creativity

Make mistakes

| Anna Cull
John Lennon poster 1 — digital illustration, 2011
John Lennon poster 1 — digital illustration, 2011
John Lennon poster 2 — digital illustration, 2011
John Lennon poster 2 — digital illustration, 2011

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” Scott Adams

The first image was created by following a tutorial on Tuts+ (the design is based on street artist Shepard Fairey’s Obama campaign posters). The second image was a mistake* I made when messing around with layers in Illustrator.

*Visit this post if you would like to know what I really think about mistakes.

The very small painting with the really long title

| Anna Cull
Where shadows grow long at the foot of the mountain, ghost trees shine like gold. Acrylic on canvas, 102 x 102 mm, 2014
Where shadows grow long
at the foot of the mountain,
ghost trees shine like gold.
Acrylic on canvas, 102 x 102 mm, 2014. Sold.
Ghost trees, Arthur’s Pass, original photo, 2013 — Cropped and Photoshopped, 2014 (click to embiggen)
Ghost trees, Arthur’s Pass, original photo, 2013 — Cropped and Photoshopped, 2014 (click to embiggen)

The really long title is also a haiku. I’m thinking it may be the first of a series of mini canvas + haiku combinations.

The painting is based on another phone-camera image edited in Photoshop. Good old Photoshop!

Shoot it, Sketch it: Southern Alps, Oxford

| Anna Cull
Southern Alps, Oxford – acrylic on canvas, 204 x 204 mm, 2014
Southern Alps, Oxford – acrylic on canvas, 204 x 204 mm, 2014  (SOLD)
Southern Alps, Oxford, original photo, 2012 — Cropped and Photoshopped photo, 2014
Southern Alps, Oxford, original photo, 2012 — Cropped and Photoshopped, 2014 (click to embiggen)

Question: when is a bad, low-res phone photo a good photo? Answer: when it’s the only one you’ve got. After opening my horribly pixelated image in Photoshop, I lightened it a little and messed around with artistic filters until I had something I didn’t object to looking at, printed it, and painted it. The details you would normally expect to see in a ‘good’ photo were slightly blurred and kind of painterly even before I started working on the canvas — which was an unexpected bonus because it meant not having to squint (a time-honoured technique for getting rid of unnecessary details). I really like not having to squint.

Not so sure

| Anna Cull
Beat book cover, detail — student project — mixed media, 2011
Beat book cover, detail — student project — mixed media, 2011

“…it’s easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent (like thinking) and it’s also easier to do little things we know we can do than to start on big things that we’re not so sure about.” John Cleese

I’m raiding the vaults to find images to illustrate some of my favourite quotes ― and there are plenty more where this came from.