How to Exercise Your Voice

If your profession requires you to speak or sing a lot, then you may find that your voice becomes tired very easily. By exercising your voice beforehand, you may be able to strengthen your speaking or singing voice. Warm up your voice by breathing deeply, moving your tongue around and pretending to chew. To strengthen your speaking or singing voice, trill your lips and practice saying tongue twisters. Solfèging and saying “Mm-mm” or “Ney ney ney” are also exercises you can use to strengthen your voice.

1. Breathe deeply.

Stand up with your back straight, and your shoulders back and relaxed. Place both of your hands on your stomach. Breathe in through your nose. Expand your abdomen and lungs/ribs as you breathe in. Hold your breath and count to ten. Then, slowly exhale. As you exhale, make sure to contract your abdomen as if you are pushing the air out of it.

• While performing this breathing exercise, your shoulders should remain in place; they should not be moving up and down as you breathe.

• Repeat this exercise two to three more times.

2. Move your tongue around. 

With your mouth slightly open, swish your tongue around, as well as back and forth in your mouth. Do this for five to eight seconds. Repeat this two to three more times.

• This exercise will help loosen and relax the muscles at the back of your tongue

3. Massage your jaw and cheek muscles.

Position your palms on the sides of your face. Using slow, circular motions, massage your cheek and jaw muscles with your palms. Lower and raise your jaw as you massage to help loosen your jaw muscles.

• Do this exercise for 20 to 30 seconds, three to five times.

4. Pretend to chew. 

Pretend as if you have gum or food in your mouth. Using your upper and lower jaw muscles, slowly chew for five to eight seconds. Repeat this two to three more times.

• This exercise will help loosen and relax your jaw muscles.

5. Roll your neck and shoulders. 

Keeping your shoulders still, slowly rotate your head counterclockwise then clockwise. Do this ten times. Keeping your neck still, rotate your shoulders backward ten times and forward ten times.

• Coupled together, these exercises will help loosen the muscles around your throat and neck.

How to Improve Your Art Skills

Improving your art skills takes passion and dedication. Whether you want to be a professional artist or just get really good at a new hobby, you can create thoughtful, highly-skilled art with a little patience and lots of practice. You’ll need to develop a daily routine to practice and have an open mind about taking on new skills and experimenting with old ones. Training your eyes to see the world like an artist will also help you create realistic pieces or work with light, shadows, and composition in a novel, creative way. Art is supposed to be unique, so have fun and don’t shy away from breaking the rules!

1. Learning New Techniques

Watch free online tutorials to learn techniques like blending or shading. If you want to learn how to make particular colors or create realistic-looking shading and shadows, consider watching some free online tutorials. Have your sketchpad and supplies handy so you can pause the video and practice as the instructor breaks it down.

• Peruse the comment section on videos because it’s likely that other artists have left some tips and suggestions.

• Search for tutorials in any particular technique you want to learn. For instance, you might find some good lessons on composition, working with light, cubism, surrealism, or even creating 3-D effects. If you can think of it, the internet probably has it!

2. Take private lessons or join an art class focused on particular skills. 

If you’re a beginner, look to local community centers and libraries for beginning art courses. If you already have some intermediate or advanced skills, you might consider enrolling in a class offered at a local college or art institute.

• Taking classes is a great way to meet other artists and get some constructive criticism.

3. Use instruction books if you’re a beginner or learning a specific skill. 

Workbooks are a great way to start if you’re a beginner or looking to pick up a very specific skill like figure drawing or cartooning. This is a great option if you have a busy schedule because you can tackle each lesson at your own pace.

• You can buy instruction books online or at most large bookstores.

• If you rent an instruction book from your local library, don’t draw in the book! Photocopy the practice pages so you can draw on those instead.

• If you’re a beginner, look for instruction books that have traceable practice sheets so you can get a feel for it before practicing on a canvas or sketchpad.

• Beware of the "paint or draw by number" format—it can help if you’re an absolute beginner, but it may also hinder your individual style. Great artists are unique!

How to Be Talented in Multiple Areas

Setting out to increase your talents and abilities in multiple disciplines is an audacious endeavor. It’s also very feasible to accomplish. In fact, it’s far easier to become talented in multiple areas than you may expect. Practicing the skills you wish to improve upon, maintaining a positive mindset, and broadening your base of interest and knowledge can all help you be talented in all sorts of ways.

Developing Multiple Talents with Practice

1. Practice

Whatever it is you’re trying to be talented at, you know you have to practice. This is especially true if you hope to be talented in multiple areas. Fortunately, you may not need to practice quite as much as you think, and can likely make the time to practice multiple skills every day. In order to get the most out of the time you put in, you have to focus on what you’re hoping to learn.

• Practice two different skills 40-45 minutes each, every day for a month.

2. Practice priority stacking. 

While you may have multiple interests, use priority stacking to organize your time and resources around the hobbies you are most passionate about.

• Check in with yourself once a week and make sure what you're pursuing is truly what you want and enjoy doing.
• Don’t worry if you miss a day of practicing one of your talents once in a while. If you 
• practice each skill almost every day for a month, you’ll have put in about 20 hours of focused practice on improving each of the talents you hope to develop!

Maintaining a Talent-Inducing Mindset

1. Defy negative thoughts.

In order to maintain talent in multiple areas, train yourself to prevent negative thoughts that can diminish your ability to work towards achieving the multiple goals you set for yourself. Start by paying more attention to your inner dialogue. Then, work on breaking your negative thought habits. There are several ways to rid your mind of negative thinking:

• Overcome fear. Audacious, yes. But reflect on what’s holding you back. The most common barriers to acquiring talent are based on your emotions] Recognize this and prevent emotional perspectives, such as fear, from preventing you from pursuing whatever talent you wish to acquire.

• Filter out the negative. We tend to filter out the positive and be overly concerned with the negative, especially in terms of our perspective on our own abilities. Don’t fall for this mental trap. Contemplate your room for improvement only so far as it motivates you to continue improving.

• Recognize the middle ground. Abandon the concept of perfection. Don’t think that you must be perfect at something to consider yourself talented.

Broadening Your Ability to Gain Talent Generally

1. Monitor your progress.

Know that focused practice will not always be fun. Realizing the development of your talents, however, will be. Take note of and appreciate your achievements – such as a new personal record mile time or a particularly compelling painting.

• If there are tangible indications of your progress (perhaps especially paintings), place them in locations you will frequently see them in order to motivate yourself to continue practicing and improving upon your talents!

This Guy Photoshops Himself Into Movie Scenes And Celebrity Photos

Most of us wouldn't say no to hanging out with our favorite celebrity or being a part of our favorite movie scene. But let's be real, that's probably never going to happen. However, this Indonesian artist found a way to make it work.

Syahril Ramadan uses Photoshop to incorporate himself into celebrity photos and movie scenes, and he does a pretty good job, because at some moments, you find yourself wondering if he isn't actually hanging out with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson or a part of the movie Jumanji.

Costumes Designs From The Lightweight Wearable Porcelain And Stained Glass by Candy Makeup Artist

Candy Makeup Artist is a renowned Styling and Makeup artist hailing from the Netherlands. Well known for her bizarre and almost Tim Burton-ish theme styled design, she captivates her audience with over de top headdresses/corsets finished by a unique make-up style inspired by the bizarre. Inspired by folklore and ancient stories she tries to capture the awe of these myths by telling the story of the unknown, where everything is possible. Starting at the age of 16 by posting photo’s online, she now also teaches others, rents and sells her creations and often works on music video’s.

People Before And After They Were Asked To Smile

The Dalai Lama said, "A simple smile. That’s the start of opening your heart and being compassionate to others." Smiles have the ability to change one's whole day, and not only to the one that's smiling, but also to those who see a smile. It's just a simple expression, and yet it may be the most powerful, as it's the most positive one.

Jay Weinstein tests this idea in his project "so I asked them to smile" with an extremely diverse group of people, and the answer behind each and every one of his pictures is that a smile changes everything—not only the mood, but even the whole picture. His pictures also show that a smile is unique to every individual and that it's sometimes hard to know how beautiful they look when they smile until they do.

#1

"He was wandering home one evening with his friend, walking along the stone wall-lined lanes that cut through the lush fields of Hundar, in the starkly stunning Nubra Valley of Ladakh, Jammu & Kashmir, India...so I asked him to smile."

 

#2

"She was playing with her mom on a dirt lane off the main road as I explored the the vibrant and colorful shops and homes on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya...so I asked her to smile."

#3

"She was playing outside her home in the village of Kakhsar, Gujarat, India...so I asked her to smile."

#4

"She was walking with her friends one evening as I photographed a donkey enclosure in the beautiful and isolated plateau village of Turtuk, Ladakh, in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, India…so I asked her to smile."

#5

"He was hunched over the remains of a fire and empty pot of tea as I approached his house one afternoon in Muthatari, near Embu, in the Eastern Province of Kenya...so I asked him to smile."

#6

"She was playing on the streets with her friends one evening as I wandered around the old town of Leh, in Ladakh, Jammu & Kashmir, India...so I asked her to smile."

#7

"He was waiting in line at 7 AM outside the post office opening at 11 AM, that exchanges invalidated 500 and 1000 rupee notes for newly printed currency, in Jojowar, Rajasthan, India...so I asked him to smile."

#8

"He was playing with his brothers in the family compound, having just returned from school and discarding his uniform one humid afternoon in Nirdoi, a sleepy village on the banks of the river Ganges, in West Bengal, India...so i asked him to smile."

#9

"He was playing with friends and family one afternoon in the web of narrow lanes that make up the old part of the ancient city of Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India...so i asked him to smile."

#10

"She was exploring the stunningly restored, 1300-year-old Kaiyuan temple complex one evening in Quanzhou, Fujian, China...so I asked her to smile."