Five Interesting and Useful Art-Related Websites

Today's post features cool art-related websites that are unique and or useful and interesting. I've gone to great web-surfing lengths to bring you only high-quality creative sites that you will absolutely enjoy browsing, so here we go:

• Imaginify Community Network: "A collaborative exploration connecting creative movements and magnifying grassroots concepts & practices."
  

This is a very awesome blog/network/website promoting creative awareness, knowledge growth, new ideas, new positive world culture, understanding etc. If you're looking for a place to network with open-minded creative individuals of all kinds, this is it.

• The Scribbler "A generative illustration toy by zefrank.com"
  

Just make a doodle and press go, and this toy creates a sketch over your drawing, resulting in a very pleasing and professional looking image. The sketch it creates gets kind of woven around your drawing, repeating until you press stop. Words don't do it justice, take a moment to play with this ingenious little web-page. Check out a 30-second drawing I did with it below:

by Ed Tajchman ©

• What is a Print?

This is just a short little demonstration, but it's very informative; it's the best 5 minute explanation of the printmaking process ever! This interactive animation explains the difference between woodcuts, lithography, screenprints, and etchings. It shows the processes of each type of printmaking and includes a gallery showing examples of the different kinds of prints. From MoMA (the Museum of Modern Art).

• National Gallery of Art

One of the best, most professional, informative and comprehensive online museum/galleries that I have come across. Take one of the online tours, and browse a plethora of art by artist, artwork or theme.

• PDphoto.org

One of, if not the best source for high quality public domain photography in the world-wide-web. Make sure to check the credit for each photo, but most are in the public domain. A very useful and generous site, make sure and link back to them if you do use their images.

Green Sweat Bee

I hope you find those pages as interesting as I do; let me leave you with a quote about discovering interesting things:

“An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.” -Aldous Huxley

Now I can't promise that the websites listed above are more interesting than sex, but what the hell; give them a try.

Mockery Breeds Hatred

I came across this quote and it immediately pulled my attention. My first response after I read it was; well duh. But the truth in these seemingly simple phrases really resonates in a meaningful way.

"The mockery made him feel an outsider; and feeling an outsider he behaved like one, which increased the prejudice against him and intensified the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects. Which in turn increased his sense of being alien and alone. A chronic fear of being slighted made him avoid his equals, made him stand, where his inferiors were concerned, self-consciously on his dignity."

-Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.

Although Aldous Huxley's book Brave New World is set in the future, and contains elements from 20th century culture, his words in the preceding quote are true for mankind at any point in our history. A chronic fear of being slighted resulting from alienation is a key point for me. Sometimes even if one knows he is right, he won't bother speaking up. Preferring not to share the information, rather than risk being dismissed and or ridiculed. What's that old saying that goes something like - the one who speaks knows nothing?

Child-Like Intuition

Aldous Huxley was easily one of the most influential minds of the 20th century. He was a writer, humanist, philosopher and towards the end of his life was considered by many a leader of modern thought. I like the following quote from him and agree with it whole-heartedly:

"A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention."

-Aldous Huxley (1894 - 1963)

This relates to a Picasso quote that is basically the same idea. (click to read.) There is that saying that 'kids can be cruel' - yes this is true, but kids are also open-minded, sincere, unabashedly honest, intuitive, and incredibly expressive. All things that go into being a great artist, writer, or anything really.

Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World"

Huxley is the master of that science fiction writer's art of predicting the future with one's writing. In an age where drugs are advertised on billboards, pens, and notepads everywhere, I find the following quote from his book Brave New World, to be especially true.

""Free, free!" the savage shouted, and with one hand continued to throw the soma into the area while, with the other, he punched the indistinguishable faces of his assailants. "Free!" And suddenly there was Helmholtz at his side-- "Good old Helmholtz!" --Also punching-- "Men at last!" --and in the interval also throwing the poison out by handfuls through the open window. "Yes, men! men!" and there was no more poison left. He picked up the cash box and showed them its black emptiness. "You're free!""

-Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Harper & Row, New York, 1932.

Pharmaceutical companies routinely cover-up and ignore negative safety studies of their newest drugs that they've invested millions of dollars to make, more concerned with at least recouping the money if not making a huge profit. It's an endless cycle of curing only the symptoms and not the problem. People get hooked on an endless train of pharmaceuticals, while the concept of people taking real responsibility for their bodies, emotions, and lifestyle choices becomes more obscure.