Daily painting book

I just finished reading daily painting by Carol Marine and I gotta say it was pretty inspiring. Carol Marine is a daily painter who paints a lot of still life. She went from painting big paintings and then eventually went to small paintings. She saw that she was avoiding the studio to paint big pieces of art. When she switched to painting smaller and more regularly and she saw that she actually wanted to go in the studio and she got excited to paint. She has a blog where she sells all her artwork. This is her blog if you wanted to visit it. http://carolmarine.blogspot.com/
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The benefits of painting smaller art more frequently are...
-It fits into your busy schedule
-You're more inspired to experiment
-You're less emotionally attached
-It facilitates quick growth
-You feel less fear
-You enjoy the process more
-You gain confidence
-It's less tedious
-It helps your larger work
-There is more structure

That sure is a lot of benefits. Honestly I like painting small too because you just feel more accomplished in the end and it helps me grow quickly. I also notice that I'm not really in the mood to do bigger paintings because I just think "I gotta fill this all in with paint and it's probably going to look weird in the end because I put too much water to the paint". I just produce better work when it's small.

Carol Marine talked about selling art online, framing, composition, awkward still lifes, plein air painting, Values, artist blocks, and just basic things that are helpful to see information on. I would really suggest her book to someone that is looking to get inspired by art. I sure hope some of you who read this will like the book too.

Trip to Atlantic beach

My mom, my brother, and me went to Atlantic beach on Tuesday and came back on Wednesday. When we made it to Atlantic beach we went to Fort Macon beach and we relaxed and went swimming for a few hours. Around 2:20 we checked into our hotel(Caribee inn). After we checked in we visited Fort Macon, it's really cool for pictures. The tunnels really creeped me out because they were all dark and you could hear water droplets. So it reminded me of a cave. 

This is the entrance to go into Fort Macon. 

Here I am

We found baby birds in one of the canons in the Fort. It's was cool to see baby birds so up close and living inside a canon. I've never seen something like this before. The birds are living in a canon that is unused so that is good. 

Then we walked to the beer garden place that we were going to eat dinner at. It was really good, I didn't even finish eating my dish because I got too full. I ordered a fried ham and cheese sandwich. We walked back and relaxed for a while in the hotel. We drove to get desert at Dairy Queen, I ordered an Oreo blizzard. We came back to the hotel and relaxed some more and then decided to go on a beach walk around sunset time. 

I liked this kite a lot

The sunset was really pretty

It just makes me say wow

I really enjoyed the pier

Look at how the ocean looks from high up!

There were benches that you could sit on and watch everything

Doesn't this just look amazing

Then we walked home and we chilled for a bit and then went to bed. The next day we woke up to a thunderstorm at literally 6 am. Usually it thunders at night so it was weird how it was thundering in the morning. We opened the window and looked out to see rain pouring down harshly causing everything to flood. So we just went to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast and headed home. It kinda sucked how we couldn't stay longer but that is okay, we still got our beach time. So that sums up our vacation, it was really fun. 

The impact that technology has on you that you don't realize

Technology is everywhere, it's in your home, it's in your work, it's in your school, it's pretty much anywhere where you can think of. 

Now think about how it's effecting your life. Is it enriching your life? Are you learning something? 

Analyze how you use technology.

If you're just surfing from one social media to another and back to the first one, you're not being enriched. If you are doing that I think you're lost in the glow of your screen. You don't have to get caught up on the latest gossip or whatever it may be. All that social media won't matter in a couple of days, you will just forget about it. Try spending less time on social media because you really don't realize how much time it takes up. 

Urgency is a major thing in technology that people don't really realize. The average person checks their phone one hundred sixty times a day. Now isn't that a little obsessive? I see kids all over my school that get a Snapchat  in Thier inbox and reply to it immediately. You know a lot of the time it's just a picture of a wall or something. Is it really that urgent that you need to see that wall immediately? Come on people. It's not like someone is dying or something so therefore you don't need to check it immediately. But if someone is dieing then I can understand the urgency. 

Laziness is another thing that people don't realize about technology. You can do a lot online by just sitting on your butt. My dad used to work at A & B Store Fixtures and he worked with some lazy people. They were lazy because they were playing games on thier Iphone instead of working. Now in days people always feel like they need to be entertained so they spend lots of time using technology. The average person spends five hours a day watching TV. That's a crazy number and I'm sure the number will just keep growing. People sure love the entertainment but it definitely makes us lazy. 

I hope this article made you think about how you use technolgy. You choose how you want to use technology. But I hope I helped you become more aware of certain things. 

May favorites

1)Minimalism film

I saw the minimalism film with my mom and it was really good. I liked hearing a bunch of people's stories on how they became minimalists. I liked how the film went into detail about the impact of advertising and also the fast fashion industry. But I do think they could of went into a lot more detail about technology. The documentary gave off the message of living simply and everything that you own should serve a purpose or bring you joy. The film sold out of tickets for Raleigh so I'm just glad we got our tickets right on time. 

2)Doing artwork

I love painting and sketching, so much that I do it almost everyday. I just love creating my own work and it's really fun and relaxing to sit down during the day and create artwork. I get off for summer break in about a week so I will be excited to create art more since I'll have tons of time. 

3)Cheese sticks

Okay usually I don't have a favorite food of the month but I gotta say these cheese sticks are so good. We usually get the mozzarella ones and they are great for snacking on. I enjoy peeling the cheese for some reason it's kinda fun.

4)Daily painting book

This book is about a artist who paints on a daily basis. Her name is Carol Marine and she is a daily painter. The book talks about how painting on a daily basis can benefit you in the longrun. She tells her story and her techniques that she uses in her artwork. This is a very inspiring book so far(I'm only halfway through it). I'm prabably going to do a whole seperate post about this book in a couple of weeks. I will go into more detail in the upcoming post.