Much has been published on the link between creativity and mental illness, from scholarly articles to articles in HuffPo, the Harvard Gazette, and the New York Times. What is clear is that mental illness, and other conditions like ADD and Autism, makes one see the world differently, and this is often reflected in the art they create. There also tends to be a symbiotic relationship between art and artist, as the act of creative expression can have a calming effect on the artist.

National Art Exhibitions of the Mentally Ill (NAEMI) is a group committed to  displaying, and promoting the art of so called “outsider artists” – those with mental illnesses and other conditions. They hold an annual exhibit in Miami, FL, where they display works from mentally ill artists in the US, England, Spain, and Central and South America. In addition to raising public awareness, they assist developing outsider aritsts and provide them with vocational training in art-related fields to increase their independence.

While NAEMI’s focus is on drawing and painting, The Awakenings Project – a grassroots organization dedicated to helping aspiring outsider artists develop their talent – includes artists in the fields of music, drama, and literature. You can visit their website to see samples of the artists’ work, explore resources for outsider artists, and donate to support the organization.

Many famous artists have been diagnosed with mental illnesses, although few people are aware of it. Pablo Picasso was schizophrenic. Jackson Pollock and Vincent Van Gogh suffered from bipolar disorder. Claude Monet suffered from clinical depression. Edward Deeds, committed to a mental institution in Nevada in 1936, created a collection of 283 numbered colored pencil drawings on hospital letterhead. He was diagnosed schizophrenic, though it has been suggested he may have been on the Autism spectrum as well. His art reflects landscapes from  his home in the Ozarks, images from the Civil War, and – according to his niece – family portraits. It also shows the story of the hospital’s transition from urging patients to move about and cure themselves through physical labor to using Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT), also known as electroshock therapy. He earned his nickname “the Electric Pencil” from a drawing in which the word ECTLECTRC appears next to a drawing of a pencil. It was originally suspected he may have been dyslexic and have spelled the world “electric” incorrectly, but was later discovered that the word was a reference to ECT. You can read more about his story and see examples of his haunting illustrations here.

If the Electric Pencil and these other incredible outsider artists have inspired you, grab a drawing pencil and some colored pencils too, and get creative!

Adonna has been praised by The Los Angeles Times, U-Press Telegram, and Edward Goldman on NPR and in 2012 she won the ArtPrize for one of her graphite drawings. In her ArtPrize submission, Adonna described her creative process:

“Raised in a small town in Iowa, I’ve been drawing my family and animals since I was three. I create using the pencil, the eraser and a sock as my tools. The drawings are not pre-planned rather they evolve through my experiences with people and the absurdities of life. The result is a group of drawings where the animals coexist in a world beyond ours, and are inexplicably tied together, often not by choice.”

Drawings by Pencil Artist Adonna Khare

If you want to see more of Adonna’s drawings, you can check out her gallery on her website, or you can check out her permanent collection at the Long Beach Museum of Art.

What do you think Studio 602ers? Sound off in the comments section below!

I signed on early, but at first, I was unsure what to do with it. Most of the early videos on Vine were stop motion creations and pencil art. But the service is still young, and many users are just beginning to explore the creative possibilities.

Creative Ways to Use Vine

One of the most innovative pencil artists using the service, the Vine artist known as Pinot, made this and many other pencil animations. You’ll be amazed at how thoroughly just six seconds of video can blow your mind.

Blurry edge between pencil+paper & reality: Snooker ball! #art #stopmotion #drawing vine.co/v/bxpijxd7WP1

— Pinot (@pinot) April 29, 2013

When users make their first post on Vine they typically use the hashtag #FirstPost to identify their first attempt at a Vine. Below you’ll find my first attempt. My cat Jackson stars in this quick vine creation of him sleeping in the sink as usual.

The cat is in the sink. #cats vine.co/v/bQeYTKO3nph

— Victor Inzunza (@Victor_Inzunza) May 2, 2013

Like playing with Legos? So does artist Mark Weaver. He’s devoted a lot of time and effort to making a series of Lego Vines. You can see all of his Lego creations on Vine at Mark Weaver’s website.

LV-026 #legovines vine.co/v/bHrAxpDqAKB

— Mark Weaver (@markweaver) March 5, 2013

Don’t have enough time or gas money to visit SFMOMA? No need. Twitter user Ian Padgham has condensed the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s entire second floor collection into six seconds of video. Pretty cool. You should still go to the museum anyway. It’s the best.

Here is @sfmoma‘s entire 2nd floor collection! Tap to see which work of art you are by @origiful vine.co/v/bP9dHFzV62j

— Ian Padgham (@origiful) April 26, 2013

Even Pendleton Ward of Adventure Time fame is using Vine to create new and interesting bits of animation.

@littlethurop aheheharheh vine.co/v/b26TnnWBlUP

— Pendleton Ward (@buenothebear) May 7, 2013

Artists of all stripes are finding new and impressive ways to use Vine. Plus, with six seconds of video, you can now watch 6 cat videos a minute. That’s (CVPM) Cat Videos Per Minute, the Internet’s new official unit of measurement.

What are you doing on Vine to stay creative?

Matt Mongomery uses Blackwing pencils to create. And like great creators, he has taken his latest grand idea from his head, put in onto paper, and now he’s ready to bring it to life.

Matt is trying to bring together 25 of the most talented musicians in the San Francisco bay area  to capture a rare music experience.

“Nothing matches the sound and energy of putting 25 musicians of this caliber together at the same time.” says Montgomery. “We aren’t backed or influenced by a major record label… Just a bunch of world class musicians playing great music together.”

The project is expected to take months of preparation and rehearsal, culminating in one 8 hour recording session. They will produce an HD documentary chronicling the preparation and recording, and will also feature live music videos of the performances themselves.

The only obstacle? Money. Because this is an independent project, Montgomery launched a campaign on IndieGoGo to raise funds needed to hire 25 professional highly trained musicians, filmmakers, editors, recording engineers, catering, graphic design, vinyl and CD printing.

Montgomery is poised not only to make this project happen, but for it to be “the impetus for more collaboration like this throughout the world.”

If you’d like to contribute, visit http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/petty-troubles-orchestral-live-album.

Pencils.com and Studio 602 are excited to announce that we will be teaming up with Palomino and the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity to bring the Blackwing Experience to the West Coast!

Last year’s Blackwing Experience, which was held at the Art Directors Club in New York City, entertained and enlightened over 1,000 artists, musicians and everyday people during its weeklong run. This year’s exhibit, which will be held at the Chuck Jones Center’s facility in Costa Mesa, California, will feature a three-day exhibit celebrating over 2000 years of pencils and the creativity they enable, along with nightly events that include a kickoff party, Chuck Talk panel discussion on creativity and Blackwing Foundation benefit concert.

Here’s an excerpt from Palomino’s announcement press release:

“From June 25^th – 27^th, Palomino will host the Blackwing Experience at the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity in Costa Mesa, CA. The three-day exhibit celebrating creativity, pencils and the people who use them will kick off with the Party for the Pencil on Tuesday, June 25^th at 7pm…

In addition to the opening party, on Wednesday June 26^th at 7pm, the exhibit will feature a Chuck Talk panel discussion on creativity and on Thursday, June 27^th at 7pm, the exhibit will host a benefit concert for the Blackwing Foundation, a non-profit established to raise funds and awareness for K-12 music programs.”

You can read the entire press release at PalominoBrands.com.

If you want more information, including how you can attend the Party for the Pencil, Chuck Talk panel discussion and benefit concert, head on over to the Blackwing Experience page on PalominoBrands.com.

What do you think Studio 602ers? Sound off in the comments section below!

The room is deathly quiet, except for the ticking of the clock. In front of you, a sealed test packet rests on your desk. Your fingers hover over two freshly-sharpened number two pencils. You hold your breath. The teacher says, “You may begin,” and suddenly you’re ripping open that packet and tearing through questions like it’s the testing equivalent of the Indy 500. This is a scenario most of us remember well, but today’s students may face a different reality as standardized testing moves to computers.

The Graduate Record Exam (GRE) is taken on a computer, and now other standardized tests are being given in schools on computers as well. Proponents of the move tout its benefits – no issues with stray pencil marks, improved accuracy with grading, instant scoring results, and adaptive questions – that is, questions that increase in difficulty as students answer correctly, and decrease in difficulty as students answer incorrectly. Some tests even consider the amount of time it takes a student to answer each question as part of the score. It’s an upsetting trend for students, parents, and educators alike, but don’t panic just yet.

Some schools that have moved away from pencil-and-paper testing are switching back, and for good reason. Proponents of the move to computers argue that scoring accuracy is improved because computers remove the risk of human error, but they say nothing about computer error. Many testing programs are still new technology, and as such, they contain glitches. Scoring errors will be much more difficult to catch with computers doing all of the calculation. In addition, many schools do not have the technology – the level or the amount – to support computerized testing.

The biggest issue of all, however, is the negative effect of computerized testing on students. Students as young as four years old are being required to take computerized tests, for which they have neither the experience with technology nor the attention span nor the emotional maturity to handle – many of them end up in tears during the process. We have a tendency to think that babies born after 2007 came out of the womb with an iPhone in their hands, but the truth is that there is still a technology gap, and students with regular access to computers are going to do better on these tests than students without – including low-income students. In addition, instant results mean that students can and will compare their scores. Even in college, my self-esteem hinged on my GRE score for weeks. I can only imagine how that number will affect younger students

This is a serious issue which will probably be up for debate many times as technology continues to advance, but I for one will always vote for the pencil. Students have enough anxiety when it comes to test-taking. The least we can do is let them use their lucky pencil in a testing format that is familiar. Readers, do you agree? I’d love to read your take in the comments.

Scott was influenced and inspired by a number of American artists, including Norman Rockwell, Walt Disney, Tom Richmond, Frank Miller and Thomas Kincaid. He grew up attempting to redraw his favorite artists’ scenes, characters and themes, all the while developing a style that is completely his own. His works are collected internationally and have been featured in several publications, and on national and local television stations.

Depending on the scale of the project, Scott’s drawings can take anywhere from 5 to 150 hours to complete. He general starts by sketching out his subject in graphite and then carefully layering on the colored pencil while erasing portions of the graphite underdrawing.

“My technique is built on several layers upon layers of only pencils to create the high definition effect in my work. I try to capture an aura and sense of spirituality in every single one of my pieces. I hope to become an award winning children’s novel artist. I also strive to be the 21st century Norman Rockwell and be prolific in my work” – Scott Wilke

Drawings by Pencil Artist Scott Wilke

If you want to see more of Scott’s work, you can check out his website. If you would like to contact Scott about a potential commission, you can email him at swilke@ymail.com.

We have featured many fantastic pencil artists who create everything from realistic pencil drawings, to tiny sculptures (Dalton Ghetti, Hungarian artist Cerkahegyzo) to large-scale pencil artwork (Jennifer Maestre). While you can argue (and many do) that all art is political, I have never seen a piece of pencil artwork that has had such an overt political message as the pencil sculpture recently unveiled by students at the University of New Hampshire.

32,000 pencils have been painstakingly sculpted into a graduation cap – one pencil for each dollar of student loan debt that a typical UNH student will graduate with at the end of their undergrad program. The sculpture, created by the UNH Peace and Justice League in concert with local sculptor Tim Gaudreau, has been designed to call attention to the mounting tuition costs facing college students – New Hampshire has the highest in-state tuition rates in the country – and to lobby senators at the state assembly for more affordable and accessible education.

The sculpture isn’t just an artistic endeavor; it was designed using no glue, so the pencils can be distributed to local schools when the project is complete. In the meantime, this one-of-a-kind piece of pencil artwork will travel the state to inspire dialogue and, hopefully, reform.

Pencil artwork isn’t typically overtly political, but with college students across the country feeling the pressure of excessive student loans and scarce economic opportunities, it isn’t surprising that the UNH students have turned to a unique medium to express their frustrations. A pencil evokes many things, but for me, the bright yellow #2 pencils evoke a certain sense of innocence and hope – after all, they were the first thing pressed into our chubby fingers when we were kids, and they became the medium through which we engaged our education. Math, the sciences, language, writing, history – it all flowed from the tip of that cheery yellow pencil. We’ve written before here that a pencil is a tool of an endless possibility, and it seems that college students throughout the United States – and especially, it seems, at the University of New Hampshire – have found that the promise of endless possibility has been thwarted.

As a recent college graduate myself, I can identify with their frustrations. No one I know is asking for a job and a salary on a silver platter, but it is frightening when the script that you have been told to follow your whole life – go to school, go to college, graduate, get a job – doesn’t have the ending that you thought it would. I don’t want to clamber atop a soapbox, but it seems to me that the pencil is a perfect symbol to capture the fear, frustration, and hope that many college students are feeling right now. It’s less accessible, in some ways, than realistic pencil drawings might be, and yet from my perspective it captures the anger and fear of a generation better than any realistic pencil drawings ever could. I am sure that this piece of pencil artwork doesn’t speak for everyone – what piece of art ever does? – but for college students around the United States, it may very well make a salient and timely point.

We want to hear your thoughts – what does the choice of pencils as a material for this sculpture say to you? Be sure to check out our gallery of pencil artists, whose works run the gamut from surreal pencil sculpture to realistic pencil drawings, as well as our drawing lessons for tips on creating some realistic pencil drawings of your own. Make sure you leave your comments below!

When I was young, passing notes was a favorite pastime. My friends and I were forever inventing creative ways to pass notes without the teachers finding out. It wasn’t until my junior year of high school that pretty much everyone had a cell phone. With the advent of texting, you could pass notes to people in a whole other classroom! Everyone thought they were being incredibly subtle about it by hiding their phone under their desk. The best part was that even if a teacher caught you, they couldn’t read the note to the rest of the class, and if they tried to make you read it, you could always say you deleted it. Texting replaced note-passing in schools, and I for one would like to see it come back, inside and outside of the classroom.

Now, I want to clarify that I’m in no way advocating that everyone stop paying attention in class and write notes all day long. Use your best judgment about when it’s appropriate to indulge in the passing of notes. That said, my friends and I passed notes often. In third grade we sat at tables that were grouped together with four or five people in a cluster. For this situation, we developed “flick notes” – teeny tiny words written on teeny tiny scraps of paper which were then balled up and flicked at the recipient (hence the name). Back when third grade was still an innocent time, our notes were nothing scandalous. Nor could they be very long – “I’m bored,” was a favorite, as was “Math sucks” and “Tag at recess?” Breaks were short, you had to plan your games ahead of time.

In my senior year of high school, I decided to revive the passing of notes, with a slight update: instead of individual notes, my three best friends and I passed around a notebook. It was plain blue and by the end of the year it was held together with duct tape and prayers, but it was the content that was special. We wrote about how ridiculous our teachers were (seriously, who decorates a classroom with cacti?), who we were crushing on, what college would be like. We shared our triumphs and our tribulations, and looked like diligent note-takers all the while, and now we have a whole notebook of memories to look back on and embarrass each other with.

Even if you’re no longer in school, you can still pass notes. In college, my best friend and I would leave notes on each other’s cars just to remind the other person how awesome she is, and in the workplace, a simple “Cute top!” or “Smile, it’s Wednesday!” placed on a coworker’s desk while they’re in the restroom is sure to brighten their day. So grab your pencils and bring back the passing of notes!

Photo by theogeo.

Nicole’s pencil art can best be described as abstract, though that only scratches the surface of what her art truly is. She uses white space, combined with deep blacks and middling greys to create drawings that are full of movement and contrast. She combines these streaking bands of graphite with mirror writing, a technique that sees her backwards so that the text can only be read while looking in a mirror. The result is art that is not only reflective in the literal sense, but in the metaphorical sense as well.

Drawings by Pencil Artist Nicole Fekaris

If you want to see more of Nicole’s work, you can check out her website Extreme Pencil. You can also visit her portfolio on EBSQ and purchase prints from her Etsy shop.

What do you think Studio 602ers? Sound off in the comments section below!