On 10 Jun, 2014 With
Article by T. Stonefield
It was 1998. My husband was gone. My mother had died of leukemia that June.and I was trying to get my live back together.
I had been back in the States for already two years. I had found work, a place to live, and even bought a used car. At first, I thought I wouldn’t need one and just use mass transit as I had done in Japan. However, by November, the temperature was hovering around freezing and I realized that there was no way I was going to be walking the 20 minutes and waiting for buses that were never on schedule or never even came. So I gave in…
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On 7 Jun, 2014 With
The things you need to know to make your paintings sing
Article from T. Stonefield
1. Focal point – What do you want your views to look at first?
The main goal of a artist is to direct the viewer’s eye through the painting and lead them toward what you think is important. Very much like a director for the stage, you use supporting actors and background to highlight the main character or focal point of your painting. Although there isn’t only one way to do this, there are tried and true strategies you can use to draw a viewer’s eye to a point of interest, as well as to create the illusion of objects, people, and places being set in space…
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On 20 May, 2014 With
Article by Slater Smith
When we think of Greek sculpture, we tend to have beautiful white statues made of marble run through our heads. The figures are realistic, full of movement, and idealized. The Venus de Milo, one of the most popular Greek sculptures, comes to mind. Limbs are missing, clothing falls in a dreamlike motion, all on the nude figure. What most people do not realize is that sculpture in Greece was not how we view it today and we are left with but only a faint shadow of the true experience…
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On 19 May, 2014 With
Article from Chris Crombé
From hunters/gatherers to farmers/shepherds
In the history of prehistoric times one makes distinction between the old and the new Stone Age. Both in the Paleolithic and the Neolithic age people made use of stone tools, hence Stone Age. The big difference between the two is that during the Paleolithic, people mostly were hunter-gatherers whereas in the Neolithic age agriculture arose. This evolution has everything to do with the climatic changes by the end of the great ice age. As a result of the more fertile land, it became possible to stay longer at the same place.
During the Old Stone Age, plants and crops were the business of women. It were probably women, who in the proximity of their settlement, took the first steps towards agriculture. And they just kept doing this in the new Stone Age…
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On 5 May, 2014 With
Article from Chris Crombé
When did the history of art start? The simplest answer is: the moment people started to create art.
It has been assumed for a long time that the earliest form of art is only 45.000 years old and dated from the time of the Homo sapiens. These modern men came from Africa and were able to express themselves in images and symbols, witness the many figurative and abstract art forms from the late paleolithicum (40.000-10.000 BC)
Due to the traditional view that art should be a representation of nature and could only be created by modern man, we overlooked for a long time the art of older mankind…
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On 4 May, 2014 With
Article from Slater Smith
Tempera painting was once the primary way of applying pigment on canvas, its only rival being fresco painting. Every Old Master made tempera from scratch in their workshop, along with the apprentices that gathered to learn what it took to be an artist. Mixing tempera was a very delicate procedure, admitting much room for error. Despite this, tempera reigned during the early Renaissance and for centuries prior, dating back into Egyptian times. With the advent of oil painting, the beautiful medium slowly died out.
Artists had to mix tempera themselves, as needed. The pigments, also ground from raw material, were combined with the binder, egg yolk, and distilled water. It was essential to get the proportions accurate, which slightly varies depending on the pigment. It dried quickly, sometimes on the brush itself, much like common-day acrylics. Too much paint would leave leftovers that could not be stored; only discarded. On the opposite end of the spectrum, not making enough tempera paint, would like lead to color inconsistency, as a second batch rarely matched the first…
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On 4 May, 2014 With
Karl Bryullov – Album Russian Romantic School Painter Right-click and choose “Save Link As” to save this Album. Download Album » Review by Vladimir London Karl Bryullov was born on 12 December 1799, in St. Petersburg, Russia. The son of French Huguenots, he was called Charles Bruleau until 1822. Coming from a family of artists going back generations, Bryullov studied…
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On 29 Apr, 2014 With
Article from Chris Crombé
Women and art
Throughout the ages Women were barely recognized as artists. It was partly thanks to the research of the first (1860) and the second (1960) emancipation wave, that their names came alive. In the eighties of last century a lot of articles and books dedicated to the work of female artists were published. Despite this, women remained the underdog of the history of art. We therefore speak of HIStory.
Art history as a scientific discipline has arisen in the 19th century in Germany and spread all over the world. Despite the globalization the present-day art history remains focused on Western art made by men. This has largely to do with the privileged position of the classics as a putative cradle of Western civilization. The 19th century considered the Greek and the Roman civilizations as starting point of Western history…
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On 22 Apr, 2014 With
Article from Luca Molnar
Edwin Long (1829-1891)
Raphael Delorme (1885-1952)
Alphonse Mucha, the painter (1860-1939)…
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On 18 Apr, 2014 With
Article from Coco Depink
Gaetano Gandolfi was the most talented member of a family of artists that dominated Bolognese painting in the second half of the eighteenth century. Early in his life he studied with his elder brother, Ubald; he later was a pupil of the sculptor-anatomist Ercole Lelli at the Accademia Clementina in Bologna. In 1760, under the auspices of an important early patron, Bolognese merchant Antonio Buratti, Gaetano and Ubaldo travelled to Venice for a further year of study. In Venice, Gaetano was deeply impressed by the art of Sebastiano Ricci and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, painters whose fluent brushwork and effortless technique had a dramatic influence on his art…
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