Drawing Lessons

It has been too long since I have added any cool sites, but I have been bookmarking like crazy, so I have lots of recommendations for the new year! I will be blogging regularly in 2008, but as 2007 marked the launch of our business, Wall Dressed Up...mural transfers for instantly stylish walls. and I was a bit too "crazy busy " to post with regularity here.

I will write a bit about our Mural business as time goes on, but for today, I wanted to suggest a site with lots of great Drawing Lessons. Obviously, art is my thing and I would have loved to have had access to a site like this when I was learning to draw. I believe that you can LEARN to draw, it is not an inherited talent. Everyone always says that. They never really say it about musical instruments; they know you have to spend hours and hours practicing the piano for instance. For some reason people never think you have to practice art to get better. That is SO not true. It is true, that some will have an interest in art that makes them practice until they can express it the way they see it in their heads (I always say that is half the work), but everyone can learn to draw, we just give up too early in life! So here Drawing Lessons is a site that will teach you a few things....and if you want to be an artist, draw every day!

P.S. How did I learn to draw? I really love animals, but when I was 7 , we had to give our dog (an adorable Sheltie named Ginger) away because my brother was allergic. I was so sad, and I wanted a dog so badly and I also loved horses, so I got lots of books about dogs and horses from the library and started to copy the illustrations. The BEST lessons came from the books by C.W. Anderson. He illustrated books about horses in pencil drawings that were just amazing! I wanted to be able to draw like that, so I just practiced over and over and over again. People always tell me I have talent, but really, I just practiced until I could draw the way I wanted to.

Quote of the Day

By the way, if you want to add a "quote of the day" to your blog or website (like the "Art Quote of the Day" that I have to the right), just visit Brainy Quotes, decide what topic of quotes you want, ie. art, funny, love, nature...... click on that and code will come up that you can copy onto your site. The cool thing is that the quotes rotate daily without any additional work on your part once you copy in the code. These things continue to amaze me. The internet is so cool. Aren't we lucky? Let me know how this works for you.

Reservations for Dinner

Valentine's Day is fast approaching. Do you dread calling around trying to make reservations? After the 2nd or 3rd call will you give up? Well, try OpenTable.com before you do. This cool site allows you to choose the city and/or town, select the time you would like to get a reservation for along with the amount of people in your party and then lists all the open tables available at finer restaurants that take reservations. The best part is that if your exact time is not open it suggests an alternative. You can book your reservation on the computer. This is handy at the last minute, but also a great way to find restaurant suggestions or to book in advance. The larger cities are better represented here, but it is a good site to check out your town's restaurants. I would imagine the more this site is used, the more restaurants will want to be listed. Have a Happy Valentine's Day!

What IS the name of that song???

I was sent this link today in a newsletter that I get each day, and it is just the coolest thing! Have you ever wanted to know the name of a song that you only remember part of? Or you have been hearing it on the radio and you want to know the artist? Some of us have radios in our car that scroll the artist and the name of the song, but certainly not all of us, and sometimes you just miss it or keep replaying a chorus in your head later on. This site, Midomi.com, allows you to sing or hum part of a song and identifies it for you. How cool is THAT! This is definately a link to pass on.

Color Scheme Generator

Here is a link to a very useful tool if you are building a website, especially on a site like ibuilt, or the very similar netidnow. It is a color scheme generator and as you click on any color you like on the color wheel, you can build instant color schemes with a single click. You can choose mono, contrast, triad, tetrad or analog color combinations, go lighter, darker, pastel etc. and you get a color coded list with all the corresponding color numbers you can just type into your site. It is easier than I am even describing and a very useful tool!