Why We Paint: A Personal Process
I started my official “commercial art” training at the age of 13. I’m talking ink wash black and...
Chris Beatrice
Whatever It Takes
Our first dog was a rescued Australian Cattle Dog or “Heeler”. These little toughies were bred from crossing wild dingoes with god knows what. When my wife handed our “Syd” his first juicy prime rib bone, he promptly flashed his gigantic teeth and said, in dog language, “Give me that s**t then get the f**k away or I will destroy you!”
So… my wife called a professional trainer, and said, “We want to train him…
Throw Your Work Away!
We have a tendency to keep things in our pictures because we’re proud of them, we worked hard on...
Toned Paper and Painting
When I was in art school we were given an assignment to draw on sheets of brown paper using only white chalk and charcoal. I’m talking like cheap-ass grocery bags, burned sticks of wood, and chunks of the Dover coast. I had no idea what the point was. Now I do.
This was back before plastic grocery bags were invented… which were later made illegal, so we’d switch to reusable (great!), which then became illegal…
Dark Vision
“The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say.” -Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
What exactly is meant by this word, “shadow”? An area of darkness, of less light, perhaps? The very concept of shadow is an artificial convention, which can lead to limiting mischaracterizations of the underlying reality. For instance:
Everything in shadow is not darker than everything in…
Art… ificial Selection
What do you feel is the greatest thing about Charles Darwin?
A. He came up with the theory that species evolve over time.
B. He had a mighty hipster beard.
C. He insisted that humans are all one species.
D. He named his ship after the author of The Last Unicorn.
E. He realized that the illusion of design could emerge from random factors.
I say C. After that, B, I guess (the beard is…
You Don’t Suck At Color
Help Is On The Way
Do you suffer from chromophobia (the fear of using saturated or bright colors because every time you do your picture winds up looking like a cheap effect from Star Trek TOS)? Well, turns out you don’t suck at anything, but you probably misunderestimate the role of something else…
It goes by many names: lightness (I’ve heard), luminosity (la di da), Mithrandir (I think that’s one of them), brightness (unfortunately),…
A Treasure Trove of Tutorials
One of our newest members, Chris Beatrice, has spent years creating really helpful tutorials for...
Water, Simplified
Water… translucent, reflective, fluid—a painter’s nightmare! But it doesn’t have...
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