Artists who are also science geeks like me will find The Tell-Tale Brain by V. S. Ramachandran incredibly interesting. It is the most eye-opening book I’ve read in decades! The author trained as a physician. He is also a noted researcher holding a PhD from Cambridge. He is a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, San Diego and adjunct Professor of Biology at the Salk Institute.   Written for the lay person, The Tell-Tale Brain explores concepts as far ranging as: “what makes humans unique; what is consciousness, and are there brain structures which have evolved to give ..read more

Representational artists must learn four basic skill sets if they ever hope to successfully render a person or object: shape (drawing), value, edge treatment, and color temperature relationships. We generally learn them in that order. I remember struggling for years before I could finally see and depict the temperature relationships! Temperature is so challenging, in part, because we don’t normally talk or think about it…therefore we don’t have a verbal “bucket” to house that information.   When I ask students “What is the temperature of the light?” I’m often greeted by a blank stare. In ..read more

In December’s newsletter I wrote that “drawing is the root skill.”  The sad truth is that if my drawing is off, no one even looks to see how well I painted the eye, mouth, or any other detail. BTW what most people mean by “drawing” boils down to proportion – having the right parts in the right place.   At the American Academy of Art in Chicago, I had the great fortune to study life drawing with the legendary Bill Parks who trained many of today’s professional artists. He taught two drawing methods: contour and gesture.   Contour is a concise description of the subject. Mr. Park ..read more

When someone tells me, “I just love your colors,” I, of course, appreciate the compliment, but I think the real key lies in getting accurate value relationships. The artists’ cliché, “Value does the work, but color gets the credit!”, is absolutely true! It’s like being a lineman in football; the big guys upfront slug it out to create space for the running back to dance through. The RB gets the girl, the glory, and the endorsements. The lineman gets icepacks and the whirlpool!   Value is not only the key to successful color choices, but it is also the key to design. Composition or design ..read more

We all have our artistic heroes – the painting “Gods” we worship. When I went to art school I used to think “If I could just paint like Sargent, I will have arrived.” Later I learned a couple of important truths: • No matter how accomplished I become, I can never paint like Sargent. • That’s OK because the world doesn’t need another Sargent…It’s already got one! We can’t learn to paint like Sargent, Fechin, Schmid, Gerhartz, etc. not because we can’t become as skillful but because we aren’t them. We don’t have their worldview, aesthetic, or personality. The good news is that we can each becom ..read more

One of the biggest threats we face as artists is painting things instead of shapes.   Think of how an infant sees the world.  A baby sees a swirling mosaic of shapes, colors and values. But soon it learns that when it’s hungry or needs its diaper changed, a recurring pattern of shapes appears and makes it feel better. The baby learns a name for that recurring pattern – “Momma”. He or she soon learns names for other patterns of shape, color and value too. “Where’s your eye?” “Touch your nose.” “Where’s Daddy’s ear?” Etc. By the age of two the toddler strings together simple sentences. “More f ..read more

Athletes lose strength, speed, and agility as they age…there are no 60-year-old pro-bowl quarterbacks. Artists, however, can (and should) keep learning and growing their entire lives! Leonardo da Vinci on his deathbed said, “I have offended God and mankind because my work didn’t reach the quality it should have!” He was still intent on learning.   “Chunking” Given that the quest for mastery is never-ending, it’s probably a good idea to find the most efficient way to learn. Bryan Mark Taylor calls it chunking. The idea is to isolate and master one “chunk” of information at a time before movi ..read more

  Alphonse Mucha (the inventor of Art Nouveau) was an unparalleled master of design. You may not recognize his name but you’ve seen his work.  Mucha wrote, “There are certain proportions which serve as principles according to which all organic nature appears to be built.” He observed that the ratio of 3 to 2 appears over and over.  (The first bone of each finger compared to the second, the second compared to the third, the segments of insect bodies, the structure of flowers and leaves all seem to fall into that ratio.) So Mucha adopted that simple principle as a way to design pictorial ..read more