Chris Pate

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Inspiration for your Creativity

Here you will find links to sites with inspirational pictures and information.

Ancient Civilisations

Site by the Trustees of the British Museum. Beautifully presented with some wonderful pictures.

Ancient Resource

Fabulous site stuffed with pictures of ancient artifacts for sale. Loads of inspiration if ancient civilisations are your thing.

If you like ancient writing and pictorial scripts, this is a great site for inspiration. Fantastic if you like to create your own unique textures for metal clay. Searchable in several ways and with lots of added links to relevant sites. Also has some scripts in font form to download.

Art Creativity and Inspiration

Every artist has days when they feel uninspired and uncreative. Here's help on getting over creative burnout and getting your enthusiasm and creativity back.

BBC Ancient History

From the death cults of Egypt to the fearsome yet sophisticated society of the Vikings, the ancient world was a surprising and challenging place. Check out the world's ancient cultures at this well organised and researched site.

The Bead Museum - Glendale AZ

The Bead Museum displays the largest collection of ancient and contemporary beads in the world.

Beads from the Early Civilisations

Short article about ancient beadmaking.

British Museum

Wonderfully rich source of inspiration from one of the foremost ancient history museums in the world.

Cairo Museum

The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo is an unbelievable treasure house of riches. This site has some wonderful pictures and information about ancient Egypt.

Cartoon Museum

The Cartoon Museum exhibits the very finest examples of British cartoons, caricature, and comic art from the 18th century to the present day.

Dali Museum

The work of Dali is endlessly fascinating. Pictures and information.

Daniel Essig

Daniel Essig creates wooden-covered art books and book-based sculptures. Using a fourth-century binding style known as Ethiopian style Coptic, he creates mixed-media book structures that incorporate unusual woods, handmade paper, found objects, fossils, and mica.

Denver Art Museum

Eclectic mix of exhibits with some wonderful pictures, many showing detail.

Design Museum London

Exhibitions and information, some pictures of well designed items from a wide range of sources.

Design Spotter

Design examples from all genres and sources. Lots of great pictures.

Eckman Fine Arts - Cast Paper Sculpture

It's hard to believe that these amazingly detailed sculptures are made from paper. The Native American themed sculptures are breathtaking.

Eden Project

The Eden Project is one of the UK's top gardens and conservation tourist attractions located in Cornwall. A living theatre of plants and people, the Eden Project is wholly owned by the Eden Trust, an educational charity.

Egyptian Museum

Official site of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Encyclopedia Mythica

Award-winning internet encyclopedia of mythology, folklore, and religion. Here you will find everything from A-gskw to Zveda Vechanyaya, with plenty in between.

Faux Bone™ Flickr Group

This group on Flickr shows Faux Bone™ creations and is well worth browsing for inspiration.

Gallery of Designs from Fire Mountain Gems

Useful resource for inspiration.

Godchecker

They have more Gods than you can shake a stick at. Godchecker's Mythology Encyclopedia currently features over 2,850 deities.

Guggenheim Museum

Official site of the Guggenheim Museum.

Jade Orchid

Check out the work of Wanaree Tanner for inspiration on working with copper clay, silver clay and incorporating stones - big ones! - in your work.

Jeff de Boer

Jeff de Boer is a Calgary-based multi-media artist with an international reputation for producing some of the world's most original and well-crafted works of art. With an emphasis on metal, he is best known for such bodies of work as suits of armour for cats and mice, armour ties and sword-handled briefcases, rocket lamps and pop culture ray guns, and exquisite high art, abstract works called exoforms.

Krakow National Museum

Official site of the Krakow National Museum in Poland.

Kris Kuksi

Multi talented artist Kris Kuksi creates paintings, drawings and sculpture with amazing detail. His sculptures particularly inspire, such is the detail and artistry. The subject matter can be disturbing and breathtaking in equal measure.

Linda Lundell

Fabulous enamelled pieces, great pictures.

MC Escher

The official site of the artist includes a fantastic gallery of his work. Amazing buildings and complex symmetrical patterns feature.

Medieval Bestiary

Animals in the Middle Ages, includes mythical animals. Great pictures.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

A wide range of inspirational pictures from the official site of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Meteora, Greece

The conglomerate rock at Meteora, Greece, has eroded into fantastic peaks upon which medieval monks built monasteries, several of which are still active. Fabulous pictures of awe inpiring natural formations.

Museum of Ancient Inventions

Fascinating site showing ancient inventions. Lots of pictures.

Museum of Fine Art Boston

Official site of the Museum of Fine Art Boston.

Museum of Fine Art Dunkerque

Dunkerque's Musée des Beaux Arts has a rich collection of old masters from the 16th century onwards.

Museum of London

Official site of the Museum of London.

Nature Photographs

Unbelievably beautiful photographs of nature.

Nellie Bly

NELLIE BLY is a unique gallery of kaleidoscopes and art glass located in historic Jerome, Arizona since 1988. They are the largest dealer of kaleidoscopes in the world and feature over 90 kaleidoscope artists.

Old Beads

Great page of pictures of ancient beads with some useful commentary.

Pam East - Out of this world: Inspriration and the creative process

One thing my students seem to struggle with a lot is coming up with their own, personal artistic voice. They often ask me where I get my ideas. There seems to be this vague perception that The Muse waves her wand and I’m gifted with the vision of a design, fully formed in all detail. Of course, the reality is not that simple. Design development usually involves a lot of different elements coming together over time. I would like to share the development for one particular piece with you as an illustration of the creative process. The piece is titled “The Adventures of Flerg: Chapter 1”.

Flerg floated around in the back of my mind for years. You can find tiny space ships flying around on the margins of my notes and homework dating back to high school. Years later, on a cross country flight, I entertained my then young daughter by having her think up things for "Flerg" to do and I would draw them out. (don't ask where the name came from. It's completely random.) Flerg had many adventures after landing on earth, including rescuing princesses from towers, riding roller coasters and trips to the mall. There was even one fairly unsuccessful stint as a pirate (the eye patch over his single eye made navigation difficult).

All this was nothing more than doodling and completely separate from my jewelry work until two things happened.

The first thing was meeting master quilter Linda Cantrell. Linda specializes in pictorial quilts using appliqué and embroidery techniques. Several years ago she and I were teaching at John C. Campbell at the same time and I had the opportunity to see some of her amazing quilts up close and personal. These were master works from the word go, museum quality and award winning. But the subject matter was a riot! There was one whole quilt devoted to the life and times of Sunbonnet Sue. It started with her shotgun wedding (sue being visibly pregnant) and followed through the trials and tribulations of her life, including moving into the trailer park, kids with piercings and tattoos, Elvis sightings, lottery winnings and more. This was not some quick thing knocked off as a joke. It must have represented hundreds of hours of work and her skill and artistry showed in every stitch.

All along in my own work I had tried to create pieces that were "beautiful" and "elegant". I wanted to advance my skills and be taken seriously as an artist, so I did "serious" work. But if you look at the artwork I've purchased over the years, you can see that my own aesthetic leans heavily to the whimsical. Looking at Linda's quilt I had an epiphany. Fine art does not have to have to be "serious" to be very good.

The second thing happened when I was taking a Cloisonné class with renown artist Don Viehman. Although I had been enameling for a decade already, my work leans to basse taille and champlevé. This was my very first cloisonné class. I wanted to make something “beautiful” so I designed a fairly traditional rose. It was coming out lovely, but as I worked on it, it occurred to me that it was not my style at all. There was nothing wrong with it, it just didn't fit ME. At that moment I remembered Linda Cantrell and her wonderful quilts. I realized that to be true to myself, I had to make something whimsical. And Linda's work inspired me to pour the same level of effort and devotion into that as I would into a more traditionally "beautiful" piece. Flipping through my sketch book I came across some of the Flerg drawings I had done for my daughter and "The Adventures of Flerg" was born. Over the 8 day class I worked simultaneously on both the rose and Flerg. Both pieces I made that week with Don turned out well, but Flerg will always hold a special place in my heart. It's a lesson in following your own creative vision no matter where it leads.

Here is a link to some of Linda Cantrell's Quilts

Here is a link to some of Don Viehman's enamels

Enjoy!

Pam East

Patina Paintings

Nathan Bennett paints on silica bronze using a mixture of chemicals, oxides, nitrates, and acids, which are suspended in water before being applied to the bronze.

Patricia Boyd

Patricia Boyd creates beautiful sculptures using gourds. Using her background in the arts and the human body, Pat has brought her own unique expression of figurative gourd sculptures in the field of art.

Peter Chang

Jewelry made from plastics - have a look at this man's work, it's fabulous.

Picasso Museum

Explore the work of Picasso at this official museum site.

Providence Jewelry Museum

In addition to individual items, the Providence Jewelry Museum has the world's largest collection of jewelry making artifacts.

Raku Gallery

Located on Cleopatra Hill in Jerome, Arizona, Raku Gallery is well known for outstanding art and a fabulous view overlooking the Verde Valley and the red rocks of Sedona. There are more than 200 artists of various mediums represented at this gallery. Browse through the gallery to view some of the exceptional works of art they carry.

The Scribbler

Well here's a fun thing! I'm not sure I can explain it but basically you draw a picture on the screen, then the Scribbler recreates your drawing in a random way. What they say about it is this...."The Scribbler takes simple vector based input (in the case of the online toy, your drawing) and creates its own drawing on top of it based on a number of simple rules. When a new scribble line is created it chooses a few numbers at random that eventually determine what sort of line it will draw. As it begins to draw it fine tunes those values to the type of drawing that you've made. " Check it out, it's great fun and you could create some really unique textures using photopolymer plates or tear away sheets.