I Am the "Art Education" Contributor on Squidoo

When I was a child I would dig a hole in the dirt and fill it with hose water and add the dirt I dug out to make a muddy paste. I would sculpt little animal figures out of the clay mud and let them dry all day on the hot sidewalk. Everyday I would get a spanking for playing in the mud and the next day I would go right back out and do it all over again. I must have thought it was worth the spanking to make those little creatures. Mud was all I had to work with back then but I lived in an area that had natural clay in the dirt.

I guess that love of playing in the mud never left me because now people pay me actual money to be able to own the figures I sculpt in clay! Not only that, they give me money to teach them, and their children, how to make things out of clay. Who would have ever thunk such a thing when I was playing in the mud back then?

Since those early days, I have not been able to stop exploring other forms of art and I guess you could say I've just gotten worse or better depending on the kind of critic you ask. I do have an art degree and I hope that it will come in handy as we begin the journey of getting an Art Education.

It's hard to image with our western minds but most of the world lives in mud habitations. In fact entire cities are constructed of mud and rock. Some are quite elaborate like this town in Morocco.

Playing with clay is not my only artistic interest. I also have an interest in making soaps. You have to have a way to get all that mud off right? Soap making is not as hard and it sounds. Handling the Lye takes a little precaution and you now have to vouch for its use, due to its use in bomb making. For the most part, with a little education soap making is a exciting endeavor. Making soaps led to my next little hobby-Soap Carving. Soap carving is easier than it looks. I was very lucky to have started with a very thin fish flaying knife and right from the start I excelled where others failed.

I was taking a college class. I think it was called 3-D art or something like that. We went through a variety of mediums and then we came to soap carving. At first I bought my soap from the local dollar store and it chipped away like I was using a chain saw on it. It was so brittle I could not carve anything without it breaking off. Soap carving is about lifting the soap and not always carving it down to nothing.

Soap carving is a relaxing hobby and an economical way to make exquisite gifts. I've put flower soaps on display here but there are hundreds of soap carvers who carve 3D images, animals and figures from soap. Soap carving is a very elaborate craft in the Eastern world especially Asian countries.

The trick to creating great soap sculptures is in the knife you used to carve with. A thin knife with a very sharp point allows the carver to get in deep with causing damage to the previously carved areas.

I was not very good at drawing as a child or even a teenager. It wasn't until I took a drawing class in college that I even had an interest in it. I was introduced to charcoal drawing and I did not care for charcoal when I first started using it but it has grown on me. I spend about an hour, once a week working on a new drawing.

I prefer to draw people and animals. Anything with eyes really. Once I get the eyes completed the rest just seems to fall together.

I am a huge Breaking Bad fan. I live in Albuquerque where the TV series was being filmed and have had the good fortunate to work on another movie film with Brian Cranston. I have been a huge Brian fan way back when he was still doing soap operas. I knew he was a great actor then, now everyone knows it.

I am working on the whole cast of the show. I have 5 charcoals completed. I may do a lens when they are all ready to show.

I love it when someone who has never attempted any form of art dives in and gets their feet muddy, I mean wet. The easiest way to learn something new is to watch someone else do it step by step.

These drawing videos are just right for getting you started. You may not be able to make your creations look as good as these artists but it would be nice to try and make the attempt. You can only get better.

I really enjoy painting. When I can find the time to get started I can't seem to want to stop once I do so I end up painting about 4-5 painting in a row before i put everything a way for a few months and then do it again. I like to watch Jerry Yarnell at 5am in the morning on Saturdays but it is a real effort for me to get up at that time just to watch a paint show. I studied painting under some very well trained artists, unfortunately that doesn't make someone a great painter. It takes lots of practice and I certainly don't claim to be an expert at it. I claim to love painting. That is my only claim to fame.

The funniest thing happened when I did this painting. I was using it as a place to empty the extra paint on my paint brushes while I was painting another painting. I would just wipe the stripes on the horses until my brush was clean enough to rinse in water so I didn't muddy up my water too bad. I hate to change my water often while I am painting. The stained glass tree was an afterthought and an extension of the painting I was actually working on. So just just kept this painting and titled it: Horses Under a Stained Glass Tree.

The only thing better about painting is the satisfaction I get from teaching others, especially children to paint. Once a kids has learned they can paint it opens a whole new world to them. I encourage every parent to allow your child to paint once in a while.

There is one thing I do everyday. Make rubber art stamps and promote creations that customers make with rubber art stamps.

I started making rubber stamps long before they were cool art images like they are now. Stamps started when the need arose for commercial use mostly for banks and the postal office who needed a cheap way to make repetitive marks over and over on customer mailings and forms. You can find out how I got into all that through one of the links below.

I started getting into art stamps and had the idea that they could be used to create art but most people who caught the wave in the beginning were just doing envelope art. Now, there is a whole new world out there and they never stop creating new things with rubber stamps.

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