Digital Whisper Challenge - Ships

My piece for this weeks Digital Whisper challenge. The theme is ships. Elements from Teddi Rutschman's Mythology kit.

She swore vengeance...

Finding Your Tribe

My creation from the Dream Big kit.

Artists' work can sometimes be lonely. Especially writing and the visual arts. Although it is a delight to create a story or a painting, it is a solitary task. Even more so when you are totally immersed in the process. The world is there and you are here and time stands still.

But it is also good to connect to a tribe. I have said this before. Connecting to other artists can bring new energy to your work. And with social media, like blogs and Facebook, there are endless possibilities to connect. You find one tribe that leads to another that leads to another and another.

I just recently joined another digital art Facebook group called Mischief Circus. I found the group through another artist who shared a piece of artwork on Facebook that she made from a digital kit she had collaborated on at Mischief Circus. I followed the link, did some exploring and joined.

Mischief Circus' Facebook group perfectly compliments their online store which is a collaboration of 17 individual and groups of designers. Mischief Circus is chock full digital kits at reasonable prices.
I was hooked. You can only post artwork to their Facebook group that is made with elements from a Mischief Circus kit (a brilliant marketing model) so I went shopping! I purchased Marsha Jorgensen's Tumble Fish Studio Dream Big kit which included over 150 elements.

Let the fun begin! 

Digital Round Robin

I have been participating in a really fun collaboration with a group of artists from Digital Whisper. Once a month we play Digital Round Robin. There are usually 8 to 10 of us playing and it is a blast!

You start with a background image

Then each artist adds to it.

Seven Artists  - Final Image

Is design just about commercialism?

Photography has become a key component of advertising and public relations.

I was perusing my November/December 2007 Step Inside Design magazine and came across an interesting interview of designer Kalle Lasn written by Laurel Saville. The discussion was focused on Lasn's book Design Anarchy.

Kalle Lasn is the creator of Adbusters magazine and describes the process as to how Adbusters came about in Chapter 3 of Design Anarchy: "We were a bunch of burnt-out activists tired of environmentalism, feminism and all of the other -isms...We had this nasty feeling that 'we the people' were slowly but surely losing our power to sing our songs and tell the stories and generate our culture from the bottom up."

In Kalle's "First Things First Manifesto" he states: "The [design] profession's time and energy is used up manufacturing demand for things that are inessential at best...We propose a reversal of priorities in favor of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication - a mind shift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning."

This article brought home the realization that designers and writers have a duty to use the power of words and imagery to illuminate and enlighten, not just fuel mass consumerism.