Become a Better Artist Without Practice

I'm happy to announce that I have published my first book: Become a Better Artist Without Practice! It's a guide to success for artists in the digital age. The tips aren't specific to any one field of art, and no art practice of any kind is required. It isn't a small book, or a really big one. It has a lot of information, but I tried to present it all in a concise sort of way. Here's the description I wrote for Amazon:

"Being an artist can be hard. You may not improve as much as you'd like, make as much money as you'd like, or get as much attention as you feel your work deserves. This book, written by the artist Savanna Williams, is here to help you with all of that, without any art practice required. It will teach you how to think about art and your role as an artist in order to maximize your creativity and learning potential. It also discusses how to profit from your art, including doing commissions and selling prints and products. The book also goes in-depth into how to maximize the amount of attention you and your work receive by effectively using online galleries and social media. There are even discussions about making art to cause change, making "unpopular" art, and making art just for fun.

New and old artists can benefit from the many tips in this book, which are based on observations Savanna has made over her several years of trying to make it as an artist. Learn about SET, breadcrumbs, and what activities lead to the most attention on specific art websites and social media services. Not targeted toward any field of art in particular, this e-book makes a helpful and motivational addition to any artist's digital bookcase."

Become a Better Artist Without Practice isn't the big online project that I mentioned yesterday, but it is one I have been quietly working on and am very excited about. You can preview the book with the Look Inside feature and Amazon Prime members can get it free with the Lending Library. And remember, you don't have to have a Kindle to read Amazon e-books. You can read in-browser with the Kindle Cloud Reader, or you can download the Kindle for PC program.

Awesome Art Quotes Pt. 2

Here's part 2 of the motivational, inspirational, and thought-provoking art quotes. Part 1 is here.

1. "Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures."- Henry Ward Beecher
2. "I don't think there's any artist of any value who doesn't doubt what they're doing."- Francis Ford Coppola
3. "Great art picks up where nature ends."- Marc Chagall
4. "Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression."- Isaac Bashevis Singer
5. "I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way- things I had no words for."- Georgia O'Keeffe
6. "I've been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good."- Barbra Streisand
7. "If you hear a voice wihin you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."- Vincent Van Gogh
8. "In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine."- Ralph Waldo Emerson
9. "Painting is by nature a luminous language."- Robert Delaunay
10. "Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun."- Pablo Picasso

I hope you guys liked the quotes! Tomorrow I'll do a Best Of art feature.

Awesome Art Quotes Pt. 1

Hi, guys! I'm in the midst of a cool online project that I hope to be able to reveal to you in a week or two. As I work through it, which includes doing a lot of research and typing, I've found that keeping your motivation high is critical. That's why this week's theme is motivation. I found some great art-related quotes that I think will help keep your artistic motivation high, or at least give you something to think about. Some are by artists, and some are by other creative people. Here's the first set of quotes.

1. "A great artist is always before his time or behind it."- George Edward Moore
2. "An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it."- Paul Valery
3. "Art begins with resistance- at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor"- Andre Gide
4. "Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth."- John Ruskin.
5. "Art is not a thing; it is a way."- Elbert Hubbard
6. "It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process."- Max Eastman.
7. "Art is the only way to run away without leaving home."- Twyla Tharp
8. "Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers- and never succeeding."- Gian Carlo Menotti
9. "Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence."- Henri Matisse
10. "Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."- Scott Adams

I hope this was motivational, inspiring, and/or just plain interesting. I'll post the rest of the quotes on Thursday, then wrap up the week on Friday with a Best Of of some sort. By the way, I often tweet motivational quotes on my Twitter.