Revisiting the Past

It's all been done before.  There's nothing new under the sun.  When something is new, we attack it with enthusiasm and do it til it's no longer fun.  Soon, the joy wears off and the productivity tapers off.  But real success comes from consistency, and the whole western world is based on the factory line production method.  The daily grind is the secret.  Do a little bit every day.  Day in and day out, do a little bit, and the results will accumulate, and your work will become part of your lifestyle.

I don't create new designs as often as I used to.  Instead, I go back to old line art and recolor it with new color palettes.  Or I take line art I rendered in my grayscale period and apply color to it to see it as something new. 

That is why i'm revisiting the past.  I will attach one design I recolored below.

Red Barn In Color

This was originally a grayscale design based on a replica of a work by Roy Lichtenstein from 1969.  I saw it in a book on his work, and did a drawing which I applied shades of gray to.  This time around, out of boredom, I recolored the work in RGB, and came up with this creation.  It is almost Cubist in it's use of solid blocks of color, heavy black lines, and geometric shapes.  But it makes sense both in grayscale and now in color.

So even if I am not dreaming up new designs for new artworks, I can visit the past and recolor old artworks.  I save every artwork in three forms, as line art, as a PSD file, and as a colored JPG.  With the line art and Photoshop, you can recreate a work with a totally different palette or filter and create something new from the same drawing.  This has become my specialty, coloring line art.  I want to expand in art, but this is my fundamental skill.  The Japanese have been using Photoshop to color hand drawn illustrations for a long time.  That is where Manga comes from.

So I can stay productive even when I am not productive.  The daily grind.  Do a little bit every day, and stay occupied.  That is the secret to a fulfilled life.

Check out my FASO Artist Site.

Over the course of the past five or ten years, I've blogged away a lot of knowledge and information and history.  My Taoist Nutrition blog, nativefitness, lasted three years on Wordpress and with it, I established I have the education of a Phd scholar in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Nutrition.  I gave away a lot of information on that site and got very little in return.

I've also blogged on other subjects, and now I have a FASO artist site at www.lioravnidesignwriter.com which features a portfolio of artworks for sale, a blog within the site where I share my ideas about art and life, and a system of analytics for keeping track of who sees what I am creating.

In addition, I use this site to reach a bigger audience, with no cost to myself.  As well, I am using www.liorandhisblues.com on Wordpress to blog about my music career, my fondness for the delta blues, and to chronicle the history of American pop music, which owes a lot to poor southern blacks who never got rich off their own folk music.

Selling art and blogging can be lucrative in this day and age when the internet has changed the way people do business.  In 2019, half the world population will buy something online with a credit card.  That is 3.5 billion people.  The internet changed everything, and made it possible for creative professionals to make a living, when in older times, most would live and die starving artists.  Very few creative people become rich and famous, and leave behind a household name.

I am not great with business, finance, and law, but I have a growing talent, and I know I can create an extra income with art, blogging, and even album sales.  I am constantly refining and updating my art to be more up to date.  Continuing education is part of being an artist. 

So as the months go by, my art and writing skills grow, and i continue to produce better and better works.  The point of my endeavors is not to create a million dollar sale and die rich and vindicated, that is only the result I want.  The point is to live a harmonious lifestyle where I enjoy what I am doing on a daily basis, and constantly grow and mature as I reach old age.  Dying rich and well known and leaving a legacy is just the icing on the cake.