Recently I was nominated by artist Ian McKendrick on his blog here for the Around the World Creative Blog Hop, a flashmob, connecting artists around the world. Everyone who has been nominated should answer the four questions as I have done below, and to nominate three other artists to do the same.

The four questions are:

What am I working on?

I am a gallery represented fine artist, licensed artist, art broker and an art curriculum designer so I always have several projects on the go at once. As a gallery represented artist, longer term project that I am currently working on involves preparing artworks for my 2016 exhibition at the TYTO Regional Art Gallery in Queensland Australia where I was invited to exhibit along with one of my Certified Instructors at Drawpj.com who I have been mentoring for several years both as an artist and an art educator: Brigitte Back. I have chosen Brigitte to exhibit along with me because she is simply an amazing artist and I love her work so much! I wanted her to gain the exposure for her work and the career development that will come with being exhibited in this prestigious gallery. We are both painting to the same theme of the great Australian beach and tropical lifestyle and our art styles really work well together. You will see that Brigitte has been inspired by my art style of the years but yet also made it her own.

Another project I am working on is creating coloured pencil drawings for my art education business at Drawpj.com where I offer my CPD accredited art course the ‘Complete Drawing Certificate Course.’ I prepared this course for internet correspondence teaching about five years ago after first teaching it in the real live world for over 12 years. It was hugely successful in the real world where I was teaching up to 80 people a week at one stage and over the past five years it has proven to be just as successful. One of my instructors from Queensland Australia continues to teach my course in the live world as a licensed partner Lyn Donald. About six months ago, I also invited one of my personally trained dpjwebmst.wpengine.com art instructors Tannis Trydal (who is an amazing artist) to co-author the Colour Pencil modules of the course with me and its really fabulous fun sharing and working cooperatively like this with the wonderful people who I have trained myself over the years. This to me is great full-circle collaboration at its best! To be able to give these amazing ladies all an opportunity for a career in art is very rewarding and fulfilling.

As a licensed artists I am currently working on a new series that will not be released to the public until the entire series is completed and it will then be released onto the market as products. Surprise everyone!

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I work in several mediums depending on the purpose (for either my gallery selling art style, art licensing or for art education business). For my gallery selling style, I paint in a representational hard edge art style sometimes combined with elements of realism and fine details in the foreground (which are a more recent addition to my work.) All of my colours are hand mixed from the basic primaries plus a few others and black and white. For my art curriculum design I  draw in realism with coloured pencil, charcoal and graphite  pencil.

For art licensing I create all of my works as digital images in Adobe Illustrator in Vector art. The images are all hand sketched using my Bamboo wacom tablet combined with pulling the handle bars in vector to refine some areas, but I do use a traditional painting approach of stippling, circling, sketching and other effects to achieve the details in my elements. You can see more of my work here cindywider.com

Why do I create what I do?

For my art education programs, I create art that serves the purpose; acts as a vehicle to present the necessary skills. My art course is a delicate combination of traditional skills methods and techniques along with contemporary knowledge about how the brain helps us to learn to draw.

For my gallery selling art career I mostly paint tropical inspired themes that remind me of my childhood growing up on the Island of Papua New Guinea and my memories of living in tropical Queensland Australia. Through painting these images I give myself permission to escape reality, to feel like a child again, filled with wonder, happiness and joy. I believe that fantasy is so important and can easily be forgotten with the busyness of our daily lives.

 

How does my creative process work?

My creative process happens long before I am in front of the canvas or paper, when I am considering my idea and working through it in my mind. I call this the ‘Heart and Soul’ stage . Then I move onto the next stage of gathering reference materials in the form of objects, sketches and drawings from life or photos of the objects that are needed for the artwork. This is what I call the ‘Planning Stage’. Finally I embark on the ‘Application stage’ where I begin to transfer the drawing to paper or canvas, choose my colours and mix my paints then at last I begin to paint. The emotional side of creating an artwork is quite complex at times. There are some paintings that require alot of deep thought but others that just pull together gracefully and with ease, but all in all the creative process is very similar each time. Its a logical sequential process for me and I like it like because I have that element of control over my environment which I long for. Structure in my art processes gives me security and the most enjoyment.

My Nominations:

Wow how do we choose just three artists that we admire to share this amazing Blog Hop opportunity with, however I chose three people who I felt pretty sure would actually carry through with this great idea and share with us about what they do . I would like to nominate these three artists and invite you take a minute to enjoy their work;

Jandamarra Cadd – One of the best living Australian Aboriginal artists and kindest people I know. Jandamarra is a friend of mine who I met in Australia while studying an Edgeware Entrepreneur program several years ago. He specializes in portraiture and his work is very spiritually moving. His message to the world is that of unification and connection. Through his art he provides a very powerful voice for the minorities and the oppressed. A truly great man and great artist. http://www.jandamarrasart.com/about/

Joseph Holodook – One of America’s finest painters of country Americana, folk art and everything Christmas. I am a huge fan of Joseph, for his amazing story-telling ability through his art, his diversity, gorgeous colours and wonderful ability to evoke child-like wonder into the adult world. A truly great artist who I had the privilege of having my image exhibited alongside during Surtex two years running. Joseph is represented by the amazing Porterfield’s Fine Art in Florida

Susan Schmidt – Another truly great Australian Artist whose work and business ethics I have long since admired. Susan is an amazing fine artist and my favourite pieces of hers are the Seaburbia range of paintings. I love her colours and the message that Susan is telling us through the creation of these important national treasures; the beach homes that are a huge part of Australian Beach culture. http://www.carinas210.com/gallery/original-paintings/seaburbia/