Lines and Colors art blog
  • The Last Museum

    The Last Museum, art search engine

    The Last Museum, according to the website’s “About” page, is a search engine for museum art. It features a searchable database of over 5 million artworks, and intends to grow well beyond that.

    You can choose sections like “Artists”, “Museums” or “Cultures” and search from there, or simply enter any terms in the general search box.

    It may be difficult to see in my small screen capture above, but it’s the returns on a page for which I’ve searched for “landscape”, and then used their date filter to limit my search to works from 1850 to 1925. I like this feature.

    In many ways, this is following in the footsteps of the Google Art Project, which does many of the same things and has been established longer, but I’m glad to have all of the art search resources I can get.

    [Via Metafilter]



    Categories:
    ,


  • Carolyn Lord

    Carolyn Lord watercolor
    Carolyn Lord watercolor

    Carolyn Lord is a California watercolor artist who paints with bold, strongly geometric compositions, and colors that range from vivid to subtle. Within her elegantly simplified shapes you will often find fascinating variations in texture and color.

    Her website offers selections of her work in categories like gardens, still life and architecture, but my favorites of hers are her seascapes and landscapes, in which her particular appraoch resonates most strongly with her subjects.

    You can also find prints of her work offered through CaliforniaWatercolor.com.



    Categories:


  • Eye Candy for Today: Pierre Guillemet portrait

    Portrait of a Lady of the Court Playing the Tambourine, Pierre Desire Guillemet
    Portrait of a Lady of the Court Playing the Tambourine, Pierre Desire Guillemet

    Portrait of a Lady of the Court Playing the Tambourine, Pierre Désiré Guillemet, oil on canvas, 39×31 in. ( 96 x 79 cm), link is to Google Art Project, downloadable version on Wikimedia Commons.

    French painter Pierre Désiré Guillemet was known for his paintings in the Orientalist style. Like many paintings in that genre, there is a fascination with the details of dress and an emphasis on how different it was from the European standards of the time. Novelty and the allure of different cultures were key to the appeal.

    Guillemet has gone into the details and pattern of the fabric with a high degree of finish.



    Categories:
    ,


  • New Plein Air Easels and Systems Special Featured Article

    Plein Air Easels and Systems Special Featured Article

    In the past I’ve done several articles on pochade boxes and other painting systems. I’ve tried to follow up with update posts as the things change, but I finally realized the usual post format wasn’t ideal for this.

    So I’ve created a couple of separate permanent pages, rather than temporary posts, that consolidate what I’ve found. I intend to keep updating these as time goes on.

    In this article on Plein Air Easels and Systems, I’ve tried to give an overview of most of the major commercial options that I’m aware of.

    These are not reviews, simply overviews based on the information I can glean online and from the experience of other painters I’ve talked with.

    I hope it can act as a starting point for those interested in plein air systems who don’t know where to start.

    I’ve written an accompanying article on Pochade Boxes



    Categories:
    ,


  • Eye Candy for Today: Childe Hassam’s Water Garden

     Water Garden, Childe Hassam, oil on canvas
     Water Garden, Childe Hassam, oil on canvas

    Water Garden, Childe Hassam, oil on canvas, 24 x 36″ (61 x 91 cm), in the collection of the Matropolitan Museum of Art.

    The Met doesn’t provide large version of this image; I found one on masterapollon.com, a site that sells reproductions, from this page.

    American Impressionism took many forms, Hassam is here using the broken color approach the French painters pioneered to great effect in allowing our eyes to glide over the irises bordering a lily pond.



    Categories:
    ,


  • Bill Sanderson

    Scratchboard illustrations by Bill Sanderson
    Scratchboard illustrations by Bill Sanderson

    Bill Sanderson is a freelance illustrator with a long career in editorial and comercial illustration as well as book publishing.

    Sanderson works in the fascinating method of scratchboard, in which a specially prepared board is coated with ink, and the image is created by scratching white areas out of the ink with sharp tools.

    While not a popular medium becsuse of the painstaking process required, not to mention the kind of reverse thinking of the light out of dark process, the results can be unique and quite wonderful.

    In Sanderson’s case, he uses the medium in a style that can look at first glance like woodcuts. Scratcboard is often used for black and white works, but In many of his illustrations, he also uses color, though I can’t find information on his process in this regard.

    Sanderson’s own website has a variety of his work in a number of categories. I first came across his work on the website of his Artists Representative, Richard Solomon, and I think the gallery of Sanderson’s work there is a little easier to go through.



    Categories:


Vasari Handcraftes artist's oil colors

Charley’s Picks
Bookshop.org

(Bookshop.org affilliate links; sales benefit independent bookshop owners; I get a small percentage to help support my work on Lines and Colors)

Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting
Carlson’s Guide to Landscape Painting

Landscape Painting
Landscape Painting

Drawing and Sketching in Pencil
Drawing and Sketching in Pencil

Successful Drawing
Successful Drawing

Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing from Life
Bridgman’s Complete Guide to Drawing from Life

Nature Drawing: A Tool for Learning
Nature Drawing: A Tool for Learning

Making Comics
Making Comics

Dinotopia, a Land Apart from Time
Dinotopia, a Land Apart from Time

Charley’s Picks
Amazon

(Amazon.com affiliate links; sales go to a larger yacht for Jeff Bezos; but I get a small percentage to help support my work on Lines and Colors)

Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting
Carlson’s Guide to Landscape Painting

Landscape Painting

Drawing and Sketching in Pencil
Drawing and Sketching in Pencil

Successful Drawing
Successful Drawing

Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing from Life
Bridgman’s Complete Guide to Drawing from Life

Nature Drawing: A Tool for Learning
Nature Drawing: A Tool for Learning

Making Comics
Making Comics

Dinotopia, a Land Apart from Time
Dinotopia, a Land Apart from Time