Art Before Breakfast

I try to avoid using Excel before breakfast – how about you? Instead, I read the news feeds, and take a peek at Twitter, and open my email for a quick look. This week, I also tried a little art before breakfast, but that didn’t go too well.

Public Domain

Speaking of art, if you need images for your blog, there’s good news — thousands of photos, and other items, entered the public domain this year. This is the first time in 20 years that a huge amount of material has become available, and you can read about it on the Open Culture website.

You won’t find photos of the latest gadgets, but you might find interesting illustrations or old photos that are related to your topic, in some way.

For example, this week I borrowed “Art Before Breakfast” from the local library’s online service. A quick search of the British Library’s public domain collection resulted in this illustration, with ravens (crow?) about to enjoy someone’s outdoor breakfast.

Here’s the illustration’s information:

Title: “From the Black Sea through Persia and India … Illustrated by the author”
Author: Weeks, Edwin Lord.
Shelfmark: “British Library HMNTS 10075.f.17.”, “British Library OC ORW.1986.a.1503”
Date of Publishing: 1896

As I mentioned above, this week I was reading “Art Before Breakfast“, by Danny Gregory. The subtitle is, “A Zillion Ways to be More Creative No Matter How Busy You Are”.

I liked the concept – take some time every day to draw something. Make some “art”, and don’t worry about making “Art” (with a capital A). There are exercises to do, starting with simple contour drawing of the items on your breakfast table.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get very far in the book, because it has many pages in a strange font, and with my eye problems, they just weren’t legible. Yes, you can increase the font size on the iPad, but it was still uncomfortable to read, so I returned the book.

Anyway, don’t pass up on this book just because I couldn’t finish it. If your eyesight is fine, you might enjoy it. There’s an Art Before Breakfast Workbook too, but you don’t need that. Just get a little sketch book, or start with a pencil and some office paper.

Weekly Photo Challenge

As I mentioned last week, I’m following the 52 week photo challenge, on the Dogwood Photography website.

For week 2, the challenge was, “Use Rule of Thirds to show motion in your picture.”

There wasn’t too much motion at our house last week, so I cropped an old photo of my grandkids, from summer 2016. There’s certain some motion in that photo, as there usually is, when the two of them are here!

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