Since my blog is geared towards discussing the great creators and their works of art, I want to begin by introducing the greatest creator the world has ever known–Elohim, the one and only true Creator. The very first verse in the Bible introduces Him as such when it says, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1 (ESV) This leaves no doubt as to who the the first creator was. Before the first man breathed or put his will to art, God was creat

Last week, my family and I had the privilege of watching a movie in a theatre. We don’t usually watch anything that way, instead preferring to get a hard copy when it comes out and watch at home. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that it’s expensive for a family of five to go to a theatre often. The second is that there are so few movies we feel comfortable watching without editing/filtering. Last week, we saw Young Washington on the big screen, and today I am

It's been quite awhile since I've written any posts for Shades of Art. Those of you on my email list have already found out why: I left Tennessee and am currently traveling around the U. S.! While I've been writing a good deal the last week or so, the art I've probably been focusing on most is photography (and clearly not blogging.) After all, what better things to take pictures of than the Washington Monument, the Statue of Liberty or my best friend that I finally met in per

Recently, I had the privilege of watching the 87-year-old movie Gone with the Wind. In some ways, it was a lot better than what I had been expecting. In others, it was disappointing. Without a doubt, though, I'm very glad that I watched it. I'll start with the positives of this movie... The Acting I won't pretend to be a great judge of acting, because I haven't watched enough movies, nor enough of the great actors of all time. However, I thought that Clark Gable an

Those of you on my email list have heard me discussing my newest writing project, one that I feel has a lot of potential. As of this post, I am about 28K words in, and I am really starting to enjoy the characters and plot. I have passed the initial barrier presented by writing in a different genre (one that you can't make up things in 😬). As anything does, my story has become easier to write as I've spent more and more time with it. Before I share a snippet of the story

This post is two weeks late, but if you can believe it (I can't!) I recently celebrated my two-year blogging anniversary. To be honest, "celebrated" sounds so much more exciting than what really happened. What really happened is that I realized it had been two years since I started blogging and that I needed to write a post about it. As a result, I worried when I didn't post it on time. (January 20th, to be exact.) And I'm sure you were making "tsk tsk" noises as each day p

With the writing of this post, I began to realize a couple things about my picture-sharing methods. First of all, it is very often; I appear to be a very visual person. I love to share and receive pictures, so you'll probably get more than you asked for (if you did at all.) Even if a post isn't specifically concerning art, I usually have a lot of photos to go along with it. (An example of such a post is my " Sunshine Blogger Award " post. Another thing I realized about this s

Eight Below is an exciting, heart-warming movie loosely based on a true Antarctic tale. The story follows Jerry Shepherd (Paul Walker) as he tries desperately to get back to Antarctica so he can rescue his eight sled dogs who were abandoned in an emergency evacuation. While Jerry is fighting agencies, trying to raise money and struggling to convince friends to go back to Antarctica with him, the dogs have their own difficulties. The film flashes back and forth between the dog

It’s a thousand pages, give or take a few I’ll be writing more in a week or two I can make it longer if you like the style I can change it ‘round and I want to be a paperback writer. Paperback writer." These few lines in the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer” stood out to me. It isn’t just because I relate to the song, but because there is a lesson to be learned here. Upon a single listen, it is clear that the narrator is desperate to be an author. Besides the fact that he nee

It's hard to believe it's been exactly a year since I published "My Top Ten Movies of 2024" . I watched a lot of movies this year. I watched movies like Frozen that, yes, I had never seen before, and How to Train your Dragon: Live Action that was the first new movie I'd seen in a theatre in quite a long time. (The last one was quite possibly Incredibles 2 ; I won't confirm this, however.) Unlike last year, where I had to remember as many movies as I could, I made a li