This blog is a collection of posts from my personal blog, Tumblr blog, and re-bloggings from my reading list. I hope you enjoy it!
Studies In Expression. When Women Are Jurors , Charles Dana Gibson
Beautifully confident pen and ink by a master.
This large version of the image is on a Russian site called Artscroll, which features a list of additional Gibson images.
Scottish artist Thomas Millie Dow, active in the late 19th and early 20th centirues, traveled and painted subjects in The US, Franc, Morocco and Italy, as well as in the UK.
I came across his painting Trees, above, top, and was fascinated by it. Unfortunately, I can’t find many examples of his work on the web.
Mark Carder, the well regarded painter and portraitist who I profiled in a previous post, at one point participated in and lent his name to a series of instructional painting videos known as “The Carder Method”.
These sold for over $100, and were for a time heavily promoted.
Carder is no longer associated with the company that was selling the set, and they have ceased selling the materials as of the end of 2012.
Carder has since been creating his own instructional videos, outlining his teaching methods, and is generously making them available for free on his website Draw Mix Paint .
You can also access them on his Draw Mix Paint YouTube channel, but the website includes additional resources, like his supply list and the discussion forum.
Carder is self taught, and attributes some of his training to study of painters he particularly admires, including John Singer Sargent and Velazquez.
He has codified his teaching method into a process that is based on direct observation, measurement, and constant incremental color checking.
To this end he has created some simple tools to facilitate the process, and gives instructions for making them yourself, including proportional dividers and a pistol grip style “color checker” that allows for sighting across a swatch of paint through an eyelet, to better isolate the color than with the traditional method of simply sighting over a color laden palette knife.
To those of us who have had some formal training, his method may seem laborious, relying as it does on many more steps of color checking and smaller increments of mixing than most approaches to painting.
Bear in mind, however, that this is a method intended to allow absolute beginners to go from 0 to painting in the course of instruction. Carder points out that this isn’t intended to be a method of painting, but a method of learning to paint.
Even if your predisposition is not to the type of direct representation of reality that Carder practices, or you have less patience than required to practice his approach as demonstrated, I think many will still find Carder’s instruction worthwhile.
Although there are areas where experienced painters may disagree (as is often the case between painters) Carder’s methods are pretty much based on sound proven principles.
For an introduction to the essentials of his method, I suggest you watch his video on “How to mix colors with oil paint“. If you like the process, follow up with “How to paint what you see“.
For those with no painting or drawing experience, he recommends starting with the initial videos on drawing.
Carder has additional videos on topics like setting up a studio, making a shadow box, stretching a canvas, making his color checker and proportional dividers, etc. and he continues to add to them.
He has recently introduced two downloadable videos for which he is charging, Painting Portraits, and From Start to Finish: Still Life; but the fee is a small fraction of the cost for the original course ($20 each), and he points out that they are not necessary — they just go into more detail, and you can learn the essentials of his method from the free videos.
It’s All Things Monster at Monsterpalooza! There’s an incredible Howard Sent (not Mike Hill, as I had reported earlier) display this year. It’s full size figures of Jack Nicholson, the twins and Jack’s little son (all from The Shining ) that are blowing people away.
It was packed yesterday and everyone seemed to have a smile on their face. The Museum there this year is exceptional.
I hope to see you there!
in 1976 WILHELM M.BUSCH illustrated a collection of short stories around horses in a paperback edition of the german wilhelm heyne-verlag, DAS PARADIES DER ERDE ( paradise on earth ). there are dozens of very small printed illustrations in the book, done in pen and ink, ballpoint pen and pencil.
© wilhelm m.busch / heyne verlag muenchen
Motivational Megafauna, they’re extinct but they are proud of you.
I first wrote about California artist Glenn Dean in 2010. Since then he has continued to add to his website portfolio more examples of his subtle, atmospheric evocations of the American West and the California coastline.
His work is featured in a new solo show at the Maxwell Alexander Gallery in Culver City, CA, titled Glenn Dean: Landscapes of the American West . In addition there is a page of Dean’s work as regularly represented by the gallery.
Dean paints primarily on location, as evidenced by the small size and direct, painterly approach of the majority of his paintings.
For more, including my more detailed description of his work, see my previous post on Glenn Dean.
The current show at the Alexander Gallery runs until May 4, 2013.
[Exhibition notice via Aaron Westerbgerg on Twitter as @AaronWesterberg]
It has been a while since I’ve done a solid series of work. I’ve done the Zodiac calendar before and it has always been a project I’ve wanted to revisit. I had another idea for a project and as I researched and started drawing it out, I realized that it would work even better as a Zodiac calendar done in a series of twelve pieces. These pieces focus mainly on the idea of the constellations.
I’ve always been a stargazer, so drawing stars is perfect for me. I’ve also been experimenting with a lot of digital layers techniques which are employed in the series. I’ll do a post for every three pieces and expand on the techniques and ideas behind the series. For now, here are the first three. Above is Leo.
Gemini
Aries
Also, what kind of introduction would this be without showing some sketches?
Stay tuned for more!
