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Famous artists paint Samson and Delilah
In 1949, ten members of the faculty of the Famous Artists School correspondence course were commissioned to paint their interpretation of Samson and Delilah, based on the 1949 Cecil B. DeMille production at Paramount.
The artists pictured...Show More Summary
Waltham Steampunk Festival
The Watch City Steampunk Festival is a retro-Victorian extravaganza, with goggles, corsets, tophats, gears, and steam engines. (Video link) The weekend event is held near the Charles River Museum of Industry in Waltham, Massachusetts. Show More Summary
Patrick Arrasmith (update)
Since I first wrote about illustrator Patrick Arrasmith back in 2008, he has become best known as the illustrator of the Last Apprentice series by Joseph Delaney. Arrasmith works in the difficult but rewarding medium of scratchboard, in which line and tone are created by scratching black ink from the surface of clay-coated board on [...]
Sacred Harp Portrait
Yesterday I tried out my new casein paints at my wife's singing group.
(Video link) The portrait is a friend of mine named Alan Neumann, bass of the shapenote singing society at Bard College in New York.
I'm using an improvised easel to hold my sketchbook on a camera tripod. Show More Summary
Talking Portrait: 17th Street Locos
In 1981 I drew a portrait of two guys on the Santa Monica pier, then asked them to describe themselves into a tape recorder.
(Video link) For the first time, their faces and voices are brought together in a talking portrait.
Documentary on Wooden Boats
Shaped on all Six Sides from New Canada on Vimeo. Kat Gardner directed this short documentary about building and maintaining wooden boats.
Plein Air Painting Disasters
(YouTube link) A lot can go wrong when you paint outdoors, but wind is the biggest enemy. Artists at the second annual Plein Air Painting convention share their stories of "gamestoppers," unexpected events that bring a painting session to a dramatic halt. A few gamestoppers that have happened to me include: 1. Show More Summary
Dragon Copter
(Video link) Festo has built a working model ornithopter called a BionicOpter. Like the dragonfly it is based on, it can fly in all directions, hover in mid-air, and glide.
I have always been fascinated by the idea of dragonfly ornithopters. Show More Summary
Draw Mix Paint
Mark Carder, the well regarded painter and portraitist who I profiled in a previous post, at one point participated in and lent his name to a series of instructional painting videos known as “The Carder Method”. These sold for over $100, and were for a time heavily promoted. Carder is no longer associated with the [...]
Marc Dallesio's one-minute videos
Florence-based American artist Marc Dalessio has produced a series of short videos, each one making a single point about academic methods for painting the landscape and the figure. (Direct link to video) This one shows how to use the the sight-size method for landscape. (Video link) A pocket mirror helps check the accuracy of a portrait. Show More Summary
Plein Air Gouache in Monterey
Gouache—or opaque watercolor—is a wonderful sketching medium because it's so portable, opaque, and fast drying. It's well suited to oil painters who want to travel super-light. I had a few tubes with me at the Plein Air convention in...Show More Summary
I-Wei and Almanac Interviews
Inventor, Artist, Animator, Toy Maker, and Tinkerer I-Wei Huang has posted an in-depth interview on his "CrabFu" blog.
I-Wei makes all sorts of cool stuff like steam turbine tanks and a steam walker.
Also, our local events paper, the Almanac has posted an interview here.
Zhaoming Wu Demo
Chinese master Zhaoming Wu did a two-hour figure painting demo in oil yesterday at the Plein Air convention in Monterey, California. Here are a few notes:
"I start with three values. At the beginning I keep the treatment of shadows flat, with almost no form, but I keep lots of color. Show More Summary
Rijksmuseum reopens
One of the world’s great museums, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, reopened its doors today after 10 years of renovations. The museum’s centerpiece, Rembrandt’s monumental work Officers and other civic guardsmen of District II of Amsterdam, under the command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq andLieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch, known as the ‘Night Watch’ (above, second down), [...]
Petman the human robot
(Direct video link) New from Boston Dynamics, a human robot that walks freely and does calisthenics. The overhead cables don't hold it up; they are just for safety. Now Big Dog has someone to take him for a walk. ----- Via BoingBoin...
Urban Plein Air Painting
Yesterday, Good Friday, 2013, we set up our easels on the roughest corner of the roughest neighborhood of the city that New York magazine called the “Murder Capital of New York.” Here is what happened:
(Direct link to Youtube Video) Word quickly spread that there were five artists set up on Lander and Third Streets. Show More Summary
Stop motion figure drawing
Life Drawing at The Book Club from Wriggles & Robins on Vimeo. (Direct link to video) This video is made up of separate figure drawings made by a group of twelve artists arrayed in a circle. As the intervals speed up, the individual drawings merge into a three-dimensional sense of the figure as an animated form. Thanks, Mary
Book review: "Sign Painters"
(Direct link to video book review) A lot of you liked the recent post about the sign painter documentary. I had a chance to read the book that goes with it, and it's so gorgeous and full of colorful photos that I had to show it to you in a video. Show More Summary
Color in a bird of paradise
In its courtship display, the male Wilson's Bird-of-Paradise presents three bright swatches of color: blue, yellow, and crimson, making it one of the most colorful creatures on the planet. (Direct link to video) As with many butterflies,...Show More Summary
Forging real swords based on pop culture versions
Regular readers may recall my posts about master swordsmith, Tony Swatton, who armored up my pencil box and who I joined for a Viking raid on IKEA. Tony has produced hundreds of movie weapons, and now he's working with a video team to produce a web series showing the process he uses in his shop in Burbank, CA. Show More Summary
