Back in the 1980’s when I declared my intention to be a fine arts major at university I was told that an arts education wasn’t much use in life. I disagreed then and now after up-teen years as a professional artist (with a BFA!) I still disagree. I’ve used, and benefited in multiple ways from, my arts education – particularly from drawing and painting techniques. For example – just yesterday I burnt my lunch. The food was seared to the bottom of the pan as if I’d welded it on.  But thanks to my drawing and painting professors (and a high school art teacher before them) this was no problem! I simply took my plastic food scrapper and used “cross hatching” and “stippling” techniques as if I was doing a drawing using a large chunk of graphite on paper. I employed the sharp edge of my plastic scrapper as if I’d been assigned to do a delicate “scratch-board” illustration.  I “scumbled” small circles with the duller edge of my plastic scrapper as if it was a stiff ox-hair paintbrush – and voila! An artistically cleaned pan! Thanks art teachers!

Here are the drawing/painting techniques described in this post – just in case…