Searching for Inspiration

Ms. Bean stayed home sick today, but that does not stop her from still thinking about making all of you into more thoughtful artistic types.  Here is a little nugget of goodness that I wanted to share with you thanks to my dear friend Kathleen Kennelly who works at Harvard University Art Museums.

Today, in between my naps I worked on a few sketches and then kind of froze up with artist block.  What to sketch about?  I was out of ideas. Did that blank feeling make me throw up my hand and give up?  No way.  It just meant that I needed a little bit of inspiration.

Thanks to my computer, I had a vast assortment of imagery available to me from the Smithsonian Institution.  The Collections Search Center provides easy "one-stop searching" of more than 2 million of the Smithsonian's museum, archives, library and research holdings and collections. (The access to more Smithsonian collections via this Search Center is increasing over time.)  When doing research for projects or for your own work, this is a great resource because you are getting reliable information about the artist, context, and time period.  The images are really large and crisp , which makes it easy to zoom in for detail.  A lot of the collection is not regularly on exhibit, so it is a treat to have this kind of access.

Here is my picture of the day:

A lithograph by Howard Cook called "Mexican Family" created in 1940.