Owner: My Great Day URL:http://mygreatday.blogspot.com/ Join Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 16:44:53 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: Behind the scenes of my painting blogs. Site statistics:Click here
What makes a really good company? 2008-03-06 01:15:00 I have worked in many different jobs over the years and have been fortunate to work for some very fine people who have taught me valuable and memorable lessons. During a brief foray into retail, the owner of a bookstore reminded me on a daily basis that the customer paid my salary. That really is the bottom line. When the CEO of a successful company
returns the call of an unknown customer on a Monday morning preceding a board meeting regarding a question that will not result in a direct sale and spends a considerable length of time discussing a general matter with, and educating that customer on certain details of the industry, there is something very right with that company. I was that customer last week and Bob Buchsbaum of Blick Art Materials. Blick Art Materialshas a new customer Read more:makes
The Encyclopedia of Life 2008-03-04 01:18:00 This is a double post from another blog I am slowly developing. It's interesting so I thought I'd post it here, too. On Tuesday, February 26, I noticed an article in the NYT Science Times section, The Encyclopedia
of Life, No Bookshelf Required. You can visit The Encyclopedia of Life, register as a user, take a video tour of the beginnings of this global effort to create a comprehensive online resource of, basically, all life on earth. The site was launched last Friday by a team of international scientists who expect the project to take about ten years to fully complete. I wonder what the world will seem like in ten years. Well, that's a topic for another day.
Kat Eggleston 2008-03-03 01:15:00 By chance, on Friday I got back in touch with a friend from my singer songwriter touring days. I thought I'd introduce you. Kat Eggleston is a superior guitarist, my favorite hammer dulcimer player and a great songwriter in the traditional vein with a fine and distinctive voice. Her Second Nature album is perfect. Once, while driving from one gig somewhere to another gig somewhere else in New England, I heard a folk dj play the entire album uninterrupted on the radio. I took this photo of Kat at a midsummer gathering at Gary Martin's house in Assonet, Massachussetts some years back. I love many of Kat's songs and you can listen to a few at her myspace page. Here's one with a typically beautiful guitar accompaniment from Second Nature. Paper Boats
Aldous Huxley Interview 2008-02-29 01:15:00 Not long before his death, Aldous Huxley
is interviewed by Herman Harvey on the Sum and Substance TV program, c. 1962 -1963. Parts One and Two.
Aldous Huxley 2008-02-28 22:13:00 Aldous Huxley
, 1947by George Platt LynesProperty of Condé Nast PublicationsThe development of my thinking was profoundly influenced by Aldous Huxley, particularly his essays and especially The Human Situation, long out of print.Last week, I was trying to frame some idea on landscapes and remembered a bit Huxley had written about deforestation in the ancient world and opened that book for the first time in years. When I looked at the table of contents, I started to cry a little. The book is based on a series of lectures that Huxley gave at UC Santa Barbara in 1959 and I bought it when first published in 1977. As I leafed through the pages, I saw all the little pencil marks and underlines I'd made when I was 22 or 23 years old. I cried as a reaction to the shock of deep recognition afte
Free Drawing 2008-02-27 01:15:00 Werner Pfarr is an artist friend who lives in Nice, France and makes great little drawings that he publishes on Awaiting a Drawing. What I love about Werner's work is his projects. One project is his Free Drawings. Werner offers a free drawing and sends it to the first person who requests it asking only that they make a photograph of the drawing in their home (or wherever) and email the photo back to him. Werner then makes a drawing of that photograph which he offers as the next free drawing. Above I have posted my photograph of his Free drawing #16. If you follow his posts, you'll eventually see his drawing of my photograph. Werner's coolest project is Audible Drawings. It's right up my alley (if you remember my John Cage post from the first of the year), beautifull
The Significance of Watercolor 2008-02-26 01:15:00 Francis TowneThe Source of the Arveyron, 1781Watercolor
, pen and brown inkVictoria and Albert Museum, London Another post from my Squidoo Landscape into Art project. As I was wondering how to frame and compile the many artists, extensive work and changing approaches to landscape painting in the 18th century, I found two of the most thoroughly researched, beautifully written and illustrated pages at Handprint, one of my most favorite sites on the web. Bruce MacEvoy continues to create a beautiful and thorough site that is the end all and be all for everyone who works with watercolor. In addition to the best resource on watercolor materials and books, Bruce has written articles on an extensive list of watercolor artists. I am turning the microphone over to Mr. MacEvoy for this Squidoo mod Read more:Significance
My Deer Friends 2008-02-25 01:12:00 After drawing class last Wednesday, I stretched my legs with a walk through the Carell Woodland Sculpture Trail at Cheekwood and came across half a dozen deer including the fetching maid above, the most robust looking buck of the group, a blurry, worried fellow with only one antler, and hey, what happened to this guy's antlers? Were they fighting over the fetching maid? Well, probably, at some point. I was relieved to discover that loss of antlers at just this time of year is part of the normal seasonal cycle for deer. So my robust friend must be getting ready to shed his any day now. The deer were all quite comfortable with me at such close range except for one gal who made the most of her sparse camouflage. You can't see her, can you?
Read more:Friends
Impermanence II 2008-02-22 01:36:00 You may remember my earlier post on Impermanence. Here is a second installment.For information on Andy Goldsworthy. More on him later.
Lunar Eclipse 2008-02-21 23:42:00 In case you missed it, here are some highlights of the total lunar eclipse tonight.As the umbral shadow progressed and the night got darker, colder, it was more difficult to get good shots because a) I was shaking and b) the camera was so cold, the zoom froze up. At the full eclipse point, I managed to capture the colors changing from red to violet to blue and finally to a neutral. These photos are completely unadulterated. Next full eclipse is in 2010.
Read more:Lunar
Groundbreakers 2008-02-20 01:35:00 Albrecht DürerView of Arco, 1495Watercolour and gouache on paperLouvre, Paris, FranceAlbrecht Dürer (1471-1528), Joachim Patinir (1480-1524) and Albrecht Altdorfer (1480-1538) each took landscape painting into new territory. Dürer examined the grain of sand, Patinir and Altdorfer, the world at large.Let's begin with the grain of sand. Nils Büttner writes about Dürer's contact with the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb."When Albrecht Dürer visited the Netherlands in 1521 he paid extra to have the retable opened so he could study its center panel."Kenneth Clark writes about Dürer and his importance in the development of landscape art in The Landscape of Fact. Why paraphrase when Clark knows so much and writes so beautifully?"The curiosity about the precise character of a particular spot
The View Expands 2008-02-19 01:13:00 Naked Young Woman in Front of the Mirror, 1515Giovanni Bellini Kunsthistorisches Museum, ViennaMore Lanndscape Painting History for you this week as I work on my Squidoo lens. I hope that you find this interesting — I do, and that's a good thing!Look at the charming and beautiful flora and fauna in the landscape of Pisanello's The Vision of Saint Eustace (c. 1435) and then see what happens after the van Eyck brothers produce their Adoration of the Mystic Lamb.In the Netherlands and Germany, the painted landscape expands in depth and detail providing vast settings for religious figures such as The Miraculous Draft of Fishes (1444) by Konrad Witz, Crucifixion (1491) by Hans Memling (although a far better of Memling's landscape is his Seven Joys of Mary (1480), it's only available as an
Plus ça change... 2008-02-18 01:10:00 Rock PillarZheng Xie (1693-1765)Qing DynastyAmongst other things, I am currently reading Michael Sullivan's Symbols of Eternity: The Art of Landscape Painting in China. While waiting on a tune up and oil change, I came across this passage and thought I'd share it not only for my fellow daily painting blogger friends who aim for daily sales (like moi) but as a comment on the ongoing dilemma of art and commerce.Zheng Xie (Cheng Hsieh) was a calligrapher, writer and painter. Michael Sullivan writes that He posted a list of prices on his door, adding, "If you present cold, hard cash, then my heart swells with joy and everything I write or paint is excellent." Sullivan also includes these lines by Zheng Xie: I studied verse to no avail,So I quit and studied writing.I studied writing to no ava
Manufactured Landscapes 2008-02-15 01:00:00 I can think that I am paying attention to what I'm listening to when suddenly, something that is said will stand out in high relief and I'll recall most of whatever else I heard as "blah, blah, blah." What struck me most about what Edward Burtynsky says on this clip is that when he started taking photos of mines and such twenty-five years ago, he did not fully understand why he was taking the photos, he just felt compelled to make them. That's how I feel about the landscapes I'm painting now. When I started painting them a year and a half ago, I did not understand what I was doing but I was compelled to paint them. I have a slightly better understanding now of what I'm doing and where I may be headed but I can tell that the seeds of what I started with will take a while to fully flow Read more:Landscapes
The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb 2008-02-14 01:00:00 In college, I wrote an extensive compare and contrast paper on the Simone Martini and van Eyck Ghent Altarpiece Annunciations. I am fond of Annunciation paintings and enjoyed the process but had no idea what that exercise was really preparing me for. I took the train up from Brussels to Ghent in '97 to visit a director friend who was judging at the Ghent Film Festival. While there, I ran around town, taking in the sights. I saw a sign for the Ghent Altarpiece and ducked into St. Bavo Cathedral for a look. Honestly, I could still be standing there to this day. The Adoration of the Mystic
Lamb, completed in 1432, is the most magnificent piece of artwork I have ever beheld. It is absolute magic. It helped that I was familiar with the images — I was grateful to have already grasped th
Kenneth Clark 2008-02-13 01:00:00 KennethClark
in his Albany home by Roger George ClarkI was not planning to post on Kenneth Clark today but in preparing to write about The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (stay tuned), I came across a passage in Landscape into Art surrounded by a variety of pencil marks. drawing attention to it. I am compelled to share and comment on it. "Facts become art through love, which unifies them and lifts them to a higher plane of reality; and, in landscape, this all embracing love is expressed by light. It is no accident that this sense of saturating light grew out of a school of manuscript illuminations, and first appears in miniatures. For in such small images a unity of tone is far more easily achieved, and the whole scene can be given the concentrated brilliance of a reflection in a crys
Medieval Landscapes 2008-02-12 01:19:00 Icon of St. John the Evangelistfrom the Dionysiou Monastery11th c. On Landscape into Art I mentioned that I'm working on a Squidoo lens on the subject of Landscape Art. I'm doubling up a bit and posting some of the Squidoo modules I'm writing for you to read here.The Medieval landscape was filled with weird and wonderful images of nature rife with rich symbolism. One of my most favorite images in Medieval painting is the hand of god reaching down out of the clouds. In certain paintings, there even appear to be flying saucers (actually, I think that's what the object looks like in the above featured icon from which the hand of God reaches). Even with great scholarship, it is difficult, if at all possible, for our modern minds to comprehend fully how the actual and interpreted landsc Read more:Landscapes
Landscape into Art: Hardcore 2008-02-11 21:07:00 As you may have heard, we had some BIG STORMS in Tennessee last week. A few days before they blew in, we had a night of BIG WIND and in the morning, I found my old Mulberry tree stump like so. This was a favorite yard pal of mine because, not only did it provide camouflage for the not very sightly side of the next door house, it also had been supporting poison ivy vines for I don't know how many years. Every summer, instead of spreading across the yard, the poison ivy moved straight up this stump and in the fall, the stump sprouted a mighty head of flame red leaves — gorgeous. I painted it several times and am very glad I did, now that it's gone.Anyway, the stump fell across my compost piles and crushed my wire fence falling into the neighbor's property. I figured that when I came Read more:Landscape
In a Landscape 2008-02-08 01:00:00 For your weekend's entertainment, I present this beautiful video made by Keith T. set to John Cage's In a Landscape
.
Bunches o' Brushes 2008-02-07 13:16:00 A few people have asked about what sort of brushes I use. I hesitated to reply because I wasn't quite sure where to begin. So, out in the bright light where you can see them all, here are what I grab at in the midst of painting. I can use anything from a 0 to a 36 round depending on size. I keep the brushes sorted by rounds, flats, large brushes for large jobs, and short handles with travel brushes. I also keep containers with pencils, exacto knives, willow sticks, a pair of magnifying glasses, scissors, emery boards and nail files. My kneaded eraser and pencil sharpener sit by the window latches, out of paw's way. I am not wild about very expensive brushes. I am a stickler for a good point, a decent well and proper construction. When I first assembled these for their formal photo
A New Start 2008-02-06 15:14:00 I survived the fierce tornadic storms last night although the tornado sirens were wailing on and off for many hours in the evening and again in the middle of the night. No damage in my neighborhood or through the route I take to Cheekwood, thank God!This morning was the first session of my winter drawing class. We have a good group and I think it will be lots of fun.The studio section of the Frist Learning Center, pictured above, was originally the stables for the Cheekwood estate. The drawing studio where I teach looks like this from the outside.
Read more:Start
Struggle (Paper) 2008-02-05 01:00:00 I could easily have titled this post "An Embarrassment of Riches" because of the paper I have put in stock to work with. Limitation is a mighty tool, though. If you read yesterday's post, you'll know that I've been tearing my hair out with one failed painting after another. I know I can paint, and beautifully, too. So what in the heck is the problem?I left off with Twyla Tharp's comment that using the wrong materials can be deadly. I now have had first hand experience to confirm this fact. You're only as good as your tools. I was told from the very beginning that the best brush, paper and pigment are the only way to go - with watercolor especially. But what if the best isn't the best for you?I've been working with St. Armand's handmade paper over the past month. A beautiful paper
Failure 2008-02-04 09:28:00 I have had to throw away, or turn over for color testing, what feels like 92% of my work over the past few months. It feels like this is getting worse. I spend three days on a painting and then have to shelve it. It's not like I can paint over it. Well, I guess I could if I prime the paper for oil or use gouache but that's not what I'm doing now. This is extremely discouraging and disheartening and depressing. All those damned D words. Still, at certain times during the day, I realize that a) this is normal, b) is part of the process, c) will make me a better artist and painter (although I don't know how!) and eventually, I reach a place of trust which gives me a little hope. Then I have to go through it all over again. In fact, I do know that there's a way out of the vicious cycle
Poetry 2008-03-11 01:15:00 My mother kept the Oxford Book of English Verseon her bedside table and, striking a dramatic pose mid-hallway would launch into, for example, a Robert Browning poem at any given moment or some funny song with a clever lyric from her childhood. My father knew Shakespeare like the back of his hand and lovingly lacquered each new volume of the John Dover Wilson and Arthur Quiller Couch set from the New Shakespeare before placing it in order on his special shelf for them. He would then skip down the stairs, jangling the change in his pocket, singing a George M. Cohan song on his way to spinning the latest Toscanini LP. Among the few books remaining from my childhood are A. A. Milne's When We Were Very Young, Now We Are Sixand Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses. I grew u Read more:Poetry
Impermanence III 2008-03-10 01:15:00 Drawings of horsesChauvet Cave, FrancePaleolithicWhile passing out the chapter on Black and Brown from Victoria Finlay's book Color: A Natural History of the Palette to my drawing class last week, I noticed the section on Impermanence and decided to add it to my occasional posts on the subject. In fact, I've made a new category for Impermanence where you can read all of them.Today, I'll excerpt that chapter in which Finlay writes about early mediums including charcoal, kohl, pencil and Conté."According to one Western classical legend, the first paint was black and the first artist female. When Pliny the Elder was writing his Natural History — a summary of everything available in the Roman marketplace and quite a few other things besides — he told a story of how the origin of art was
Rise and shine 2008-03-14 01:15:00 In case you've missed this...by Simon Tofield at Tandem Films.Scroll down in the sidebar at right for the new purple button to the Animal Rescue Site. You can click on it each time to have free food and care donated by sponsors to animal rescue organizations. It doesn't cost you a cent and only takes a few seconds.
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