Everything started right after my second solo exhibition, exactly one year ago. In that moment, I just wanted to introduce myself and my creative work to the crowd. Exhibition “We are not alone” was opened on Thursday January 14. I bought this awesome domain name on Saturday, coded a very simple WordPress theme during that afternoon and my adventure has begun in the morning January 17.

Die without art was such an amazing experience for me. I’ve met many cool peeps, made lovely friends and had a lot of fun in general. Hooray!

I’d like to pick out some of my favorite posts. So, let’s go back in time a little bit. Stephen Morris made us crazy with his amazing creativity. You must see his jumps and standing-on-head’s. Incredible sisters Mirna and Martina told us their life stories. I felt a big responsibility to bring their story, amazing, must read. During the Stockholm Fashion Week I’ve presented Balkan-inspired clothes by Lamija Suljević. Her main inspiration was the Balkan traditions. Feeling when art makes you younger is very familiar to my dear friend Marta Lamovšek, I simply couldn’t believe she is older than thirty.

I’m very proud of two amazing interviews I did during the first year of Die without art—with professional fashion and portrait photographer Lindsay Adler and lovely Erin Loechner of Design for Mankind. Three guest bloggers helped me while I was away. Sky Nash wrote about five books she loves, Giulia Scifoni showed us photography in the opposite direction and Yamille Marmont presented an exclusive preview of 500 Seconds Of No Breathing, her most personal work ever and a collection of 20 years of images. Thank you girls.

I was dreaming about my studio, my own huge creative space where I can work on visual art projects with my friends. I was official blogger at my favorite regional photography festival Rovinj Photodays. That was awesome!

Thank you all for reading this blog, this is 110th post here. Happy first birthday Die without art! Cheers people, love you.

Last days I’m working on a brand new experience of Die without Art blog, redesign. Before the launch I’m collecting and processing all important information of how people use my blog. Who they are and what they are looking for. I must admit this is really hard work. I’m reading a lot about design and user experience on the internet, and what is interesting, I’m not a web designer or any kind of a designer actually I’m a photographer and blogger, but I’m trying to do it all by myself. I need a very simple, clean and useful design for my blog. I was brainstorming till 5am last nights. I’m still drawing a new concept, testing different widths, colors and fonts. I’m learning how to use a pen tool in Adobe Illustrator, because I’ll need it for the logo.

Hope the near future will come with new pretty stuff and readers will enjoy totally new experience of Die without Art. If you wanna help feel free to leave your thoughts down below. By the way, why don’t you take a quick survey?

Photo © Rosie Hardy

I know some other blogs and sites disabled leaving comments, but here on Die without Art, comments are still alive. Not so alive, because you have a problem with them. Is it so hard to leave a few words about some others work or I have to integrate like buttons to save your time? Come on, I’m not angry but offended about your relation with my blog.

The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social network in which everyday authors can publish their opinions.

It’s a very nice habit of leaving comments on other blogs, right? Blogosphere has to breathe, interact in all ways. We have to grow it together. Maybe this won’t change anything… but… please do not be so lazy.

Photo by SunnyMarry

Wanna help? Submit your work!

I’m busy but that doesn’t means this blog will stay without new posts. I’m calling you, my dear readers, to help me! If you wanna share something creative with us please drop me a line to submit AT diewithoutart DOT com, thank you.

If you have something creative and worth publishing I’ll give you the opportunity to share it with the world, simply said my blog is yours. You can use your own art works or find something interesting all around the internet. In case you’re new here, please read older articles. Your style of writing is very welcome here, and do not worry about it. Be yourself and tell us your opinion. Write how much you think is enough, and relax. Write a few sentences about yourself. Enrich the article with links and include interesting quotes.

During my offline week I’ll review your articles and publish only the best. That means I’ll bring my laptop with me, but I’ll have only 1 or 2 hours per day for reading, reviewing and publishing submitted GUEST BLOGGING articles. Important is to send me the content with title and resources such as links, pictures etc.

Submitted articles will be published from April 2nd to 10th and you can send yours TODAY to submit (at) diewithoutart (dot) com, I would really appreciate you.

Thank you!

Aaaand… the winner is… Agata Lučić, from Croatia, who wins a $25 Threadless gift.

After I saw Agata’s wall, full of creative stuff, I decided to feature some of her art on Die without Art, very soon. Her twin sister is an artist too. Stay tuned for their work.

Agata, you will receive a gift at the beginning of next week. You and Poon Kan Chi are so amazing, thank you for participating my first giveaway at Die without Art. Love you two.

I was expecting a larger turnout, more creative workspaces and funny faces, more photos. Is two participants ok for beginning? Maybe Die without Art is not old enough, maybe I have to wait more. No problem, I will. I need more audience, more, more and more. I’ll just be myself and write as much as I can to bring you new interesting content.

Interact with me on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook!

This is the first giveaway here on DwA. When I came to the idea to give something away to my readers I didn’t know what to give and what to ask in return. I realized that the tees from the huge Threadless collection are enough awesome for the creative artists and in a hope you will like it I’ve run this giveaway.

You are able to win a Threadless gift (25$) if you follow these simple steps below:

1) Download the illustration from Wallpaper alert! page.

The illustration, made by my dear friend Djuro, has improved the whole DwA behind story. Read more about Djuro and the illustration in this article, “You are safe now”.

2) Set it as wallpaper on your desktop.

3) Take a picture of your room/office… including you and your computer with DwA’s wallpaper on it. I don’t know how your place looks like, but I suggest you to open the windows in the daytime and use the natural light. When the sun is falling down try to catch the best light or make a spirits in the dark using tripod and long exposure. Things on your desk or wall can help to make an creative composition.

Submission mail: submit@diewithoutart.com (please title: Wallpaper alert!)

The submission must contain your full name, mailing address (because of the shipping), email and the pictures. Giveaway ends on March 20th at 0:00am and the most creative workspace, face and angle of shooting wins. Good luck.

(You can support this giveaway using #WallpaperAlert hashtag on Twitter or just posting this link on Facebook. Thank you!)

By the way, thank you all for the greatest weekend on DwA. Looking forward to see your crazy pictures. Lovely regards from Croatia.

With his young daughter Nasc has watched Disney’s new computer-animated film “Up!”, so he paid homage to the man with balloons in the work area. Can you find him? He’s so little, I know. You can see a bigger picture here.

Thank you so much Nasc and welcome to DwA‘s *friends with creative brains* (not just a sidebar blogroll). Respect!

Keep receiving DwA signals from the tower!

RSS feed will always bring you up to date daily fresh content. Click ‘n’ Subscribe! Or/and follow Die without Art on Twitter, @DieWithoutArt!

She’s currently working on improving her drawing skills, her design eye, reorganizing both her online and physical studio, preparing fish and going to bed no later than 5am. I’ve spent a few great weekends with her and had so much fun. For Christmas Djuro bought me a book called “Sexy Web Design”, by Elliot Jay Stocks which is still on my *Read me* list. She sometimes tweets about these things. And sometimes, when things consume her enough, she will draw them and put them on her blog.

To realize what she meant with the illustration I asked her a few questions:

The illustration you’ve done is not far away from the blog concept, and that’s why I like it very much. How did you come to the idea?

Well, since our initial Skype musings on Die Without Art blog, we both loved the idea of the illustration to literally represent that title. Your only wishes were to make it black and white, with a dash of red. So that was perfect, because we both wanted it bloody :).

Later I spent (how much?) two – three weeks, just letting my sick and bizarre part of mind do its work. At first I was getting all sorts of suicide – scene ideas, but soon I threw those out and just wallowed in ironic and more “bad luck” ones. And those came suprisingly easy.

This idea came to me while I was in the exact position our guy there is – the living one. I was drawing, with my iPod on and thinking “Okay, so I am indulging in some form of art, so I am safe now, but what if I weren’t?” and BAM! A piano falls right next to me! Well not really, but piano is the quintessential thing to be falling from the sky, killing random non art – loving people. The dog came to the picture later, as I felt bad for killing the poor guy, so hey, why not give him someone to fire the alarm?

It is a very self-explanatory idea and I liked that, header – wise.

I’m sure readers wanna know how you draw it?

I like to have a photo reference when drawing people, so after an unsuccessful web search for the exact poses I imagined, I turned to my only model available at midnight – my boyfriend, and made him pose for both our guys. I must say he was very cooperative, even stayed in the “you were just crashed by a piano” pose longer than needed. The piano was easy to find. So that was the sketch.

After realizing I sketched a way too vertical composition for a header, I traced it on a another paper. Actually two papers, glued together (you can notice the seam on the piano). I traced it with a pencil, and then traced it again with a thin black pen. I used Staedtler Tripulus Fineliner. Originally I planned on on coloring it in Photoshop, but I got carried away with the fineliner, and did the shadowing with hand. I also used a red fineliner and a grey Faber-Castell crayon. And lots of eraser!

I know you’re attending a drawing course, can we expect new works, soon?

Well if I do wish to exhibit something soon, it will surely go up on my blog. I’m trying to keep myself in a learning-mode as much as possible, and the drawing course is extremely valuable for that. Most of my work now is school-work. I sometimes publish that work on Twitter, while the initial “I made a drawing!” enthusiasm is still with me. To publish something purposefully, I need a backstory, an idea, a blog post, or a fun project such as DwA here :)

Thank you Djuro!

You’re following Djuro already?

Djuro is one of DwA’s friends with creative brains, read her blog at drawingdjuro.com. Hope she will publish new stuff more often. There you can find her drawings and sweet words. For short updates please follow her on Twitter.

Wallpaper alert!

You like the illustration ninja Djuro made? You can have it on your desktop. Just choose the resolution 1280×1024, 1680×1050 or 2560×1600 pixels and enjoy it every time you minimize your windows.

DwA logo is on the way. Stay tuned. Thanks for reading.

There is a situation when you have to drop some habits and start thinking about the future if you care about your career. I suggest you to write down the list of what you’ve done and what you are planning to do. For example, my plan was to start a new blog and connect my main passions art and blogging. First of all I wrote my blogging plan for 2010 and started working on design. After one month Die without Art (DwA) was born as my today’s *full-time* activity.

DwA’s main mission is to help *unknown* artists by publishing their stories/works. Maybe I can help you to find the audience, feel free to submit (submit@diewithoutart.com).

You don’t have to write a blog like me, just be yourself and follow your inside voice(s), you will not regret it. Good luck.

Google Analytics makes me happy every midnight when I check the stats. I’ll keep those numbers my secret, but the percent of change is absolutely for the public – 188,300.00%. Are you kidding me, Google?

Submissions

DwA‘s submission inbox recieves something new and creative almost every day. On top of the page is an Submit button where you can find more about the submissions. Feel free to submit your work, story, anything.

Fans

Almost 400 fans joined the community on DwA‘s Facebook fan page. I hope you are enjoying the content and that you agree with the title – Die without Art. In the near future you can expect some giveaways on Facebook fan page and Twitter of course.

So stay tuned, and enjoy the content. Thanks for reading.

Subscribe

RSS is a wonderful technology. You just subscribe and the content comes to you, totally free. I use Google Reader to follow other blogs and it saves my time a lot. If you already use it or any other readers, here is the link of DwA‘s feed.