Category: Art & Artists
-
On “Simplification” In Drawing
One of the main challenges in learning to draw is accepting that simplification of the scene is a lot of what you do. But you can’t simplify without highlighting. You’re changing the relative importance of one picture element versus others. And if you change the importance of A versus B you reduce the importance of…
-
The Headstones Are Gone
As houses and churches shifted toward sameness over the last century, our graves did too. Before mass production uglified the headstones the graveyards looked like town parks where tall, short, thin, squat amblers had just stopped where they stood, and there they stand. Each one a unique individual of unique sizes, shapes and colors. You…
-
On drawing…Walter Isaacson on Leonardo’s “sharpness of eye”
His curiosity was aided by the sharpness of his eye, which focused on things that the rest of us glance over. One night he saw lightning flash behind some buildings, and for that instant they looked smaller,so he launched a series of experiments and controlled observations to verify that objects look smaller when surrounded…
-
Helen Vendler, on Gerard M. Hopkins: “…second-order reflection…”
“The subjects that interested Hopkins were chiefly intellectual ones; even his most sensuous responses to the natural world were immediately referred to the intellect, which, in the poetry, meant referral to philosophical or theological thought. Although it has seemed regrettable to some readers that Hopkins grafted religious sestets onto octaves of natural beauty, it must…
-
Omit Needless Words?
We’re all told to omit needless words, that this is the key to good writing. Simple, we’re told. Just cut those extra or latinate words and you’ll find under the fluff the sinews of virile prose. And the connotation is that this is almost a scientific exercise, one which yields objective truth which multiple…
-
An Odd Credo (Douglas Wilson)
http://dougwils.com/s16-theology/an-odd-credo.html I believe that God is God, and that we are not. I believe that Jesus is our Savior, and that we are not. I believe that the Holy Spirit is our wisdom, and that we are not. I believe that Jesus died under the wrath of God for our sin, and that He was…
-
As If For The First Time
I’ve wanted to name the connection between drawing and composing poetry. Drawing is a mode of seeing. We don’t see, then draw; we don’t draw what we see; we see by drawing. And we see, truly, only what we love. So as we draw we fall in love with what we are seeing,…
-
The Second Moment of the Artist
Have you noticed it is exciting to start a painting, but you lose interest in the middle? I argue that we never lose interest in a sound composition, whether we are the artist or just the spectator. It is the geometric arrangement of lights and darks and lines of motion that capture our eye…
-
Shape Of Wind In Lilac
The lilac leaf is not interesting aside from the wind, nor is the wind visible aside from the leaf, but the shape of the wind in the lilac will hold me here for hours. It is the dance of the parts with each other, frozen in a moment, that we have the privilege to feel…
-
On Art Supplies
Great artists don’t talk much about their tools. The rest of us do, because we’re still discovering what our hands can do. Most of us never get to the end of this exploration of means – and that’s ok, because to create is its own reward, no matter what stage of development we find ourselves…