Category Archives: Fun Stuff

Fold 1000 Origami Cranes and Your Wish Will Come True?

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Artist and iPad designer/developer, Heidi Berthiame, is putting the legend to the test. 

It is said those who fold 1000 origami cranes will have their wish come true.

Heidi Berthiame, has been working hard toward her goal or wish, (we are yet to discover what that is) for the past two and a half years. Perhaps in a last ditch effort to see her wish come true, she started folding 1000 origami Wish Cranes in January of this year.

Because getting the Crane folded is not the end goal, but rather the end results, it takes her about six minutes to fold each Wish Crane. That time is spent thinking about her wish and how she can best do what ever it will take to make it come true. That time is a break from what has to be done to contemplate what could be done. That time is well spent, every day.

She currently has over four hundred Wish Cranes completed. In November, she will finish folding the final one.

She said, “I do not know when my Wish will be granted, but I do know …

I will have *a lot* of origami Wish Cranes.”

Thus she has started a Kickstarter project. And yes, it has funded. 

FolioAcademy salutes Heidi Berthiame. Congrats and way to go!

You can give a Wish Crane a home? There are about two days left for the Kickstarter but you may be-able to contact her as for a Crane at the same Kickstarter page.

If you pledge, you will receive one of the origami Wish Cranes that Heidi has personally hand crafted this year. She says that she will rejoice that it has a new home, and perhaps that Wish Crane can aid a wish of yours to come true, too. So if you can provide a good home. . . make a pledge.

The origami Wish Canes are created from 3 inch x 3 inch patterned paper, which comes in five designs.

Each Wish Crane is folded by hand, therefore they lack a machine’s precision but have a craftsman’s uniqueness.

All Wish Cranes are numbered under one wing, ranging from 1 to 1000.

The number and pattern of the Wish Crane you receive will be randomly chosen when she reaches into the flock and closes her fingers gently upon a single wing and withdraws that crane – kind of like The Claw in the movie Toy Story, but with less vocalizations for her origami Wish Cranes are all silent species. At least whenever there are people around.

The Funding Goal was only $25 because that is how much she needed to pay for the additional paper necessary to fold the remaining Wish Cranes.

The Pledge Reward is set to $3, which covers supplies and shipment of one Wish Crane to wherever you are in the world. (even Utah)

The Pledge Limit is set to 999 because Heidi will keep one of the Wish Cranes for herself. So she is folding 1000 origami Wish Cranes and hope to send 999 to new homes, where they can live happily ever after and perhaps help fulfill a new Wish.

It is possible a Wish Crane may go missing after it leaves my house and before it reaches yours. I will pay to ship a replacement Wish Crane if yours does not arrive within 30 days of being shipped. Replacement Wish Cranes will not be numbered but will be folded from the same kind of patterned paper as the original 1000 Origami Wish Cranes.

And if her wish comes true, maybe she will tell us what that wish was.

P.S. I just re wrote (plagiarized) what Heidi already said on her Kickstarter page.

RISKS AND CHALLENGESLEARN ABOUT ACCOUNTABILITY ON KICKSTARTER

Art for beginners, try Zentagle, No Art Experience Necessary

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Zentangle a cool art form for everyone

Zentangle Example

“Discover your inner creativity!” We have 3 new courses by the funloving, certified Zentangle instructor/ photographer/ artist, Ellen Darby, on Zentangle at FolioAcademy where you find all kinds of art lessons online.

What is Zentagle? Good question.

Zentangled Heart

Zentangle is an easy to learn art form, it is fun and relaxing. With it you create beautiful designs through the use of repetitive patterns. It’s like doodling with direction.

Zentangle art ideas are limitless

Zentangled House

Zentangles canbe used in endless ways—from greeting cards, creative journals, and ceramic tiles, to business logos, therapeutic self-expression, and corporate team building.

Zentangle is Fun and Easy to Learn

Zentangle Process

No matter how you choose to express yourself, Zentangling is a fun, soothing, invigorating, affordable, portable, and personal way to be creative. No background in art is required!

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PHOTOSHOP DEMO FOR MY CLASS

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Photoshop is an amazing program!

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When I’m not working on folio academy, I am teaching at UVU.
I painted this for my class at UVU for our next assignment. I don’t work in this style so I wanted to work up a little example of what I’m looking for. I can’t tell you how much fun I have playing with different brushes and settings in Photoshop – it truly is an amazing program!

My Art is For Babies ?

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My 9 year old (my baby) said my art is for babies

I will admit that I am trying to appeal to a younger audience since I illustrate children’s books. Some times I have to hit the cute button a bunch of times before it looks right. (oh how i wish there was a “cute” button) So in response to my son’s accusation I wanted to see if I could still conjure something up from my junior high days of drawing sculls in the margins of my tests.


Yup – still got it.

I did this doodle out in the car while my wife did some shopping. I showed it to my youngest child, my 9 year old – he thought it was “totally bad” meaning good of course – score one for the old guy. Oh – and I fooled around with it in Photoshop to add some mood.

Use Your Strengths as an Artist

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“Study your strengths; then decide how hard you want to work.”

~Martha Stewart on finding confidence to succeed

a colorful painting by Will Terry.

Artist Will Terry, founder of FolioAcademy.com discovered early in his career that his strength was in applying beautiful color to his artwork. He has recently found that he has a knack for saving time by Illustrating electronically, like with Photoshop or even on an iPad.

Every artist has strengths as well as weaknesses.

So you want to figure out what your strength is (Drawing, Painting, Great Color, Figure Work, Humor, Value Patterning or what ever) and use that and strengthen your strength. Exorcise your strength to make it stronger. Make it even better, use your strength to make your art that much more excellent. By focusing on your strengths, your artwork’s quality will be better and you’ll have more fun creating it.

“You grow most in your areas of greatest strength.”

“You grow most in your areas of greatest strength. It sounds odd, but you will improve the most, be the most creative, be the most inquisitive, and bounce back the fastest in those areas where you have already shown some natural advantage over everyone else—your strengths.” – Marcus Buckingham

Believe it or not, I am no good at math. I hate math, I am horrible at the third R, it doesn’t even start with an R. YUCK!

I’m one of those dads that can only help his kids with their math homework through 1st grade. After that, they’re outta luck. No wonder I went into art. Thank goodness my wife is OK at math. But she doesn’t like it much, even though she is good at it. Therefor, math is not one of her strengths.

Your art should revolve around your strengths.

Obviously, it makes sense to hone in on our artistic strengths and avoid our weaknesses in order to create huge masterpieces, or at least, nice pieces of work.

So, what exactly is a “strength?”

Pic of a man flexing his muscles

 

Now that is the Million Dollar Question. It seems like an obviously simple question to answer. And for a long time I simply thought that a “strength” was anything that we are good at, and in most cases it is. BUT. . .

Marcus Buckingham,“ strength-specialist” says that:

A strength is “an activity that makes you feel strong.” It is an activity where the doing of it invigorates you. Before you do it, you find yourself instinctively looking forward to it. While you are doing it you don’t struggle to concentrate, but instead you become so immersed that time speeds up and you lose yourself in the present moment. And after you are finished doing it, you feel authentic, connected to the best parts of who you really are.”

Remember I said that my wife is good at math, but she doesn’t like it? Since she has no enthusiasm for math, it is not a strength. Have you ever had a job that you were good at, and maybe it even paid well, but you hated it? You were good at it sure, but it wasn’t a strength or you would have enjoyed it.

Focus on Your Strengths

When you focus on your strengths, you’re engaging in the work that invigorates you and fuels the energy to keep you going. Why not bring your strengths into your artwork as well?

I would also say that you should take some time occasionally to work on your weaknesses too. You may have a tough time drawing humans, but who knows, that may become a strength. Don’t be afraid to push the envelope. But don’t stress too much over it, no one can “do-it-all”. It’s impossible.

So, imagine, for a moment that you eliminated the areas that drag you down and only engaged in the areas that pump you up.

How would THAT change your art efforts?

CAN PINTEREST HELP IMPROVE YOUR ART?

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I must think so or this would be a really short post right?

First let me just say that I’m like a lot of you – “NOT ANOTHER SOCIAL MEDIA SITE!!!” I know I know – but trust me – Pinterest is worth it…and you can get in and out quickly!

I will show you how to find out what people think of your work.

For starters lets deal with that title – what if I told you that there is a way to see how your art stacks up against your competition? What if you could be that fly on the wall in the office of an editor, art director, agent, or fellow artist? What if you could know what people really think of your work? I’ll show you a very simple way to use Pinterest to do just this.

1. Make your own Pinterest account

BUT do it by logging in from Facebook or choose the setting so that every time you make a “PIN” it updates facebook.
Why? So people see your pins, visit your board, and re’pin your pins.

2. Type a Key word in the “search bar”.

In the “search” bar at the top of the Pinterest page after you’re logged in – type in something like “illustration” or “Children’s illustration” or “characters” and hit enter.

3. Click on “boards”

4. Click on a piece of art that interests you.

You might want to scroll a little – pick a goody! Ok – now pick five images to “re-pin” AND – pin them to your illustration board.  (I figured all this stuff out so if I can do it a snail can do it – I mean a snail with a high school educations. Sorry snails :( …make sure you REALLY like the images you’re re-pinning. These need to be images that you really admire and perhaps wish you’d created so be picky!  Also – if you don’t pin really good stuff people will ignore your board and that will kill this whole experiment.

5. pin one of your own images.

Now pin one of your own images and then throughout the next year or so, repeat this ratio – a handful of other artist’s images to one of your own.  I suggest you pin from your website or blog so that if people click on them they come back to your portal – but that’s not what this post is about. (You should still do it for marketing reasons.) There’s a way to download some thing-a-ma-jig to your browser so you can “pin” from any site – I don’t remember how I got it to work, you could ask a snail. I think I googled “how to pin with Pinterest” or something like that. I need one of those snails to do that stuff for me.

6. Below is a look at my illustration board on Pinterest. If you go there or zoom in, you can see how many times each image was “re-pinned”, or not re-pinned. – and here in lies the magic! You get to see how many votes or “pins” each image gets including your own. In a way people are casting their votes in an impartial way – self serving! They see something they like and they re-pin it for themselves. This is more valuable than a critique from friends in some ways because it’s a rather large sample size and it’s honest. The people pinning don’t really know or care that you’re looking at the data this way -they’re just grabbing images for future consumption on their own boards.

link to Will Terry's Pinterest boards

So how can Pinterest help you improve your art? You can learn a lot by seeing what people like and don’t like. If you’re work isn’t getting re-pinned as much as the other work you pin you have some work to do – but not in the blind – because you can see exactly what images people respond to the most. You might want to make a list of the things the popular images have in common – then compare to your work. However, this could also be a little dangerous if you follow it too closely and copy what is getting votes – you could become a follower- you still have to innovate but in order to create great art you have to consume great art!

Pinterest is in my opinion a very valuable tool for inspiration, strategy, and marketing – I’m starting to get emails and messages from customers who are finding me on Pinterest – and I hear it’s the fastest growing social network! so get pinning!