“Artist” is another word like “scientist.” It is a job description, not a name. People who make and sell things that no one wants to buy are not artists, they are bad businessmen.

Or to put it in terms of the current fad: if you create a product that no one wants to buy, you are not an entrepreneur, you are a loser. And if nobody ever buys your product, you are not an artist, you are an unemployed loser.

A lot of people seem to be finding this hard to understand. In the past few years I have been hearing more and more often the phrase “true artist,” as in “She’s true artist.” What does this mean? It means that someone is not a bad businessman. If someone is unable to create something that will enable him to pay his rent as well as taking time off from work to indulge in his art full time, he’s not a bad businessman, he’s a true artist. If he can’t keep himself alive by selling things that other people want to buy, he’s not an entrepreneur or businessperson or whatever other word you want to use for someone who actually succeeds at making money. He’s a true artist.

For some reason there seems to be now a

When you pick up a pen or pencil to make art, you are making a bet. You are betting that something interesting will happen if you put the tip of the pen to the paper. If you get what you hoped for, it was probably worth the risk. If you don’t, it was probably not.

Chances are there will be no way for you to tell which is which after one try. You might as well give it a second try. Chances are there will be no way for you to tell after two tries. But after three or four or five tries, or six hundred tries, you might find that some things work and some things don’t. Chances are there will never come a time when anything works all the time or doesn’t work all the time. There is always going to be some kind of risk in trying something new, whether it is using a different color than usual or drawing with your eyes closed or adding an extra dimension by turning your canvas on its side.

There are many different ways to make shadow art. You can set something on fire and then trace the shadow it casts. You can hold a stencil between light and a wall and then paint through the holes in the stencil. You can project an image onto a surface, then trace it.

All of these techniques work because of the same principle: when light shines on one side of an obstacle, some of its energy passes through to the other side.

That’s why we have shadows. But to make art you don’t need to understand how shadows work. All you need to do is arrange things so that different parts of an obstacle cast different shadows, then trace those shadows onto a surface.*

First, stick a pin through the top of an egg. Then, hold the egg up high and strike a match. If you’re lucky and the air is still, the egg will catch fire and illuminate like a lamp.

¶This brand of magic is called shadow art. The trick works best on sunny summer days, when the light is strong.

Shadow art has been popular since Aristotle’s time; it was a specialty of the ancient Greeks. But in these times of electric light we see little of it, except in old films. Like photography, shadow art makes visible things usually invisible to us. And like photography, it seems to us today more like a novelty than an art.

¶Shadow art is so simple that almost any child can do it: if you have a sunny day and an egg handy, try it. But to be worthy of the name “art,” something must be new; no child has ever made shadow art before. And this kind of creativity requires more than just skill—one must have deep understanding as well.*

What makes shadow art special is the contrast between the material and the immaterial. The shadows are temporary and ephemeral, but they can be quite beautiful, often more so than their originals.

The first step in creating a piece of shadow art is to find a shadow. Since shadows aren’t self-illuminating, you need to provide your own light source. This can be as simple as opening a door or window on a sunny day and aiming a flashlight at something nearby, or as complicated as building an elaborate setup with lights, mirrors and tripods.

The second step is deciding on your design. You’ll have to think about scale and proximity to the objects you’re casting shadows on. Some designs may require props of various kinds; for example, to create an hourglass shape like the one above you may need to build a frame out of cardboard or wood covered with fabric that has been painted black.

Once you’ve settled on your design, it’s time to execute it. You’ll want to work quickly at this stage: once you’ve decided on the placement of your objects, set them up and start taking pictures before your subject moves out of range or begins to look distorted in any way. The more times you have to move things around, the

Shadow art is an artwork created by light. It is a hard art to master because of the complexity of light, shadow and reflections. Shadow art is sometimes considered as a branch of photography or computer generated images.

The art work can be made from any three dimensional objects such as human beings and animals, buildings and cars etc. The shadow art is normally created from natural light like sunlight or artificial lights like lamps and spotlights.

Shadow artists make use of long exposure time to create their shadow arts. The length of exposure depends on the movement in the scene which has to be captured by the camera or lens. The shadow artist has to keep adjusting the angle of view and lighting conditions for getting a clear image with good contrast.

Till date there are many photographers who create such images using digital cameras and software’s that simulate light effects but real shadow art pieces are rare in nature nowadays due to complex light conditions and vanishing old buildings that are required for this kind of work.

It is an old artistic and theatrical device. The shadow of an object appears to have a life and a reality of its own. In fact, the shadow is simply the absence of light from that spot.

Trying to put a figure in a shadow, however, is not as easy as it looks. First, you need a large flat surface with even light. And second, there has to be something casting the shadow. That means you can’t use shadows in a window or a doorway unless you can find someplace else to put a light source.

You don’t need much space for this project. It can be done on the side of any building or even in your own room if you have enough light.

You’ll need at least two people: one to hold the flashlight and one to hold the paper or cardboard cutouts. You’ll also need some friends to help you make pictures out of your shadows.