Saturday, June 20, 2009

Patience

As if anyone is anxiously waiting for my next tale. Hah! I do have a couple in draft form, nearing completion. Sometime soon.

As an aside, my boss is reading Faulkner over his lunch hour's at work, and keeps coming in and pointing out the frequent use of made-up compound words. Our favorite so far is "hollerwhisper". We both agree it's the voice one uses when you hiss at someone else to be quiet.

Landscape - 6/19/2009

Here's a watercolor I did from a photo.



Click on it and it gets all landscape sized.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Reminder to Self

No shadow is black. It always has a color. Nature knows only colors … white and black are not colors. -- Renoir


Lesson: Black paint is boring. Always mix your darks.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Inspirations: Deviant Moon Tarot

You heard that right, I sometimes use a tarot card deck for story inspiration. I don't do readings or anything like that, more like I select a card at random and pick something from that card to kick start my muse.

To that end, I picked up a copy of the Deviant Moon deck from Amazon. Unlike the ubiquitous and familiar Rider/Waite deck imagery, the DM cards don't invoke a desire to devine my life, but to tell a tale. What strikes me in reflection is how that feeling was with me, instantly and with strength, it's almost enough to make me wonder...

I went through a fair amount of research on tarot decks before deciding on one, and a website that I found very helpful was JanetBoyer.com. Her review section on dozens of different decks was illuminating, although to be honest I was less concerned with the reading potential of a deck than the illustrations, and her inclusion of a large number of sample cards from each deck (at a size large enough to be useful) was most appreciated. There are several more decks I may pick up in the future.

Amazon also has a book for writers seeking inspiration from the Tarot. I don't own it, but it's on my wish list.

This is the first in a series I'm going to call "Inspirations". It'll be about techniques and things I use to get into a creative frame of mind. Don't expect life-altering concepts here, more like little tricks you may not have considered in your own life. If you have favorite ways of your own, leave 'em in the comments. Thanks.