By Karl Dixon Karl Dixon has been drawing cartoons professionally for over 15 years. He has worked for Dandy, the world’s longest running comic, and is the co-creator of Dandy’s leading comic character Ollie Fliptrik. Dixon is the author of two cartoon book collections, in addition to the three graphic novels series, Brabbles and…
Author: Press Features
Painting in Oils: An Artist's Studio Diary
By Jessica Zoob Oils are so amazing to work with and my current paintings, (some I’ve been working on for eight years so far!), are thick and lavish with oils in glorious colors. I am having so much fun being ridiculously extravagant! Lilies have become a motif for my work and are featured in many of…
Recycled Art: Trash to Treasure
By Kathryn M. McCullough, MA I have a passion for transforming trash into treasure– for repurposing potential throw-aways into absolute blow-aways. And what I can find at my local ReStore often can be transformed from something ordinary into the extraordinary – like the table below, on sale for a mere ten dollars: Clearly, the piece was mid-century modern, a style…
Publishing: The Power of Your Own PR
By Randy Ross Blogging and social media are not the only ways to develop a platform or audience for your writing. In 2013, I spent a chunk of my book-marketing time promoting myself with special events, such as lectures and public readings. The nice thing about special events is that the venue will promote you…
Photography: Realism Digital Art
By Jacob Surland Realism Digital Art is a term I use to describe the painterly and dramatic effects I’m striving for in my photography, utilizing Photomatix, Lightroom and Photoshop. This one photo, taken in Chicago on the morning after St. Patrick’s Day, turned out as a surprise to me, as I was experimenting with…
The Picture Poem: Blend of Image With Words
By Christopher Wood I have been teaching creative writing for twenty-five years, and for class assignments, have always used images to engage the imaginations of class participants. We each see an image differently; when we look at a photograph, we are looking at something literal, but how we interpret an image depends on many factors:…
Sculpting: The Stone Reality
By Gerry Aldridge When I embark on a new sculpture, its inception is usually an accumulation of ideas, and the start of the process may date back many years. As I become more adept, I am able to incorporate more ideas into my work, many of which were first conceived back in my teens.…
The Art of Zentangling: Mindful Meditation
How Zentangling got its start: One day, Maria told Rick what she’d experienced as she’d been drawing background patterns on a manuscript she was writing. She described her feelings of timelessness, freedom, and well-being, as well as her ability to focus without a thought or worry about anything else. “You’re describing meditation,” Rick said. Rick and…
Digital Photography
Experimenting With Free Effects by Lynn Wohlers People can get pretty worked up about how much editing is appropriate to digital photography. There are the purists who perhaps take more time in their actual shooting of the photograph, to avoid having to make unnecessary digital adjustments. Purists have a point; we can be sloppy in our…
Part II: That, Which and Who
In my last post, “The Department of Redundancy Department,” I discussed how I use the Find feature of Microsoft Word to hunt down and eliminate redundant redundancies from my manuscripts as I go through the final edit. I also mentioned how I’ll use Find to ferret out those pesky to be verbs and get rid of as many of those as…
Part I: The Department of Redundancy Department
I’d like to call your attention to an editing tool for the editing of redundant words and redundant word phrases that turn up in rough drafts and not-so-rough drafts (what?). Why is this important? First, good writing is concise. Thomas Jefferson said, “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” When someone writes past experience, fatally killed, foreign…
Marvel Comics and Film Noir - What They Taught Me About Writing
I knew early what I didn’t want to read. Though I longed for adventure my mother bought me all the usual little girl comics/magazines containing stories about ballerinas in pink tutus, owning a pony, or cute puppies and donkeys. Even at such a tender age I didn’t care for them. I’d rather be out climbing…