PREVIEW: 11th season of blog posts

My 11th season of Blog posts is due to start on Monday January 25th 2010… and on Artwork Premiere Thursdays…

Snow White and Ariel will take center stage again – and there’ll be three drawings in all, one of which you’ll be able to personalize…

Cats will wander in to sun themselves in new some landscapes of Rhodes in Greece…

And as for the dogs, they’ll be visiting more of their wolf country cousins, as well as appearing in a new set called ‘Dreaming Dogs’

Thanks for reading this season, hope you’ll join me in January. Have a very Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas, and why not follow me on twitter for sneak peeks, and just in case a few new drawings appear early, you never know!

Amalfi gets the Fauvist treatment

Débuting today, some villas taking off into the sky over Amalfi, Italy. And to top off this fantasy imagery, the whole Italian town is drawn in an aggressive Fauvism style!
Fauvist artists first applied their paint straight from the tubes to create their expressive works at the start of the last century, in France. I’ve always been a little heavy handed with my oil pastels and think I’ve finally figured out perhaps I shouldn’t hold back and that this style, is kind of fun for me. And I hope you’ll have some fun owning ‘Flying Villas of Amalfi’!

Intimate with Imagination

When I left art college I couldn’t get a job, didn’t really know where to look or what to do. And yet here I am 20 years later, and people like my artwork and are buying my fine art prints all over the world.
There must be other imaginative artists out there whom I can help. And I believe people working together on something can produce far more, than if they were working alone. So I’m launching ‘Intimate with Imagination’.
It will be a destination initially offering art products, which will be from artists who, like me are able to infuse a little imagination into what they can see. Perhaps they will pump up the colors of a traditional landscape sketch or turn a classical dog drawing a bit whimsical. I just know that there are some hidden jewels out there, just right to make their creativity part of Intimate with Imagination. And hopefully you’ll enjoy seeing us all begin to shine together!

Disney on the menu

I had to pinch myself to see if this was real. I’d been invited again by Castle China in Warwick to offer my still-life studies of WDCC sculptures art at the Walt Disney Classics Collection Fall Premiere Event in October. And I only got to go and share lunch with two artists working for Disney who appeared at the Event. They were both so gracious and a pleasure to meet. You could say Andy Grey (below, left) is whom Disney consider to be, the expert Winnie the Pooh artist right now. And Alan Batson shared all sorts of fascinating tidbits on the newest animated films, like The Princess and the Frog and even movies which didn’t quite get made. I almost forgot to eat my lunch!

American East Coast colleges and the Bible Belt

There are accusations of the American Heroes I’ve represented in my art, being deists. While these influences may have been around, Billye Brim talked with Gloria Copeland about what really shaped America in the 1800’s on the ‘BVOV’ broadcast week of November 16th 2009, reading from ‘2000 Years of Charismatic Christianity’:

“‘Colleges on the East Coast had become hotbeds of rebellion. Students proudly professed to be atheists, agnostics, skeptics or infidels.’ And so the [President at Yale] was the son in law of Jonathan Edwards, ‘…and he preached a series on infidelity. The spiritual stir resulted in one third of the student body professing faith in Christ… Revival fire started engulfing Dartmouth and Williams and other colleges…”

Billye read how this eventually led to a revival in Cain Ridge, Kentucky that would change the course of America:

“They say that this work spread in every direction… the Spirit of God prevailed over infidelity and deism which was rising up, and the religious character of the United States was assured for generations to come… The Great Awakening got us to be a nation, and this Awakening, the Cain Ridge Awakening turned us to have these Bible belt, moral ideas and respect for the Bible… It’s still affecting us to this day. You go to Europe and you go to some other places and you know, Gloria, it’s not that way like it is here. And we’re going to hang onto it.”

Is it any wonder why there’s such a battle over prayer in schools today.

Past and present negative influences on America

People have forget their nations’ real history, the true stories, here in England and in America.
Billye Brim talked about the Second Great Awakening in America with Gloria Copeland on the ‘Believer’s Voice of Victory’ broadcast week of November 16th 2009 and read from 2000 Years of Charismatic Christianity:

“‘As the 19th century dawned, America was again morally bankrupt’, they’ve been founded, they’ve had the Declaration of Independence, they’ve got their Constitution, but the morals have gone down again. ‘A generation had come of age that knew little of the revival that had swept the nation 60 years before’… ‘Negative influences from the French Revolution penetrated American society. This concern prompted fervent prayer that precipitated a national, spiritual awakening…’”

I’m hoping that the negative influences of President Obama’s radical socialist agenda today will provoke a new Holy Spirit led Awakening in America. Surely the sacrifices and advancements those men and women made, cannot be dismissed and dismantled right in front of us.

It’s Pink Dog Day

Running out into my Dog Breed Cartoon Portraits art gallery wing are a Beagle, Yorkshire Terrier and Doberman Pinscher (below). And these pets all have a retro pink flavor.
The Doberman à la Pink is available as a numbered limited edition of only 12 in three versions as well as an ACEO, so don’t let this pastel color-coated canine get away!

Out there YouTube videos

Just to caution you, when it comes to my speaking out, either here in my blog or on YouTube, you may have noticed, I’m not concerned about being politically correct or shying away from controversial subjects. And my YouTube Channel now has 6 Playlists of my videos. I’m still Vlogging at weekends, but the uploads will only be in ‘My Vlog’ Playlist for a month or two, (so it’s worth subscribing on YouTube or following me on Twitter if you don’t want to miss any).
‘Israel’, ‘Religion and Politics’, ‘Christianity’ and ‘On Location and Events’ make up the rest of my Playlists along with ‘Art Gallery’ which contains all those ‘1-Minute Art Spotlights’.
And I’ve re-titled a couple of uploads from a few months ago which I believe are very powerful. After all, it’s usually the title that grabs a YouTube viewer isn’t it? Did you ever see that one, I’ve rather straightforwardly renamed ‘Is masturbation a sin‘…?

My Art Buyers’ Comments still make me smile

After over 700 unique eBay Members’ feedback comments, I still pay close attention to what every one of my Buyers says after purchasing an art print through the douglasrickard eBay store. Here are some which made me smile from the past few months. ‘gped8306’ wrote about ‘Charcoal and Oil - Venice’:

“This is a beauty and so is Venice and so is the artist”

‘looseinthelilacs’ wrote about her ‘Charcoal Drawing - Pug

’:

“the little face is so precious…you can be very proud of yourself…thank you for sharing your art”

And ‘halfvastproductions’ wrote, after receiving an ACEO of ‘Story Lines - The Aristocats Characters’:

“Beautiful ACEO. Daughter confiscated it immediately.”

 

America was born out of The Great Awakening

Billye Brim corrected the ‘revisionist history’ of America I’ve been mentioning, with Gloria Copeland on the ‘Believer’s Voice of Victory’ broadcast week of November 16th, ‘Praying in Unity’:

“America was born out of The Great Awakening. One Harvard professor I read after in my studies said, ‘If you want to understand colonial America, and the birth of America, and the wording of the Declaration of Independence, you have to have studied the Great Awakening.’
And of course Jonathan Edwards was the first preacher in it… In education [The Great Awakening] led to the founding of a number of academies, Princeton, Brown, Rutgers, Dartmouth’… all grew out of the Great Awakening! They were all started, to train preachers. I wonder if they know that now…
And then there came, out of that came the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin was a dear friend of [preacher, George Whitfield], and words of the Declaration of Independence came out of [his] preaching.”