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Art For All of Us artists fill their lives with art - not just with the pieces they create, but with the music that fills their studios, the books they read, the destinations they travel to, the restaurants they eat in, the places they search for inspiration.
Here, artist Ann Baldwin, shares her work, and information on how art, creativity and inspiration enriches her life.
Announcing
Ann Baldwin teaches many art workshops around the U.S. and England. An instructional DVD of her popular collage workshop will be available in Fall 2006. Bookmark this page as we will post information on how to purchase it as soon as it is released.
Digital Art Studio
Recommended Book
As a mixed media artist who incorporates digital photographs into my paintings, I'm always looking for new techniques. This book shows you how to customize your supports to receive digital prints. I can now print on rice paper, regular watercolor paper, fabric by applying InkAid coating. The results so far have been spectacular. The authors also cover overprinting collage, digital transfers, artist books. There's so much here it will take me a year of experimentation to try it all out.
Digital Art Studio: Techniques for Combining Inkjet Printing with Traditional Art Materials
Amazon Price: $19.77 (as of 12/28/2009) 
Artist Tips
- Can't open your jars of paint?
To prevent the lids on jars of acrylic paint sticking so that you can no longer open them, rub Vaseline round the thread the first time you open them. If the lids are already stuck, run the jar under hot water for a minute or two, then bang the upturned jar onto a hard surface - preferably the floor. I find it works 80% of the time. - Left your paint-covered brushes out to dry?
To clean brushes which are stiff with dried acrylic paint, stand them in undiluted Simple Green for a day or two. Then use a soapy detergent to rub away the dried paint. - Want to prevent photocopies from bleeding when using them in collage?
Iron them on high heat to set the ink. First cover them with a piece of tracing paper. I do the same with inkjet prints.
Avoiding The Cliche In Photography
I recently returned from a visit to Sedona, AZ, where I was teaching a workshop. My hotel room overlooked the famous red rocks, so naturally I intended to photograph them. Every place I walked, the digital cameras were snapping the same obvious views. I thought about all those thousands of similar images being downloaded to personal computers. Of course, if you mostly want a souvenir of your trip, that's fine. But if you're a serious photographer you know that the galleries in Arizona are already full of those fabulous images of Sedona sunsets. So what do you do?
The answer is to look for the unusual angle: lie on the ground if necessary. Point the lens through a tangle of branches, allowing only a glimpse of the rocks. Have unexpected foreground interest (I found a mushroom.) Not every shot has to be pretty. How about a squashed Coke can or soggy newspaper in the same frame as Nature's splendor? Try shooting the red rocks at night without the aid of lights. Only a mysterious dark shape is barely visible. Get out onto the rocks themselves and take extreme close-ups. Look for unusual reflections in puddles. Get rid of the sky. Or make the sky 90% of your image - unless, of course, it's a sunset. (I confess, however, that I have dozens of photographs of beautiful sunsets on my hard drive.)
The answer is to look for the unusual angle: lie on the ground if necessary. Point the lens through a tangle of branches, allowing only a glimpse of the rocks. Have unexpected foreground interest (I found a mushroom.) Not every shot has to be pretty. How about a squashed Coke can or soggy newspaper in the same frame as Nature's splendor? Try shooting the red rocks at night without the aid of lights. Only a mysterious dark shape is barely visible. Get out onto the rocks themselves and take extreme close-ups. Look for unusual reflections in puddles. Get rid of the sky. Or make the sky 90% of your image - unless, of course, it's a sunset. (I confess, however, that I have dozens of photographs of beautiful sunsets on my hard drive.)
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