Cool Young Artists

Upon reviewing previous articles, in preparation for this week’s article, I noticed that near the end of #04 we stated that the next article would provide guidance for those interested in artistic creative writing. I apologize for the error. We will start with a description of artistic creative writing.

What Is It?
One excellent unsigned article by a writer for ArticlePromotions.Com said, “Creative writing is artistic, like painting or composing music.” In fact, not wanting to discard or ignore a short but very well written article on this same subject, I would highly recommend reading this article, entitled “How To Learn The Art Of Creative Writing.” (This website also includes significant guidance on article writing, including creative writing.) Another author, Michael Wolfe, an eHow.Com Contributor, wrote that all writing jobs fall into just two categories, technical and creative; he then lists ten types of creative writing: Critic, Novelist, Copywriter, Journalist, Playwright, Comedian, Scriptwriter, Editor and Poet. A short description of each type is also included.

Still another author, Ali Hale, writer for DailyWritingTips.Com, wrote that artistic creative writing (which some may consider a redundant phrase) is any type of writing done to express feelings, thoughts and emotions, as opposed to simply providing information. Interestingly, this author later stated that any writing is hard. I disagree. Especially for those with a passion for creative writing, or those very well-versed in a given subject, writing is both enjoyable and very often easy; although admittedly, proofing and editing for logic and readability can be somewhat tedious, but necessary. However, this is the type of writing that I enjoy most, which may be either technical or creative. Ms Hale then provides a number of tips and exercise suggestions for beginning writers; do check them out, whether you are just beginning as a writer or seriously considering a creative writing career. This fairly short article then list dozens of comments about artistic creative writing, which are also worth your time to review.

Is Artistic Creative Writing Your Forte?
If you are just exploring the field of writing, then learn all you can; it may become your passion! Being good at creative writing will require you to both love reading and read widely. To accelerate development of your talents and abilities, be willing to learn from others. Some of the referenced authors and websites in this article will provide an excellent starting point to learn everything you can.

Do you love nature? God’s creation can and will inspire you to write creatively. From a baby’s smile to an eagle soaring in a cloudless sky to horses grazing in a picturesque pasture, nature will provide an endless source of subjects and engender many feelings, thoughts and emotions.

Do you have interest in reading a wide variety of materials? Poetry, proverbs, idiomatic expressions and a variety of novels, biographies and short stories will help you with both ideas and refinements in your writing style.

Are you aware of events happening around you as well as world affairs? These too are excellent sources of topics and subjects and can and will inspire the artistic creative writer. However, most career minded individuals, in writing and other professions, do settle on a particular field of endeavor. You cannot be well-versed and knowledgeable about everything. Therefore, like scientists, doctors and many artists, search early in your career; if you want to truly excel, choose a particular field and learn everything you can about it.

I am a firm believer in giving credit where credit is due. And much of this sections was inspired by a list of tips in an article on how to become a creative writer at Shvoong.Com entitled “The Art Of Creative Writing.”

So Go For It!
Let this article be the launching point for seriously considering a career in artistic creative writing. And you may even be able to make it into a good paying career. The carefully selected articles cited are from individuals, organizations and businesses specializing in teaching others how to write creatively and/or to market one’s writing talents. Learn from them, keep improving your skills and keep moving toward becoming a Cool Young Artist.

Thank you for reading!

Are you a photographer, sculptor or painter looking for different subjects? How about just looking at the natural world or mother nature – common names for what the Lord has created all around us? From micro to macro, the world around us is a fascinating study and can provide an unlimited number of subjects for those learning how to become an artist or a Cool Young Artist.

Look Up

Evening and Morning. Sunsets and sunrises are exciting to photograph, especially as sunsets change from minute to minute and from bright white and yellow to orange to pink and then deep and vivid red; finally, the red changes to dark gray and often does so very quickly as the sunset fades away. And sunrises do the same, but in the reverse order of colors. Are you a poet? I’m sure there are numbers of poems yet to be written about these changing colors.

Especially when the weather is very unsettled, and when the sun only pokes through a few times during the day, be ready in the evening for some spectacular sunsets. This also may occur after unsettled weather overnight, sometimes producing a spectacular sunrise.

Sun, Moon and Stars. Solar eclipses and lunar eclipses can both be photographed with or without a telescope. A long exposure of the stars can produce an interesting mosaic or background for other graphics or photographs, using photo editing software. Use a telescope for a close-up of the moon; then position that moon within a romantic picture you and your girlfriend or boyfriend.

Clouds. Often when photographing sunsets and sunrises I will turn my attention around 180 degrees and look at the eastern clouds in the evening and the western clouds in the morning. Unique cloud formations can produce very unique scenes and play with light in fascinating ways. Even at mid-day, clouds can spark your imagination for a picture or painting.

Look Down
Fauna and Insects. Especially when doing microphotography, you can find many interesting colors and shapes in whole flowers or individual pedals, carpels or stamens. And a bumble bee collecting pollen can add a unique touch to a simple flower. Close-ups of live insects can be a bit scary, but certainly a source of unique pictures; be sure to use plenty of light and a fast shutter speed (This can be tricky, but use your imagination and ingenuity.)

The Ground. Late last winter I was photographing a grove of cottonwood trees with many brand new leaves that recently were burdened with a thick layer of heavy, wet snow.

Then I looked down at the path I was standing on and saw this:

I took several pictures.  As a unique background, these may come in handy someday.

Look Around
Landscapes, Animals and People. These are probably the most common subjects of photographers and graphic artists. However, you should constantly be looking for unusual poses, situations, configurations and lighting. Dappled light on landscapes, animals or people can produce many special effects for a unique photograph. A sunset or sunrise with your town’s or city’s skyline clearly visible in the foreground may be of great value to a local newspaper; be sure it includes at least on readily identifiable landmark. I am still waiting for the right sunrise to photograph our church with a beautiful eastern sky just behind it. For you commercial photographers, have you thought about photographing unspoiled natural landscape where a home or business is about to be built? Then, during the project take pictures every few weeks or months until completion; then present an album or collage (or both) of pictures to the owner documenting the whole project.

Exceptionally Unique Situations. Carry your camera everywhere you possibly can do so. You never know when a great photographic opportunity may arise. While driving, you may encounter a great sunset, a herd of elk in a field, one or two horses in a picturesque pasture or animals fighting or stalking. I once was on my way down to a lake near my home to photograph birds when, just by chance, I spotted a coyote stalking two great blue herons. I was torn between warning the herons about the coyote or taking photographs, but decided on the later. Here are two of the photographs.

 

The coyote actually stalked one heron while totally ignoring the other one!

I was not really ready and should have used a faster shuttle speed. But that is part of being a nature photographer. I’m always still learning!

Thank you for reading!

I could have entitled this article “Technology and Human Ingenuity.” In a very real sense, art is human ingenuity. And often this involves helping other to be innovative by engineering software for expressing one’s thoughts, ideas and opinions. Here are some examples. However, I want you to submit additional ideas, through the “comments” feature below, about how other software could be created, or existing software modified, to allow Cool Young Artists to create a Variety of Ideas!

Photo Editing
Think well beyond Adobe PhotoShop, Google Picasa and open source GIMP. What will the photo editing software of the future look like? Pictures may become videos or holograms. The observers, which now may be called users, may be able to converse with holographic images. Or, simply by speaking to a microphone , colors or background may change in a given image. By simply saying a date, week, month or year, all images during that timeframe could immediately be displayed.

Messaging
First there was email, then instant messaging, then texting and then tweets! Notice the trend, from asynchronous to synchronous. People want to communicate directly, even though they are located on opposite corners of the earth! Certainly satellite communications is required and will be in the future.

Think about instant communication with any one of six plus billion people! When a person is born, he or she is given a code for life. Certainly that person should have ultimate control over that code. However, it would be interesting if any one person could instantly communicate with any other person by accessing a code. The code must go well beyond numbers and letters and involve unique physiological factors such as DNA, retina and other eye structures, or even something as mundane as fingerprints, which are still unique to each individual.

Video Editing
Continuing the thought progression of photo editing above into the realm of Star Trek’s “Holideck,” video editing may evolve into re-visiting video created by our thoughts of past events. Research on dreams, which often appear as very real video with us as the central character, may reveal how to control our thoughts to produce such re-visiting. Then, “artists of the mind” may appear by some people with very innovative artistic minds.

Text Editing
Less than 30 years ago, word processing was in its infancy. Today, much communication has been possible simply by rearranging our thoughts in word processing, which I am actually doing right now. If our minds can change the actions of our fingers, can’t our minds change the actions produced by our thoughts. What might these actions be? How about output on the computer screen that images our thoughts. It may sound weird, an invasion of personal privacy, and maybe even ridiculous, but text editing would be brought to a whole new dimension if we could “harness” our thoughts as we edit our thoughts more efficiently, just as we edit our writing more efficiently with a word processor.

Other Imaginative Software
Are you thinking about how to become a software engineer? That’s great! What I have tried to do above is to get you and other readers to think “out of the box,” with little regard as to whether it appears weird or ridiculous at first. That is where new innovations in technology and artistry are generated. And certainly technology and artistry have much in common and certainly can be inextricably linked. Innovative artists, perhaps even more than innovative scientists, can and should play very significant roles in the future of mankind!

Please comment below. Your thoughts, ideas and opinions are all most appreciated. Thank you for reading and participating with other Cool Young Artists!

There are many colleges and schools to obtain an undergraduate or graduate degree in your chosen field of artistry. One very well organized website is called "AllArtSchools" and subtitled "Your Guide to Art Education and Careers." A single click on "All Art Schools" brings up a listing of art schools in your local area followed by an extensive listing of both online and traditional campus art schools accepting students in your local area or state; this is followed by state listings, many complete with specific degree programs offered at each school. Additionally, you may browse by the artistic programs of General, Design, Fashion, Entertainment and Fine Arts; or you may browse by certification or college degree, such as Associate's, Bachelor's or Master's Degree.

A similar website is called “ArtSchools.Com.” It lists a variety of top degree programs, including graphic design, fashion, interactive media, interior design, game design, web design, photography, film, animation, computer aided drafting (CAD), media arts and visual communication. Additionally, it lists the top U.S. states and cities for art schools:

 States                     Cities

        California             New York City
New York               Los Angeles
Texas                       Chicago
Florida                     Atlanta
Pennsylvania           Boston
Illinois                      Houston
Massachusetts            Miami
Georgia               Philadelphia

Other links list top art schools by state as well as a listing of nine online art schools and colleges. Additionally, visitors to this site may search for art and design schools by program and location.

Then there is the Academy of Art University, also known as “The Art School of Art Schools,” located in San Francisco. As one of the best online schools of art, this university offers accredited online degree programs to earn an Associate’s of Arts, Bachelor’s of Arts, Bachelor’s of Fine Arts, Master’s of Arts, Mater’s of Fine Arts or Master of Architecture Degree, which are offered in 18 different internal art schools:

Acting Fine                                       Art Landscape                         Architecture
Advertising                                        Game Design                    Motion Pictures & TV
Animation & Visual Effects             Graphic Design            Multimedia Communication
Architecture         Music Prod. & Sound Design for Visual Media
Illustration
Art Education                             Industrial Design                       Photography
Fashion                                 Interior Arch. & Design          Web Design & New Media

Described as “founded by artists for artists” in 1929, the Academy of Art University certainly would be a great place to start your online search for information on any of these many artistic fields of study.

Thus, there are many choices. Interestingly, very few of the above schools or degree programs, perhaps none, specifically address writing, which was the subject of the previous article on Cool Young Artists. Therefore, next week’s article will provide you with guidance to locate schools for artistic, creative writing.

Thank you for reading!

I have done much writing, but very little specifically for publication, i.e. for publication beyond a single university and affiliated or associated institutions.  Project reports, research interim and final reports, faculty senate minutes and reports, a master’s thesis and college papers for both my undergraduate and graduate work comprise most of my writing experience.  I have also done some writing and editing of definitions and descriptions of information technology (computer) and business terms; and I have corrected hundreds, if not thousands, of students’ college papers, mostly on aeronautical or related subjects.

I often have wondered how my undergraduate work, and maybe career, would have been done, or worked out, differently if I had earned an online business degree, as opposed to a business degree from a traditional college.  But at the time, the late 1960s and early 1970s, computers occupied entire rooms!

Therefore, these are actually random thoughts and ideas on different types of writing, from a writer of limited experience, but open to adventuring out to different types of writing and exploring new ones – exactly what this website and series of articles is all about in all types of artistry.

Fiction or Non-Fiction?

Made-up or real, which do you prefer?  I prefer to write about reality and helping people learn from my triumphs and failures, wins and losses, life experiences and life disappointments.  It also appears to be very easy to write about myself; in fact, I have thought about writing an autobiography.  However, as a Christian I try to stay away from being too “self-absorbed.”  The world does not revolve about me; and I do not want others to believe I think it does.  I much prefer to write about people of inspiration, such as those who have helped me and famous historical figures such as Washington, Lincoln, Churchill, Jefferson and baseball sports inspirational players such as Ted Williams, Nolan Ryan, Babe Ruth, Carl Yastrzemski and Cal Ripken, Jr.

I have thought about writing fiction.  And have a vision of writing about what might happen in the future in light of my somewhat limited knowledge and understanding of Biblical prophecy, using what some might describe as an “overactive imagination.”  Have you every thought about what the world will be like when all human still have free will, but all sin and it effects are removed, God has a dwelling place here on Earth and angels and men and women, who are one with the Lord, freely move between heaven and earth to do His will?  A million stories, scenarios, experiences and adventures could be described.  Then after a thousand years, Satan, his demons and sin will be released once again and one last time – providing millions of additional ones.

Reporting or Commentary?

Reporting to me appears easy, as long as I am sure of the facts.  Commentary on the other hand, would be more work.  I have never been comfortable commenting on random subjects for sake of commentary, just to say or write something.  I believe there is too much meaningless dialog, idle chatter and inconsequential discussion in the world – at the expense of meaningful dialog, helpful conversation and consequential discussion.

Poetry or Prose

Poetry can say more in a few lines or sentences than many authors can write in an entire book.  From “Fog” by Carl Sandburg [check) to “If” by Rudyard Kipling to a little poem I memorized long ago from a framed version in my parent’s bedroom:

I heard a bird sing in the dark of December, a beautiful tune and sweet to remember.
I heard a bird sing in the dark of December, we’re closer to spring than we were in September.

(Author Unknown; if you know the author please comment below)

I do enjoy reading poetry.  I am not sure why I remember and have memorized this little verse, but I always liked it.  Maybe you will like it too!

Prose I write as I would speak.  Especially with the word processing software, I find writing very enjoyable; and it helps me to organize my thoughts.  And I find it especially rewarding when it helps others enjoy a more fulfilling life.  I have no doubt that my best Friend, the Lord Jesus, helps me; and anything good that I produce is from Him, not me.

As always, your questions and comments are most appreciated.  Again, thank you for reading!