Thomas Kinkade & Recycled Art

I have been doing sketches in crayon, just to put less pressure on the sketches. Sometimes I get too caught up in making my artwork look a certain way, like a preconceived notion, that I end redoing the same idea. It is difficult to completely break out of your current way of creating artwork, and find a new idea. I think that is the hardest part actually, and it shows the difference between true artists and graphic designers, or someone who just uses the same template for a painting. Thomas Kinkade is like that, and I really don’t like his work. But he isn’t an artist, he‘s a commercial designer, or businessman, who counts on using the same American flag, misty forests, porch swings, and other stereotypical themes in every painting. In a way, that is good, since he makes money, and I know it’s much harder to make money selling cutting edge, completely original work.
I notice there’s a lot of artwork and designers who are focused on using recycled materials in their work. That seems really interesting to me, because it’s using creativity in a raw form, to find new ways to look at the materials and find an innovative use for them. One idea I saw is using a laundry detergent bottle and turning it into a lamp. Another is using those plywood pallets, which you see in alleys, and turning them into lawn chairs, picnic baskets, and beds. There is already so much stuff that’s been made there will have to come a point where it becomes cheaper to recycle something that already exists, than to manufacture something from scratch. I want to get into doing more artwork with recycling materials, because it is so open. Painting a regular painting is limited, because all it can do is hang on the wall, but if I made sculpture or something more interactive or useful, it would be a way to break out of my usual way of creating art.