Art, Meaning, Green Living & Health
Art, Meaning, Green Living and Health
(see "TOPICS", below)
10/27/2017 11:52:41 AM
(a talk I gave at my 60 year retrospective at the Sedona Arts Center, Oct. 27, 2017) Here is a video based on this same material.
Life is a creative journey. Every day, each moment, each act, each though is an opportunity for creative expression. And, like actors in a vast cosmic play, together we all co-create this infinitely complex thing we call human life on Earth.
I once read that in every species there are two currents: the conservatives, who maintain what has been working so far, and the innovators, the creative explorers who try new things and who become the cutting edge of evolution. And though these forces often clash, we need both and it is a dance between them. Both have a place.
I would add to this observation, however. It’s not us versus them. I think we each have both of these forces within us: the ability to keep on keeping on, to plug away with the known, and also, the spark of the creative that drives us to try new things.
Keeping things going in the standard way has obvious benefits and limits. As for innovation, trying new things often seems to have no higher purpose other than play, perhaps play itself being how we best learn. And sometimes our most treasured innovations and ventures may not succeed as we hoped. Sometimes they create problems, as creative chemistry and industry have done.
But sometimes they can and do change the world. When Steve Jobs hired the people at Apple who created the many devices that have interconnected the greater mind of humanity, wisely, he chose those who also excelled in humanities and arts over the technocrats.
My ancestor John Adams, a founding president and a farmer, also spoke of this, pointing to the natural order of stability and security first, then innovation and play. He said that he studied politics and war and government, so that his children could study science and math and navigation and business, so that their children could explore painting and poetry and ceramics and architecture. And that is exactly what happened. I am one of the lucky descendants who got to explore the creative arts, which I did. Though we have always lived to some extenet under the shadows of the nuclear age and a time of environmental threat, most of us here are the lucky children who have been able to live creative lives in a time of abundance, liberty and opportunity.
For me, that has meant a lot of exploration of the visual arts, as well as writing. As you can see from the small fraction of my work on display here, I explored a diversity of media. I used crayons and acrylics, oils and pastels and whatever I could find. I glued spaghetti and eucalyptus buttons, sand, plaster, jewels and beans alongside pencil and paint. I explored portraits of Native Americans that seemed to draw out unhealed issues from other lives. I printed up little books and inspired sayings and sold them at craft fairs.All along, I create abstracts that remind me of the formless and infinitely creative space behind all form.
As Adams invited, I have also been at least a wannabe architect and city planner. In 1994 I designed our passive solar home in Eugene, where we lived and made a living for twenty years. To decorate our homes I tried my hand at stained glass, floral wreaths, hand painted clocks and ceramics, homemade futons and sofas, and more than I can remember. It was lovely and comforting to nest in. Home is my refuge. It is safety, comfort and that stable conservative thread that keeps life going.
As I said, I also wrote, and have done a lot of critical thinking and research about many matters. Creativity is widely curious and I think you will find this trait in many artists. With my husband Richard, a veterinarian, I co-authored a best selling Rodale book with innovative recipes that led the way to feeding home prepared diets for companion animals. As of March 2017, it is now in its 4th edition, to which I made major contributions and also illustrated.
At times I blamed this book, along with the overcast skies of Oregon, for taking over the artist in me, drawing out my left brain and opening up many business and teaching opportunities we worked on together for many years. But it has also given us both a powerful chance to impact a lot of people with messages about healthy food, about sustainability, ecology, right relationship and holistic thinking.
And that leads to another thread woven throughout this life story, not unlike the one that called to Adams. Ever since college years at Berkeley I have longed to change the world for the better. I think that has called many or most of us as well. HOW to do that has always been the biggest challenge.
Though I started as an art major, fine art seemed incapable of changing the world to really meet the social and environmental challenges of our day. Thinking it held the answers, I entered a PhD program in social psychology in 1971: change society, change the world. But soon this was clearly too stalwart and limited to silly predictable experiments you’d have to “prove” with abstruse statistics.
And so, like many of our generation, I explored social change through personal transformation and spirituality. For a while, during our 20 years in Oregon I was a licensed counselor, but that too, soon seemed too narrow and too self absorbed, leading more into the ego than beyond it.
I wasn’t sure what to do next. Meanwhile, I kept busy and helped secure our retirement years renovating real estate.
Yet inside I still longed to serve the higher good, to do what most needs doing at this point in history, AND at the same time, to follow my natural inclination and gifts to express beauty.
It is often hard to see how the threads of your life weave together when you are in the midst of it. All I knew was that about 2006 I really wanted to come to Sedona and paint and become part of the wonderful art community that is here, whose heart is the Sedona Arts Center, which will now receive 25% of sales in this show.
So we moved here. I studied at SAC and I taught at SAC. I’ve won a number of fine awards and have been in the Plein Air Festival seven times. Drawing on my experience creating events and workshops with Richard for veterinarians, I’ve created group shows with poetry readings, have had my own gallery for a while.
Mostly, I painted landscapes, thinking I would spend the rest of my life perfecting that gift as much as I could. I did focus, more than I ever have, and I feel good about the many beautiful landscape paintings and pastels that resulted.
At the same time, I soon began to integrate my interests and wrote a lot of heart felt poetry to accompany many of my paintings. I am very pleased with how these two, as well as spirituality, came together in my 2013 book, “Spirit of the Earth.” The threads of the tapestry began to join, and I hope you will take a look at it. Many people have found it inspiring, including me. It comes through me more than from me.
So, as in the 1980s in California, I again began a serious study of painting landscapes, and soon, to grow them. In the tradition of countless ancestors, I have always kept a garden, and here on the rocky dry soils of Sedona with an abundance of hungry wildlife, necessity has been the mother of invention, as it has always been in all species. This time the Muse of Creativity led to designing and building a variety of screenhouses and container gardens to grow and defend lovely greens, tomatoes, potatoes, garlic and more.
About 2012 I began offer green living, garden tours and presentations to interested people, including on YouTube. In 2014 it morphed into a monthly potluck group. This time the creative act was less about stuff and more about relationships. It became a community of people sharing an interest in creating a better world, together. Many of you, as you know, are here.
We often watch films and in October 2014 many of us saw the life changing film,“Cowspiracy.” Overnight, after learning the profound truth that a simple, healthy change of diet was truly probably the most important thing any of us can do to change the world for the better, most of us made the switch to a whole food plant based diet.
Now, each day we eat this way we each save about 1100 gallons of water, 45 pounds of grain, 30 sf of rain forest and one innocent animal’s precious life. And that matters, because, unless more of us make this change, and soon, in ten years we could lose the Amazon to grazing and to growing livestock feed. Animals agriculture is the #1 human contributor to greenhouse gases and in the coming decades we will lose much of our fresh water supplies to its inefficiencies. If we continue eating seafood as we are, by 2050 we could fish out the entire ocean. This is not a good legacy to leave our grandchildren, nor all the life forms of this blue green jewel of a planet spinning in space.
And so now, much of my life is now dedicated to spreading the word about making this shift, through blogs, working with others, offering presentations, and creating significant changes to the 2017 edition of our Rodale book, after learning that dogs in particular, can not only adapt to but live longer and healthier on a plant based diet as well. And their dietary footprint on the earth is quite significant, especially due to the trend to feed them lots and lots of fresh raw meat. I also hope you will take a look at this latest edition, which I got to illustrate (the originals are for sale here) or at least take one of the free postcards available here. It includes a recipe that has helped one dog live to age 26, and others to advanced years as well. Also, please take a copy of my plant based diet suggestions for humans. They are simple, healthy and tasty.
So that’s my story, for now.
What can we learn about creativity from from this particular life of diverse wanderings and focused production, as well as musings upon your own?
First, we need to understand who we are. We are all highly creative beings whose every thought impacts the world. It is our very nature, because we are inseparable from the creative Source of all life, the great orchestrator of it all, which often orchestrates in ways we cannot presently understand from our little corner of the world. I think in our afterlife “life review” it will all be clear.
Second, I think we each come in with a mission. Changing the world is important to many of us, and so are many other things that we come here to learn. How to love, how to forgive, how to be patient, how to trust, how to create.
Third, every act we perform is a creative one. We don’t always seem be able to create or have choice over much of what happens in life, but we always get to choose how we react to it and what we make of it. Therein lies our happiness, and our power to transform life.
Fourth, let us honor both sides of us: the creative innovator and the tried and true conservative that keeps the food growing and the houses built and the bills paid.
Finally, let us trust the course of events and to be patient. It can be confusing to tie together diverse interests that seem to call in different directions or to find out which doors will open and which will close, and why.
To do that I have found it best to trust my heart and to respond to the doors that open and walk away from those that close. Without questioning my impulses, I have usually just followed them with confidence.
Proceeding in this way, with I know now that I have made a difference in this world, not necessarily in a way that I could ever have predicted, but I know that I have contributed to a chain of events that is helping to awaken this world. And where that leads next in terms of creative projects, I have no idea, but I will trust where my heart and life leads me.
Despite all the bad news in the world, I have also come to believe that a very positive future awaits humanity and our planet. In the still of the night, just before dawn, sometimes I awaken and I know that the best is yet to come. Many others report this sense as well, including some who have had deep experiences with the Light in Near Death Experiences. There will be hard times, for sure, but I believe we will get through it. It is the grand power of nature, of life itself, that is expressing through each of us in zillions of ways that no single one of us can truly comprehend.
Life is creative and innovative and so are we. Let us trust that.
Thank you so much for coming and for the creative acts that each of you do to make a better and more beautiful world.
2/28/2012 9:34:55 AM
In 2003 a good friend called, crying. A longtime friend of hers who had been sitting high up in a huge tree in protest of the clear-cutting of some of the last of the Northwest's ancent forests, had fallen to his death. No one knew why, but it appeared that he had unclipped his safety belt. Just a few days before, he had celebrated Thanksgiving with our friend and her family.
This event inspired me to write a poem, the first I'd written in years. I am drawn to share this years later as I find myself feeling ever more touched by the need we all have to care for our only planet and its incredible ecosystems, on which we and all life depend. Trees and forests are, indeed, the lungs of the earth, providing the very oxygen we breathe.
The painting is of the ponderosas next to the second floor deck of my parents' beloved "castle" where they spent every summer from 1971 to 2008 just before they passed away. I painted it onsite, as a gift for their home, later inherited.
In Memoriam: A Forest Activist
Down to the earth he fell,
Through limbs that could not catch,
Through boughs that could not grasp,
But only wave good bye friend.
Down he fell,
Hundreds of feet down,
Down to the earth.
His ancient home.
From such lofty heights he had ascended,
Released his clip: no one knows why.
Perhaps to better see that bird,
That tree,
That grove,
That world
He sought to save.
So recently here,
So recently giving thanks,
So normal, so here,
Gone now, gone to the earth,
Gone to the sky,
Gone to the everywhere
Within us all.
He fell home.
Home now.
Let go that clip,
Let go that fear.
Let go that last reserve.
He helped us see,
He let us see
What people do for love.
Here is a hug, friend,
A warm hello,
A sweet goodbye,
Whether we knew you well
Or not til now,
Now we see you,
Now we know you,
Now we thank you,
Now we bless you,
Now we send you Home.
To us
And to this world
You will always be
An angel.
—December, 2003.
10/21/2011 12:19:11 AM
Why do we create art? I believe, from my own experience and observations of other artists, that art is an expression of the spiritual core of life. Ultimately, life is one vast, mysterious, interconnected whole. Just like a hologram, each of us is a microcosm of that wholeness, and something within us just simply wants to "have its way with us" and express the truth of that interconnectedness, especially through the arts.
Recently I organized a group art show, "Oneness: Art and the Spiritual Journey" at the Sedona Arts Center. I invited seven artists to submit artwork and statements or poetry around that idea. Our opening is, fittingly, 11-11-11 at 11 am. (Is that enough "ones," you think?).
The show contains some outstanding artwork, including pieces by the celebrated Southwest contemporary landscape artist Joella Jean Mahoney, rich painterly figures in the landscape by Vince Fazio, elegant glimpses of people in everyday life by Libby Caldwell and much more.
Finally, we published it through Blurb — and it turned out beautifully. Take a look!
Like it? You can easily order here. Available in softcover, as well as hardcover and special paper upgrades.
This would be a wonderful gift either for an artist, or someone who values spirituality, or both.
Let me know what you think!
4/29/2010 11:53:10 AM
Spring is in full bloom, after a long wet winter. Recently I set out to find some flowers to paint in celebration.
The Heartline Cafe in Sedona is always a reliable place to find all kinds of flowers in bloom during the season. And sure enough, alongside a busy highway I found a beautiful clump of irises against the red rocks.
As I sat sketching them in bright pastels, it occurred to me that they are true gifts of beauty, bravely being themselves in all their glory in an unlikely setting. Cars rushed by on the grey highway behind, traveling as we all often do these days, at a speed that often prevents us from taking notice of the small things.
But today I took notice. And in these simple flowers, I found this message:
Love’s Heart Revealed
Lost by the wayside,
But not entirely unnoticed,
Fragile and fleeting blooms.
Such ancient origins,
They live only right now.
Both eternal
And transitory.
Love’s heart revealed anew.
– Susan Pitcairn
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This piece has sold, but a similar piece, "Scent of Iris," is available. Phone 928.203.1095.
2/25/2010 9:13:10 PM
On the Verge
Of something softly
Profound
Of dark turned to light
Enduring majesty
We turn gently ,
Gratefully,
To One.
This pastel and this poem came to me today in a delightful experience on the wilderness trails near my home.
In the past two years I've been exploring the combination of poetry and art, especially plein air painting. Today's journal gives you an idea of at least one way to approach this rewarding experience.
First, I kept it simple, carrying only a light nylon briefcase with a box of pastels, a 9x12 pastel pad and foam board, a viewfinder, a small notebook, a strip of foam for sitting on rough ground, my Ipod and water. Couldn't weigh more than 2 or 3 pounds.
Pastels are an ideal medium for light transport into out of the way trails where one can be alone with all that is, which is not alone at all. They are also perfect for producing quick and easy results with a vivid, gestural quality that somehow makes it easier not to overwork a piece of art. They retain the spontenaity of the moment of connection with the subject.
With little preparation, I headed into the wilderness north off the main trail, settling on the ground in view of Coffeepot Rock, a favorite subject, with the intent to open my heart and mind to its beauty once more. The spot I found had a nice lead-in for my composition, a wide shelf that emphasized the path leading to the giant butte. To me such paths have an allegorical nature, suggesting the path that we traverse in life as we seek meaning, purpose, beauty and love.
Settling down next to a friendly yucca, I put on my Ipod headset and chose an inspiring album of satsang music, "The Lover and The Beloved," by Donna deLory. It was a tossup between that and silence. But often I find that the combination of conscious, inspired music and nature is ideal for getting into the zone with plein air painting.
As I began sketching with the pastels I asked the Universe-- God-- Life-- whatever you wish to call that from which all arises-- to guide me and help me learn what there was to learn today.
Somehow the feeling and the message I received was an excitement of discovery, of knowing that I am on my right path as I prepare to open my own gallery and further expand my artistic explorations.
Like dictation, the words of the poem came to me, in this case short and simple. I thought of how the butte itself was solid and earthy, yet sits on the verge of the emptiness of space and blue sky.
In the same way, we are always but a thought away from the ever-present nature of the sacred quality of life.
If we but be still and open our hearts.
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"Morning Joy" is not for sale, but prints are available. 928.203.1095.
1/12/2010 4:38:23 PM
To receive the Glory,
The glory arising with every breath
Neither far nor near,
But everywhere
In the silent space within it All.
Ah, it's not a waiting,
But an opening to joy.
Living on the edge of
Life's ups and downs
One day the Glory just finds us,
Sitting and open,
A still field of light in every smile,
A sparkle in everyone's eyes,
Whether seen
Or not seen.
The you, the me,
The them.
It matters little then.
When at last there is
Just this Glory
Unfolding
Everywhere.
1/2/2010 8:29:31 PM
Today while giving a private art lesson in my studio, I was talking about the use of complementary colors, one of the secrets of the Impressionists. Instead of using black or brown or some random dark color to shade or to tone down a color, the Impressionists instead used its opposite on the color wheel, creating a perfect harmony that enhanced each color. Opposites were also placed side by side in areas of a painting, causing each to vibrate.
As Tom Allen, a long-gone but not-forgotten art teacher who guided me in my youth, once explained, the whole color wheel shows us the beauty and harmony at the center of the universe.
He taught that any symmetrical geometrical form, laid on the color wheel, points to colors that harmonize perfectly with each other.
A straight line, for example, points to opposites, such as blue and orange, or red and green. This is called a complementary color scheme. An equilateral triangle points to three colors that form an "equilateral" or "Triadic" color scheme. The same is true of pentangles, squares, and so on.
As Tom further observed, equal mixtures of such opposites (or triads, etc.) always yield a neutral gray. He likened this to " the stillpoint at the calm center of the universe" and offered it as an example of a divine order behind life. This explanation awakened me to an understanding of color that has stayed with me ever since.
Today the two of us explored this lesson with a simple orange. I placed an orange on a sheet of white paper and lit it with a bright incandesent light. Immediately we could each see the blue in its shadow, created by physics I cannot fully explain but can observe.
Hope, my student, went on to create a small painting of the orange, using subtle combinations of blue and orange in the simple Zen-like simplicity of this still life. After she left, I did the same exercise with the orange, enthralled by this reminder of the beauty of opposites.
As I created this 8x10 acrylic, titled "Orange and Blue," I immersed myself in a parallel truth of life — that withinin our shadow lies our perfect opposite, inseparable and beautiful.
Often we deny and disown all that we see as the exact opposite of ourselves, and yet the truth is that by embracing and "owning" that what seems so "other" is really but a hidden part of ourselves.
And the more that we recognize that truth, the greater becomes our capacity to love.
Like this simple orange on a sheet of white paper shows us, let us embrace the beauty of the opposites of life, and in doing so, may we receive all of life's blessings.
ORANGE AND BLUE
Simple and round,
O to be so perfect.
How were you made?
How did you come to be?
And how long ago
Did we learn
That softly within your
Shadow lies
Your perfect opposite,
Inseparable
Since time began?
— Susan Pitcairn, 1-2-10
10/31/2009 1:33:55 AM
Living in Sedona, Arizona, it’s easy to become enchanted by its magical landscapes.
Sedona's towering red spires, mystical panoramas and dramatic skies are an ever-fascinating inspiration for painters.
When I first moved here to return to art full-time, I took a plein air landscape workshop with John Cogan. He emphasized that every good painting tells a story, and that every part of the painting must support that story.
One day at Red Rock Crossing he asked me to reflect on the question, “What is it about Sedona that inspires you? What is the story that it tells you?”
Until then I had never exactly thought about why Sedona (or any place) was so inspiring. It was just, well… beautiful.
But here was an intriguing question, one that every artist, poet or musician should ask themselves about those things they find inspiring. So as we gazed at the spires of Cathedral Rock reflected in the autumn waters of Oak Creek, I paused to consider the question. It’s that classic scene that we all think of as the essence of Sedona:
And before I knew it, out poured a stream of spontaneous insights about how this landscape spoke to me:
“Well, we know that opposites on the color wheel create harmony. And here in Sedona the rusty orange rocks and turquoise skies are a naturally perfect harmony."
I paused again to consider the beauty before us:
“And just look at the textural contrasts here! There are vast skies with soft clouds, versus the rough, hard rocks. And that directional contrast between the hard vertical spires of the rocks and the horizontal, reflective surface of the water... What perfect opposites!”
“And really," I continued with the excitement of discovery, "Such contrasts and opposites, and the balance between them, are the underlying essence of the universe. They are everywhere: night and day, warm and cold, male and female, protons and electrons, right and left, plant and animal. It goes on and on!"
A NEW WAY OF WORKING
Earlier in my life I’d had glimmerings of the symbolism in nature. But from that pivotal moment, I nearly always look for the deeper qualities in the landscapes that attract my attention. And often, I write poetry to help me explore that.
In a way, every part of nature has a story to tell, one with complex and ancient origins stretching back to the beginning of the universe itself. Such a story is truly mysterious, forever beyond our ability to fully understand.
Nevertheless, nature speaks to us constantly and we can hear some part of its story if we but listen.
The vastness of the sky, for example, may speak of life’s mysteries and the unfettered spaciousness of those moments in which our thoughts quiet down and we sense a quality of the sacred.
A towering tree may speak to us of inner strength, of endurance, or of balance, as it is both deeply rooted in the earth and reaching for the sky.
Grand Canyon scenes often speak to me of the process of surrender, the edge between structure and the formless, the beauty of the act of letting go. The inevitable processes of wind, rain, snow and time inevitably wear down layer after layer of the Canyon’s ancient rocks, carrying it piece by piece to a distant ocean. Likewise, life is a process of constant change, ultimately taking from us all that we try to hold onto forever.
One of my favorite poems, “Surrender” was written to accompany an acrylic that placed in the 2007 Paint the Parks competition. Both express the way that vast spaces invite us to let go of all that does not truly matter. A golden bluff of limestone clings tenuously to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon on a late winter afternoon. Though these rocks have existed for eons, gradually even they erode and wash into the mystery of the light-filled distance:
Surrender
So golden each moment,
So utterly clear
To stand on the edge of creation.
So joyous that surrender to eternity.
Love is not optional.
Love is infinite gravity.
Each moment we live on the edge.
Cling we may to the rock of will,
But its fate is written into its making:
Surrender is not optional.
Surrender to time and trust,
To wind and breath,
To water and soul.
Like rain we flow into
The greatness of Being,
Into the indigo,
Into the every,
Into the All.
It's love that pulls us,
Light that leads us.
Let us go
Let go.
Recently I compiled many of my Southwest paintings and poems in book form to share the inspiration and strength that I derive from nature ("The Poetry of Place," 2009) is just the start of much more to come. I also now offer a workshop on how to incorporate this process into plein air painting, through the Sedona Arts Center, "The Heart of Landscape Art").
THE PROCESS
There are no hard and fast rules to writing poetry or journaling as a means to deepen your connection with your subject. Mostly, it simply requires a clear intention and a passion for doing so. Sometimes I've just taken a break from my easel and waded into a creek, pocket notebook in hand, scribbling poem after poem, knee deep in water and literally "in the flow."
But tools and exercises can certainly help. For example:
• First, find something in nature that attracts you.
• Then, simply quiet down and listen, with the intent to understand what draws you to this scene and what it may be showing you.
• Pen in hand, write down the first words or phrases that come to mind, no matter how odd they may seem.
• Keep writing, uncensored, until you feel done (later on you can polish the wordsmithing if you care to do so).
• Invite inner guidance as to how to best use composition, line, color, direction, values and textures to emphasize and express the inner story or meaning you want to communicate (and it may also help to explain it to a fellow artist and get feedback).
• You may wish to listen to inspiring music as you work. I find this very helpful and bring my IPod along on outdoor painting expeditions.
You can do this process before you paint, while you are painting (indoors or out), or even years after you have completed a painting.
In the latter case, I suggest you just sit and look at your piece and ask yourself the same questions: “What speaks to me here? How does this inspire me?”
Finally, appreciate that whatever inspires you will usually inspire others. After all, we humans are much the same. In my own experience, I nearly always find that my most popular paintings and images are those in which I’ve taken the time to connect with my subject in this inner manner.
You need not be a poet laureate to explore this process, and you may or may not want to share whatever you write or think about the inspiration behind your work.
But if you play with this process I think you will find that it enriches your life as an artist. And ultimately, that matters far more than the outer rewards of producing a nice painting, getting praise, winning awards or making sales.
Art, after all, is really a matter of the heart, a matter of the spirit. Be true to that calling, and the rest will follow.
Click here for
printable PDF of this article. (Download free Adobe Acrobat Reader to see PDFs)
10/31/2009 1:07:05 AM
Today or tomorrow I will be creating a limited edition full-color book of paintings and poems created by participants of a workshop I taught recently for the Sedona Arts Center, "The Heart of Landscape Art."
That sounds both Herculean and costly, doesn't it? But for a Mac user, it's neither.
If you are an artist or art teacher with a Mac, you should know about a great feature of I-Photo that allows you to create such a small book with a very fast turn-around (about a week) at about $1 a page for 8.5 x 11. (Smaller sizes are available also). This is also a great way for artists to show off their best works and perhaps offer it as a bonus to their collectors.
Our focus in the workshop was to delve into the soul of nature and express it with both the written word and a plein air sketch or pastel. The book will include student's artwork, poems and photos, as well as some ideas that I will share about the process of writing poetry with outdoor painting.( If you are interested in a copy, let me know!)
If you've never created a Mac Book, here's how, in a nutshell (an easy I-Photo tutorial will guide you further):
1. Assemble your digital images into an album in I-Photo.
2. Select them all (command-A).
3. Click on "Book" at the bottom of the window.
4. Select a style (I like "contemporary" -- most are more oriented toward family snapshots, etc.)
5. You can either "autoflow" them into a default layout, and then rearrange them as you like, or manually drag them from the line of images it creates into the page layout templates.
6. Under "page design" at the bottom, you can select how many pictures to use on each page or you can select "introduction" to create a template for text on a given page. Play with it: it's easy.
7. Using the zoom bar, lower right, enlarge your page layouts so you can easily enter text and captions as needed. You can also easily drag images from one position to another, as you will see. Likewise, you can drag page layouts around in various sequences.
8. When you are done, simply click on "Buy book" and complete the credit card and shipping info.
Presto! In a week to ten days you will have your books in hand!
The main limitation I've found with this program is that the templates are fixed in some ways. You can't move the position of the text block, for example, and it's not very compatible with paintings that are square (crops them into a rectangle of standard proportions). But it makes up for that deficit by being beautifully designed in the first place and SO, so easy.
Also, note that if your images are too low-resolution, you may have to reduce their size. I-Photo's book program will warn you about this. That said, have found incredible quality on a full-page picture of an 8x10 painting that I shot with my hand-held point-and-shoot 2 meg. Canon camera. Mostly, though, in
my own book of poems and paintings, I used high-quality professional photos.
But the real beauty of it is that it doesn't require great computer skills to learn. It's quite intuitive, as Macs are meant to be, and you and others will love the result.
I'm looking forward to having it ready for the class in time for them to give copies out at Christmas.
And the class was such a success, SAC will offer it
again.
I would love to share this experience with you. It's appropriate for all levels of artists, beginning to advanced.
Click
here for a downloadable PDf flyer of the workshop.
Here is Carol Oveross, artist and yoga instructor, sketching in pastels at Red Rock Crossing after participants had written a piece about the feelings and meanings invoked by the landscape:
