How cool is this?!

It’s a set design for the musical THE WIZ, performed at West Haven High School in West Haven, CT, USA.

The director was Margi Maher and the set designer was Sean Maher.

Sean took inspiration for his beautiful set design from my painting, Shiny Happy Landscape.  I absolutely love seeing the way interpreted and adapted the artwork to suit their set design needs.  I think they did a great job – their set looks so whimsical and fun!  A wonderful backdrop for such an enchanting tale.  The actors and actress look wonderful with their costumes!

The set design has been entered into a national competition, so we’re wishing them the best of luck!

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Here are the basic steps that I demonstrate in the drawing lesson:

Many thanks to Tambako for allowing me to use his lovely rose photo as a reference for this tutorial!

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Lately I’ve had Day of the Dead on the brain, mainly because I’ve been working on Day of the Dead articles and tutorials for Art is Fun.  The other night, after I’d been preparing tutorials for Day of the Dead art projects, I laid in bed thinking about skulls and those empty places where the eyes were.  And thinking that my eyeballs are now resting in those two holes in my skull, as they’d been all my life – something I always take for granted and accept as fact and never question or even consider. 

So I laid there thinking about the solidity of skulls and the soft fluidity of eyeballs, contrasting the living with the dead.  And thinking that there is a profound difference between having a functioning brain and eyeballs beneath this skull, versus having a dry, bare, exposed and empty skull – and knowing that one day, that is exactly what my body will become.  My eyeballs, these lovely organs that allow me to see the visual world around me, will no longer exist.  It’s all very basic on one level; we all know that we will die.  Duh, right?  But to really contemplate death, especially one’s own death, is an entirely different experience than to just passively be aware of it (or to ignore it completely).

So thinking of Day of the Dead incited all these ruminations circling around mortality, ephemerality, the cycles of existence… we’re here one minute and gone the next, but where do we (our spirits, our minds) go?  No one really knows.  We have theories and opinions, hopes and visions, but no solid evidence of anything.

I guess that makes some people scared, so they either try to ignore the inevitability that they will die someday, or they cling to their beliefs, which are really just stories they tell themselves to try to make sense of it all.  Personally, I find beauty and wonder in the mystery of not-knowing.  I don’t want to try to fit the future into a preconceived storyline.  I just want to ride the wave and see what happens.  And this brings me a sense of inner peace.

Pondering the inevitability of death also brings everything back to basics… such contemplation leads to discerning what really matters in life, if we’re all gonna die someday anyway?  The way we conduct our lives often seems to depend on our own individual answers to this question. To me, it suddenly makes my priorities more clear: I want to be a good person and have a positive impact on others. 

So anyway, back to what started this whole train of thought…

I just finished a page explaining Day of the Dead (for those who may not know) and showing my Day of the Dead Art.  Now I’m writing tutorials on how to draw skulls, hence the funky animation at the top of this post.  In the coming weeks I plan to expand on these tutorials to include instructions for making colorful Dia de los Muertos calaveras, like this one.  It’ll be fun!

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Download your free Thaneeya McArdle Twitter backgrounds here:

If you use one of my cool Twitter backgrounds, feel free to let me know!

Enjoy!

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• Happy cause it showed that people actually pay attention to those tweets – prior to this discovery, I always thought, “Hmm, does anyone actually read these things?” I felt a bit Twitter-lonely.
• Bad cause I don’t want people to think I’ve been ignoring them all this time!  I would never do that!  It might take me a few days to respond to emails, but I do always make an effort to respond to each and every one.  And if I had known about my @ messages on Twitter, I would have responded much sooner (that 140 character limit has its benefits!). 

So, if anyone happens to read this who sent me an @ message that I never responded to, please accept my humble and sincere apologies!  I Twittered about my recent discovery, so hopefully people got a chance to read it.  I actually wanted to go back and reply to each and every @ tweet, but after the first 2 I realized it would take me ages.  Plus, the speed of Twitter is such that people probably forget fairly quickly.  Therefore my belated response tweet would probably sound rather odd and out of place.

Anyway, I learned something new today!  Thanks for the Tweets, keep em coming please!

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Fiddling with Photoshop the other day, I put together this photo of me that was taken this past Christmas, with my drawing Unraveling the Telescopic Mind Incident.  I made two versions, and I’m not sure which one I prefer.  Any opinions?  I like them both! 

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Why did you decide to become an artist?

I’ve always loved art, and it always came naturally to me.  I also have a lot of other interests as well, such as writing and questioning the nature of the universe and the meaning of life!   When I was a student in college, I took classes in all the subjects that interested me, such as Art, Writing, Philosophy and Religion.  As much as I loved studying all of these things, I came to the realization that I could only focus on one of them as a career!  I sort of “fell” into art after realizing that being an artist would allow me the freedom to pursue all the other subjects that interest me, by allowing me to pursue and express those interests and ideas in my art.  All in all, becoming a professional artist just felt natural. 

Why do you use the materials that you do?

I work in a variety of media, but the ones I use most are probably acrylics, ink and colored pencil.  I love acrylics because they are non-toxic and non-smelly, and I feel that they are a good medium for expressing the ideas that I want to express.  I like the bright, boldness of the colors.  I also like that acrylics are very forgiving, in the sense that if I make a mistake, I can easily paint over it.  I like ink and colored pencil because they are both very portable, so I can use them anywhere.  I like being able to do artwork outdoors, so it’s really easy to take some paper and pens or colored pencils and find a nice spot to sit down and make some art! 

Would you also help me understand why art is for me? And what art means to you on the whole?

I think people who gravitate towards art are generally people with big imaginations and sensitive souls.  We are all unique individuals with our own viewpoints, our own storylines, our own dreams, memories and aspirations.  All of these things are part of us, and artists are the people who try to bring these things out – giving voice to our inner visions.  Art is about sharing our unique perspectives on the things around us and inside us.  It’s a way of communicating.  The creative process is also very therapeutic and uplifting, and people can be subconsciously drawn to art for that reason.  Art allows a safe environment for searching inside oneself, spending time with oneself, and then sharing one’s findings with the world. 
 
I’ve also written a small section on What is art here on my new website: http://www.art-is-fun.com/about-the-site-art-is-fun.html.  It’s about halfway down the page.

Cheers!

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Please do check it out: www.art-is-fun.com !

This site is a true labor of love, a never-ending work-in-progress.  Why is that?  Because there is so much to share, show and tell about art, that I will probably never be truly “finished” with the site.  Writing the site is an organic process, as the topics unravel and unfold in different directions.  There is only so much time in a day, only so fast that my fingers can type, only so long I can spend at the computer before my brain starts blipping in funny ways… so the site is growing piece by piece, step by step.  I ultimately envision hundreds and hundreds of pages on this site, and I can’t wait to write them all!  I love writing about art as much as I love making art.  And I love being able to share all my art knowledge with everyone around the world.  I’ve spent the past several years creating art i n t e n s i v e l y, and I’ve picked up so many tips and techniques that they are spilling out of my brain left and right.  Thank goodness I’ve got a new website to scoop it all up!

If you have any comments on the site, I’d love to hear from you.  I’m especially interested in hearing about topics people would like to see covered or explained on the site.  I’m open to all art-related suggestions! Just leave a message here or contact me via Art is fun.

Right now I’m working on a 15-page article about How to Paint Photorealism: A Step-by-Step Guide on How to Paint Your Own Photorealistic Paintings.  This article is for the more advanced artists, but contains loads of helpful tips that will be useful for beginners as well. 

Anyway, climb aboard, check out the site, and let me know what you think!

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Available for purchase here.

Looks pretty cool in black and white too:

Available for purchase here.

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