Inspired simplicity

As an artist I take time every day to keep my viewpoint fresh and I'm always delighted to find things that are truly unique.

Things that stand out for their utter simplicity. Or usefulness.

Here is a site that completely captured my admiration.

Why? It's just such a remarkably brilliant idea.

Most people are now familiar with and use any number of sites such as MySpace, Facebook , LinkedIn or others. They have been given a term called social networking. They all provide a platform for sharing music, photos, jobs, or organizing events, calendars, projects.

There are hundreds of them now.

This site is different. It is nearly oriental in it's simplicity.

Like the rendering of a bamboo & leaves with 3 strokes of a sumi-e pen.

You go to the site. Enter your name and off you go.

There is no registration form as you normally see it. The process is smoothly folded into the flow of using the site.

A real pleasure to use, and I personally predict this site is going to be a huge success.

Drop everything and Grab your Pencils!

When is Drawing Day?

Drawing Day 2009 is currently scheduled for June 6, 2009.

What is Drawing Day?

One day a year, the world stops to remember that joy we had when we first picked up a pencil and created our first piece of art - that's what Drawing Day is all about. The goal for Drawing Day is simple - to create enough drawings to make some noise worldwide for the sake of art. 2008 was the first year of this initiative. Our goal is definitely a long-shot, but we continue to aim for 1 million drawings worldwide. We have no precise measure to know if we reach this goal. If we come close we will all definitely know. Even if we reach 10% of our goal in the first year of this initiative, it will be a great achievement but we will continue aiming for the magic million.

Why is Drawing Day important?

Illustrators and artists alike often go unappreciated. The creation of art and illustration captured our minds ever since we were children and our parents turned the pages of our first book. These stories came to life via the illustrations that took us to an imaginary world full of inspiration.

Whether you're a professional illustrator or you just enjoy the occasional scribble, you can give back to the illustration community by drawing on this day. By injecting more and more illustration and art into our community, we are not only showing our appreciation to our fellow artists, but we are spreading awareness of the joy of drawing. It is important that you contribute - Drawing Day will only be a success if we all participate and make some noise. So, please tell your friends and spread the word.

How do I participate?

To join in on this event is simple - as simple as picking up a pencil and drawing. However, the most important part is sharing your art with the world.

Not entirely a bad idea.

Creative Spark

I love it when I find ideas that are fresh & unique. This one's definitely the best I've seen lately:



Artists Rama Hughes and Tommy Kane exchanged portraits - a watercolor and pen portrait of Rama Hughes by Tommy Kane, at left, and on the right - Tommy Kane in colored pencil and pen by Rama Hughes.

Their drawing swap sparked the idea for a website: The Portrait Party.

The site is an open invitation to participate in the portrait party.

To play, you and a fellow artist decide to pair up and draw portraits of one another. You can then share your portraits on the site.

Get Firefox!

My advice to anyone who hasn't used Firefox: You're missing the sweetest tool you can imagine.

I had heard of it but was kind of hesitant to try it. Didn't want to screw up my computer's settings, etc.

I read several reviews of it and looked at their site. I downloaded and installed it. My first concern had been that it would make my Internet Explorer unusable, or change it's settings. I wanted to be able to UN-try it if I didn't like it.

As it turns out Firefox doesn't do anything to your Explorer. It's there and you can browse the web with either tool.

But I've been using Firefox the last couple of years & I never even bother with Explorer.

There are really too many great reasons why Firefox is better but I'd have to say the main ones are these:

NO ADS. None. zip. No one is paying them to place ads. Firefox is created by the Mozilla project and supported by the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization.

It's infinitely customizable in how it looks, how it works and what you can get it to do.

And one of the very remarkable treats is that when you add on or remove a feature it installs or uninstalls instantly. So you can try out different Add Ons and rapidly determine if they work well for you or not. No hassles.

Once you've used Firefox for a week or so Internet Explorer just doesn't cut it anymore.

Welcome to this blog

This is the first posting. I wanted to use to sort of get a feel for the page style and the tools.

It's about imagination and ways to expand on your creativity. Tools found that really work the way you want them to, sometimes even better.