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Your plan to learn more about art as a self-taught artist

Your plan to learn more about art as a self-taught artist

Being a self-taught artist means that you are learning and teaching yourself about art on a daily basis. Some artists like theory, while the majority of artists prefer practice and experimentation. However, I think being a self-taught artist should be the byproduct of both. In this article, I will highlight a roadmap for you to follow if you’re a young self-taught artist, and I will call these…

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A beginner’s guide to composition in art

A beginner’s guide to composition in art

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Get more art sales through social media marketing

Get more art sales through social media marketing

As Q4 is around the corner, I decided to start focusing more articles on sales, marketing, and making money as an artist. Last Monday I posted about how you can create your personal brand as an artist. And today it will be all about how to use social media marketing to make more sales as an artist. So let’s jump straight into it.  1. Define Your Social Media’s Purpose Before we get started, I…

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How to turn your small Room into an art-friendly environment (simple, on a budget)

How to turn your small Room into an art-friendly environment (simple, on a budget)

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Art Journals: Your way to Fun and therapeutic creative journaling sessions

Art Journals: Your way to Fun and therapeutic creative journaling sessions

A couple of weeks ago, I was going through a lot of work-related stress and I decided to take a day off. I always journal, no matter how I’m feeling. But on that day, I really wanted to paint, but God knows the complex relationship I developed with painting when my mental health isn’t the best. So I decided, the second best thing to do was to art journal instead. Since that day, I’ve been craving…

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5 Practical tips to Stop the Art Block

5 Practical tips to Stop the Art Block

As someone who regularly falls into art blocks, I have developed some good coping mechanisms that might come in handy to you as well. This blog post isn’t much about the science behind art blocks but more about some straight-to-the-point practical tips that you can try right here, right now. If you are a creative and have never faced an art block, forget about this blog post and write about how…

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What is the broken color technique and how to use it?

What is the broken color technique and how to use it?

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Aesthetic Air Dry Clay Project ideas First-timers must try

More here: https://theartandbeyond.com/air-dry-clay-project-ideas/

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A painting I did last night

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5 Websites for Free Art Prints (Personal and Professional use)

Today’s blog post is all about Free Art Sources for both personal and professional use (images of art pieces that you can download and use for free) for your online art businesses or home and office decor ideas. 

If you are an art blogger, or maybe an art prints online store owner, these resources will be your best friends and they are all free and here for you to use. You can also print and use them to decorate your space. 

Depending on your taste and style, I have arranged these websites to suit as many aesthetic’s preferences as possible. 

Vintage Free Art Downloads for Personal and Professional use

National Gallery of Art

The National Gallery of Art has a collection where thousands of vintage art prints are displayed for download and are free. 

You can find every art style and technique you like.

And if you want me to send you my favorite finds, leave me your email in the contact form and I will share them with you so you don’t have to spend hours going through the entire collection.

You can find the form here: https://theartandbeyond.com/5-free-art-sources-for-personal-and-professional-use/

Art Institute of Chicago

This website includes a ton of options, and you can find some of the most known art pieces. 

To search for public domain images on the website of the Art Institute of Chicago, follow these steps as written on the Institute’s website:

On the Collection page, you’ll find a search box. When you enter either “public domain” or “CC0,” the search engine will return the full list of public domain images available from the Art Institute of Chicago. You can also access public domain images using the advanced search filters on the Collection page. Among the many filters is a checkbox to limit your search results to only public domain artworks. You can use this checkbox to view all public domain artworks, refine existing keyword searches, or combine it with other filters such as artist, date, and medium. 

Imagine you are looking for a painting of a cat to post to Twitter. To find public domain artworks featuring cats, you should start your search with the keyword “cats” and then refine the results by selecting the public domain filter. Now you will have over 1,800 cat-related public domain images from the collection to choose from. And you are free to download and use these images however you see fit. [extracted from the original website]

Nature-inspired and Biodiversity Free Art source for Personal and Professional use

Biodiversity Heritage Library

I keep seeing beautiful prints of different butterflies, flowers, and sketches of different elements of nature over on Pinterest and I always thought people were DIYing those frames and hand sketching them all until I came across this library where I was able to download them and use them for free.

Collections on Different Categories

The Cleveland Museum of Art

This website includes different categories, where you can find Contemporary Art, Greek and Roman Art, Islamic Art, Medieval Art, and many more… 

All Art related Images

Unsplash

Unsplash is my go-to website to find free art sources for personal and professional use, it has a bunch of images that might be useful to include in a blog post, presentation, business brief, etc. You can also find images of Artworks, it really depends on the keyword you’re using and what you are looking for. What matters is it’s all free and there to use for both personal and business.

You may also enjoy reading these articles:

2022 Top Websites for your daily creative inspiration

Best Books to Read as an Artist

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11 Websites to Find Inspiration as an Artist

2022 Best inspiration websites, social media platforms for artists

As an artist, or any creative professional, did you know that as little as a daily 15 min of visual nutrition and inspiration could give your creativity a wild boost?

If you’re out of inspiration and craving some new ideas to feed your thoughts, you’re in the very right place.

These 11 websites, social media platforms, blogs, and game websites will help you find the inspiration you’re looking for:

Best Social Media Platforms for Inspiration

Pinterest

The Best inspiration website for artists got to be Pinterest. It’s a black hole but it never fails to inspire and spark brighter ideas in my mind.  My favorite part about Pinterest is the fact that you can literally find every existing aesthetic that could inspire you, and you can even create your own inspiration boards and pin your favorite finds to keep them safe.

Tiktok

Tiktok is full of short inspiring videos, I go for Tiktok whenever I feel blank or uninspired. Make sure you don’t spend the entire day watching Tiktoks though. Only a couple of videos found looking up your preferred keywords will do the trick.

Instagram

On that note, if you’re not familiar with Tiktok, or don’t enjoy using it. Instagram reels will do the exact same job for you. When I first started experimenting with clay, Instagram explore page was my go-to for ideas and inspiration, I got great suggestions whenever I interacted with clay-related content. The app has a great variety of functions: reels, stories, shops and it’s all about visual content.

Best Blogs for Inspiration

WePresent

WePresent is one of the best inspiration websites for artists I have ever come across. I remember coming across something called “Daftar Asfar”, which sparked some amazing ideas in my mind at that time.

If you never heard of WePrsent before, it’s a blog section that was made by the WeTransfer team to deliver inspiring content in the form of stories and spread the word about the experiences of artists you probably haven’t heard of yet.

Creative Boom

Creative Boom has a whole section called inspiration where you can find great blog posts about inspiration, creativity, and a wide range of tips and advice to move your inspiration to the next level.

Shillington Education

This is more for my dear designers out there. The team is always up to the latest design trends, they also have blog posts, competitions, news about fairs, tips, and more. You will surely find the dose of creative inspiration you’re looking for.

Color inspiration

Coolors

If you’re like me and you find color to be a strong element of inspiration to you. Coolors has a feature where you can find the trendiest color palettes.

Best Games Websites for Inspiration and Creativity

Set Game

This website offers a fun little pattern-matching game that trains your left and right sides of the brain to work together. It is an excellent tool for honing your ability to identify and make non-obvious associations with things around you. Every day, a new puzzle is released.

Mastermind Like Game

Logical thinking is the Ying to the Yang of creative thought. If you want to become more creative, you must improve all of your other talents as well. This is a fantastic logic game that will help you enhance your problem-solving skills.

Best Websites where Inspiring Videos Exist

Ted

TED is a conference event where the world’s most outstanding figures are called to deliver a 20-minute talk/presentation on any topic of their choice. Those speeches are available on this website for free.  Since the speeches cover a wide range of topics, I always find great art and creativity-related inspiring talks where I learn a lot of new insights. I find this website to be a fantastic resource to get fresh ideas from experts.

Youtube

Of course, you’ve turned to Youtube for inspiration before, we all did.

I used to be so addicted to Youtube, I can firmly say I have watched every popular art-related video and I still do that whenever I am out of inspiration or about to start a new art project.

You might as well enjoy these articles I have about Creativity:

12 Creativity Killers you Want to Avoid

5 Art Exercises to Boost Your Creativity (even if you’re non-artistic)

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This is such an inspiring story.. 

a 30-second short story about creatively "misusing" language

Want more from voice guest Danielle C Ohi? Listen to her read from her forthcoming novel "The Lionhead Prince" here.

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12 Ways You are Blocking your Creativity

Are you unconsciously blocking your creativity?

Creativity is such a cliché word! And if we struggle to define it, we’re more likely to be unconsciously blocking ourselves from our full creative potential. Is it an art-related thing? Or is it about the quality of our ideas?

The amount of questions that come to mind is just so overwhelming that at one point in life, I had no idea what people meant when they said “that’s creative!” or “you are very creative!”.

In this blog post, I’m willing to share with you 12 ways we are blocking our creativity that I find easier to overcome…

What is creativity?

Some people think (I did too at a point) of creativity as giftedness or inborn talent, that it appears out of nowhere, and is the fruit of natural talent, or a good mood, or even an alignment of the stars, you name it.

And to give you a better definition of what creativity means, let me put you in a situation instead. First, a thought or an idea stirs in your mind, slowly you transform this idea into a material (sketch, written note, a picture, a scenario…), this material creates a third element: a response in someone else (an emotion, a reaction…). This exact process is called creativity. There’s no wowing effect needed around it.

Am I creative?

A straight-up answer to that: yes, you are naturally creative. We all are!

But since you’re asking, let me get back at you. Are you lazy? Or do you think you’re unlucky and weren’t blessed with creativity? We are all creative because we’re all thinkers and are able to form a vision. Thinking is an extended form of vision, and creativity is the ability to expand that vision beyond conventional boundaries. If you can’t expand your vision, it’s not a lack of creativity, it’s a lack of information and knowledge in your brain. The good news is, lack of knowledge can be fixed with the right amount of effort, you can learn, do research, practice, and gain a full set of skills through nothing but persistence and goodwill.

How are you blocking your creativity?

The first block that goes without saying is the fact that you think creativity is an inborn talent. Let’s get rid of this idea before we move on to anything else.

So with that being said, these next 12 things you’re doing are blocking your creativity and stopping you from becoming the most creative version of yourself. Yet, you can easily overcome them:

Lack of visual nutrition/food for thought

Not stopping to look at the path we’re on or about to begin

Rejecting/Judging our ideas

Rushing

Relying on shortcuts

Thinking that Effort is passé

Letting your Ego take the lead

Refusing to fail

Being lazy

Refusing to imitate and recreate as a beginner

Wanting to be like everyone/someone else

Resisting change

1. You are blocking your creativity if you lack visual nutrition/food for thought:

If your mind lacks data, it can in no way, shape, or form, create new innovative ideas. A mind’s job is to process and make connections to produce and create. The expressions “visual nutrition” or “food for thought” are what we might call inspiration as well. You can give your mind various forms of data to use and work with, depending on your thinking style or preferred info consumption style. For instance, if you’re a visual thinker, you can use Pinterest to find pictures that especially appeal to you or inspire your idea. If you’re more into writing and feel like you relate to that, articles and books provide great info and help develop critical thinking abilities.

2. Not stopping to look at the path we’re on or about to begin:

If you’re not doing something that you enjoy and that would lead you to your life’s task, forget about creativity… Connecting with our inclinations is what sparks good ideas inside of us and what we lack most in the modern world is a sense of a larger purpose to our lives. You must love the subject and feel a profound connection to it in order for you to be creative at it. It’s about where you’re pouring your effort, not the effort itself.

3. Rejecting/Judging our ideas:

Very guilty of this myself, some of my ideas sound very cool in my head and some are just trash. Over the years, I learned that no idea is bad! And all ideas deserve a chance. Every idea that fails to become a project or work of art is an idea that paves the way for a fresher, more creative one to be born. Just don’t let it sit there and waste your energy overthinking it.

4. You are Blocking your Creativity if you keep Rushing:

Another way you’re blocking your creativity is rushing. I always hear 18 year old kids :’) say that it’s too late to start on something, or that a 30 year old is too old to be creative. Let me reassure you, your most creative years are generally your late twenties and on into your forties. That’s where you have had enough knowledge and data so that your mind can start making the right pairings and connections. And if you don’t believe me, look the story of Grandma Moses up.

5. You are Blocking your Creativity if you are Relying on shortcuts:

With the way our world is nowadays, we believe that we can find a shortcut for literally everything. This is a very destructive habit and it has made the laziest less creative generation ever. We believe that we can skip the hard work and the steps needed to do something properly, we avoid the learning process and rely on easy formulas to give us the power and success we’re aiming for.

Basics and Hard work can not be avoided, no matter how hard you try to prove yourself right and stick to your shortcuts and how useful and trendy they are, you’ll eventually find yourself going back to what you avoided as the only way to master your skill or field.

6. Thinking that Effort is passé:

You are very wrong if you separate creativity from effort. Patience, discipline, persistence, and confidence are the ingredients to make a creative mind. But if you rely on your talents and consider the effort and seeking knowledge as a fussy and passé kinda stuff, you will not make any progress.

7. You are blocking your creativity if you’re Letting your Ego take the lead:

Read the rest of this article here 

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