A Camera Can Be an Artist's Best Friend

Before learning any actual art skills, I always admired people who could draw something and make it look like what it was. Then, when I started to acquire some experience of my own, it soon became apparent that a digital camera can help an artist in many ways. The most obvious way is the ease in which we can record sights that we want to remember in sufficient detail to reproduce later as a sketch or a painting.

But the ability to take lots of inexpensive shots of works in progress as well as completed art, is really motivating. It love to look back at in progress shots of paintings because that serves as a reminder that as hopeless as some paintings seemed at different stages, ultimately they turned out fine.

When I paint, it is like playing hopscotch, one step forward and three steps back. I start out really confident and go like a wildfire, and then, inevitably, there is that point where the whole thing lags. Seeing from a photo history that the same thing has happened over and over in the past but that I always eventually got past it is really motivating.

My camera of choice is the Canon PowerShot. I am currently using a 600D, but even given the compact size of the digital elph, with a PDA, cell phone, and all the different chargers and other accessories, it is hard to have that camera always at hand. So I finally bit the bullet and got a decent camera-equipped cellphone.

Only Helio says to please not call it a phone.

Fact of the matter, Fry's Electronics just happened to be having a big anniversary sale the day I finally decided to go start checking out smart phones. So, believe it or not, my new Ocean was free, or will be when the rebate paperwork gets processed.

Nothing fancy, but the accompanying photos are the first ones I took and mailed to myself from this new artist-friendly smartphone. I also posted a photo of my Ocean here: My Ocean