Month: September 2010

Tilt-Shift Van Gogh

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CategoriesAmusements, Gallery and Museum Art

Tilt-Shift Van Gogh from ArtCyclopedia
Actually, pseudo tilt-shift Van Gogh, but that’s a small quibble.

Tilt-shift photography is a process in which depth of field and lens angle are manipulated to make a real scene look like a miniature.

The effect can be simulated in Photoshop with judicious selections and applications of blur filters.

The folks over at ArtCyclopedia, one of my favorite online art resources, decided to apply the Photoshop version to some paintings, just to see what would happen.

The chose some of Van Gogh’s paintings as their subjects. The results are uneven, but where the effect works, it works quite well, and produces amusing and enlightening versions of familiar paintings that have the charm of children’s pop-up books or dioramas.

At best, they let us look at these paintings with fresh eyes, always a delight.

[Via Gizmodo]

 
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Link: www.artcyclopedia.com/hot/tilt-shift-van-gogh.htm
My related posts:
Tilt-shift photography
Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night
Vincent van Gogh Gallery

Dictaphone Parcel (Lauri Warsta)

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CategoriesAnimation

Dictaphone Parcel (Lauri Warsta)
Artist Lauri Warsta put a dictaphone (reel to reel audio recorder, anybody remember those?) in a parcel, turned it on and shipped it from London to Helsinki.

He took the resultant recording of truck, warehouse and plane sounds, along with snippets of surreptitiously collected worker conversation, edited it down, and then animated his impressions of the journey to create a sort of pseudo documentary of the box’s travels called Dictaphone Parcel.

The animation has the look of being drawn on a chalkboard.

[Via MetaFilter]

 
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Link: Dictaphone Parcel on Vimeo
Lauri Wasrta on Cargo Collective

Carlo Russo

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CategoriesGallery and Museum Art

Carlo Russo
Philadelphia artist Carlo Russo paints landscapes and figurative work, but his emphasis is on still life.

Russo is one of those still life painters who manages to convey a feeling of stopped time in his paintings, a sensation of quiet focus and contemplative stillness. His portrayals of rough textured crockery, weathered wood, and tarnished copper pots bring to mind the textural marvels of Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin.

Though his still life subjects also include such staples as fruit and flowers, Russo is more likely to choose pumpkins or gourds, objects that are rich with texture. In his recent work, he is also experimenting with other textural challenges, painting difficult objects like feather dusters and sheepskin.

Russo studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He teaches classes at the Woodmere Art Museum and occasionally takes on students in his studio. His South Philadelphia studio will be on the Philadelphia Open Studio Tours event on October 2-3 of this year.

Russo currently the subject of a one man show at the F.A.N. Gallery here in Philadelphia, that ends this Saturday on September 25th, 2010.

 
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Link: www.carlorussoart.com
F.A.N. Gallery
Philadelphia Open Studio Tours, 10/2-10/3, 2010
Anderson Fine Art

Line by Line, James McMullan

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CategoriesDrawing, Tools and Techniques

Line by Line, James McMullan I have long been a proponent of the idea that drawing is as much of a natural potential ability for human beings as writing.

I’ve often wondered about that odd demarcation somewhere around puberty where an unspoken law seems to take effect and “all children draw” becomes “only some teenagers and adults draw because they’re artists”.

Somehow, drawing has acquired the cachet of a magical gift, “talent”, with which one is endowed or not. While this can be fun and advantageous for those of us who are on that side of the divide, it’s basically nonsensical.

Drawing is a skill, a skill that can be taught (or at least learned), like playing a musical instrument.

The most popular example of this is the tremendous success of the techniques championed by Betty Edwards in her book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. See the examples on her site for the leap adults make from “childlike drawing” to “realistic drawing” with about 40 hours of training. See my post on Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain for more on the subject of drawing as a teachable skill.

I was delighted, then, to see illustrator and poster artist James McMullan begin a series last week in the New York Times called Line by Line, in which he encourages anyone interested to explore the fundamentals of drawing.

He starts out in the initial installment, Getting back to the Phantom Skill, pointing out that drawing is a pleasurable activity and open to any of us. He describes the structure of the 12 week series, in which he will teach fundamental drawing skills and use art, his own and examples from art history, to illustrate points and move the reader/student deeper into the process, understanding and appreciation of drawing.

During the 12 weeks in which he is working on the column, he will be working on professional assignments doing posters for Lincoln Center Theatre and illustrations for a children’s book, and may include work in progress as it applies.

He states: “My overall goal, apart from helping with specific information, is to communicate the enthusiasm I feel for the immediacy of drawing.”

This promises to be a basic short course in drawing for those who think they can’t draw, and a nice kick in the pants for those who can but have forgotten, for one reason or another, how much fun it is.

The required materials? Pencil and paper.

(Images at left, shoe drawing from the article, others from James McMullan’s website)

 
 
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Link: Line by Line, NYT
(Chapter 1) Getting Back to the Phantom Skill
http://jamesmcmullan.com

I become a twit, er,… Tweeter

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CategoriesAmusements

John James Audubon
OK, after years of resisting, I’ve finally decided to start using Twitter.

Despite the original intention that Twitter be used to be “sociable” and inform your friends and “followers” that you’re having 2% milk on your Cap’n Crunch this morning, I’ve always thought of Tweets as basically 140-character blog posts. I just couldn’t think of anything worthwhile to do with 140-character blog posts.

But it’s occurred to me over time that in my digging and sorting through the attics and basements of the internet, gathering the seeds for Lines and Colors posts, I encounter lots of tidbits of intriguing links and items that are interesting enough to mention, but not something to which I want to dedicate a full post (or at least not at that point in time).

So most of my Tweets will consist of short mentions and links to things of potential interest to Lines and Colors readers (as well as announcements of new posts).

You can follow my 140 character or less ramblings at http://twitter.com/CharleyParkerLC.

(Note: there is already a “linesandcolors” on Twitter. Probably a nice person, but not me. There’s also a CharleyParker, again not me. Price you pay for coming to the party late.)

Those of you who have been living in a cave on the tip of Tierra del Fuego for the last four years and are unfamiliar with Twitter, can find more here and here. (You don’t need an account to view the posts on the page linked above, but an account lets you follow multiple sources and become a twit, er… Tweeter, yourself.)

(Image above: Common Bluebird, John James Audubon)

 
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Link: http://twitter.com/CharleyParkerLC

Museum Day 2010

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CategoriesMuseums

Museum Day 2010, The Delaware Art Museum, The Museum of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The brandywine River Museum
Museum admission, in case you hadn’t noticed, has kept pace with the rising cost of everything, if not outpacing it significantly in recent years.

It can be daunting for some, and can discourage people from investigating museums they don’t already patronize.

Smithsonian magazine, an offshoot of the venerable group of cultural institutions in the U.S. capital that are always open free to the public, sponsors an annual Museum Day, in which participating museums waive their normal entry fee for visitors who arrange online for a free ticket.

This Saturday, September 25, 2010, is the sixth annual event.

Over 1,000 museums of various kinds are participating across the country. You may find some disappointing hold-outs, of course, but there are also some terrific museums participating that are normally not open for free.

There is a mini-site for the event with an interactive Google-style map that allows you to zoom in on a geographic area and look for museums of interest. You can also narrow the search with a state selection drop-down below the map.

You need to get your free ticket ahead of time. For this you have to cough up your physical and email address, and the ticket (admission for 2) is emailed to you. There is a limit of one two-person ticket per household.

The drop-down choice for “Which Museum Day location do you plan on visiting” in the ticket request form also serves as a quick list of participating museums, arranged by state.

The motto for the event is “Take your brain on a field trip.”

[Via the New York Times]

(Images above, some participating museums in my area: The Delaware Art Museum, The Museum of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The Brandywine River Museum)

For those who wish for more free museum days, check the websites of your local museums in their “hours and admission” sections. You may be surprised at how many have sporadic or regular periods of free or reduced admission, sometimes courtesy of corporate sponsors. (If you’re a Bank of America customer, check out their “Museums on Us” program.)

Also, if you visit museums enough to make a membership a good investment, see my post on the North American Reciprocal Museum Program. This grants you membership privileges to over 350 museums for a higher than usual membership level at one of the participating museums (in places, as little as $100.00).

 
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Link: Museum Day, September 25, 2010
Participating museum locator
Ticket order form