My name is Lisa Vollrath, and I’m the voice behind Ten Two Studios.

I formed Ten Two Studios in July, 2005 with a very clear idea in my head: bringing the voice of the artist back to how-to books and instructional materials.

Now, there many really good mixed-media books on the market that appear to be written by talented artists. Having been behind the scenes, I know that not everything included in them is what it appears to be. Step-by-step photos may be shot in some distant studio, without the artist present, by people who have no idea how to make the items being described. Text may be written by some poor copy editor, doing her best to come up with words to promote the artwork created by someone else. Instructions may be cut down and edited by a string of people who have never ventured into a studio in their lives, and have no idea that the words they’re deleting are integral to those instructions.

While these practices may produce perfectly lovely books, CDs and project sheets, as an artist, I feel they are just—wrong.

One of the comments I hear most often about web sites is that I write as if I am speaking to the reader. I tell her what I’m thinking, how a process evolved, and all too often, warn her against doing something stupid that I’ve already tried. I write in my own voice. It may not be pretty or slick or professional, but it’s real. My photography may be rough around the edges, but when you flip through one of my lessons, those are my hands and my real supplies in the shots, being photographed in my studio. What you see is exactly what I did to create the finished sample shown.

Some of what you’ll find at Ten Two Studios will be instructional. Some of it will be more personal. All of it will be from the hands and heart of an artist. At every step, there will be someone guiding the process who is experienced in the type of art being explored, and who is giving you everything you need to explore it with her, regardless of how many words or photos or pages it takes to make that happen. It is my hope that when the pieces are all assembled, you’ll have a full picture of a living, working artist that will somehow prove useful, and will encourage you to create with reckless abandon. There it is–my mission statement, in a nutshell.

Now let’s go make something…