Art Blog for The Inspiration Place

Did you ever hear the story of how J.K Rowling came up with the idea for the Harry Potter series? She says "I was travelling back to London on my own on a crowded train, and the idea for Harry Potter simply fell into my head."

Have you heard of that concept before? I was recently reading a story about Gloria Vanderbilt and she was discussing her writings. The New York Times reported: "Of the erotic...

I am often asked how I can bear to sell my art...why don't I keep it? Part of what makes it easy to let go of my art and sell it is that I know that my best art will always be the next one that I paint. My favorite art in my collection is always my most recent art piece. Is this really different than gardening? How could you bear to cut your flowers and make a bouquet except that you know the earth...

Art journaling serves as an important took for goal setting and keeping goals visible. Just the act of setting the goals down on paper is a small step that most people neglect and yet it makes it twice as likely that you will reach your goals just by writing them down. It is like creating a contract with yourself. I also love a place to revisit my goals during the year and the fancier I make my...

Every year I have been making very fixed goals... I define a goal as a very specific, measurable, actionable outcome for the future. But I also set some intentions for the year. The difference between an intention and a goal is that intentions guide the present whereas the goals determine the future. Get inspiration for your art journal by setting your intentions for yourself. Intentions are...

Buckling paper is a frustrating and common problem when painting with watercolor which is why I always recommend new students start with a watercolor block. However, there are going to be times when you want to paint much larger or in a different non-standard size. In those cases, you do not have to put up with buckling if you stretch the paper. (I am told "buckling" is called "cockling" by my...

I paint a lot of musicians, musical instruments and include piano music in my art. As a result,  I am always getting asked if I am a musician also. The truth is that although my childhood piano sits in my home and my kids both know how to play multiple instruments, I am not a musician. The music I make is on the canvas. My quick answer is to those asking is that because my kids are both musical, m...

It seems every spring, I start painting animals and flowers... Not that I don't paint animals other times of the year, but the intensity of my painting creatures definitely picks up around March. Early in the month, I started working on this duck painting. When I first start off with my mixed media creations, I often have no concept of what the subject will be. I start with my feelings. Feelings...

For the past few years, I have been choosing a word for the year. This words serves as a beacon for how I want the year to go. In order to keep my intentions visible, I create art journal pages around my word. For this page, I experimented with all the ways I could write my words for the year "light."

You can do this exercise as well. See how many different "fonts" you can come up with in your art...

My grandfather had a saying which he loved to repeat while enjoying his morning bacon and coffee and that is "Every age has its compensations." It was an expression that I heard and dismissed as I longed for each milestone as I grew up... old enough to drive, old enough to drink (legally), etc... and then started dreading new ones....turning 30...turning 40... but now that I am 47 I don't really...

Even more so than January, springtime signals to me a time of new beginnings. The dreadful dreariness of winter lifts and the promise of flowers, warm weather and sandals awaits me. It's no wonder that as we come out of hibernation, we want to clear out our nests. Declutter Art Journal Prompt In this blog post, I share with you my "declutter" list as well as the declutter lists of some of the...