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Arts RSS FeedsTony Wood: Siberia is Melting - The corridor we are standing in bristles with ice. Thick layers of what turn out, on closer inspection, to be delicate, hexagonal crystals line the walls and ceiling. I and a handful of other visitors are in the basement laboratory of the Permafrost Institute in Yakutsk; according to the red numbers of an LED panel, the temperature is -8 °C. After a few minutes, our presence ? breathing, talking ? has raised the temperature to -7 °C, and we are u...Feed Source: www.lrb.co.uk Jonathan Steele: Neo-Taliban - The road from Kabul to Kandahar was once known as the Eisenhower highway. Built in the 1950s, when the United States and the Soviet Union competed peacefully for Afghan friendship, this US-funded 300-mile ribbon of tarmac was plied for two decades by lorries and garishly painted buses with no concern for security. Among the passengers were half-stoned Western hippies on the overland trail through Asia. Then came civil war and in 1979 the Soviet i... Jenny Turner: Tom McCarthy?s ?C? - For the final part of this novel?s first movement, our young hero, Serge Carrefax, travels to Klod?brady?, a presumably Austro-Hungarian spa town, to take a cure. It?s 1913, and Serge is two years older than the century. His problem is ?a blockage?, ?encumbrances? in his bowel. ?Morbid matter ? Bad stuff ? black bile: mela chole,? the doctor says. ?Your illness is not a thing; it is a process. A rhythm. Toxins are secreted around body, organs bec... Letters - The letters page from London Review of Books Volume 32 issue 17... Table of contents - Table of contents from London Review of Books Volume 32 issue 17... What's Really In Your Sketchbook? - While I keep intending to make my sketchbooks just for drawing and keep other notes separate, it never works out that way. In no time it's full of scribbled quotes from the whatever book I'm reading (currently, How Philosophy Can Save Your Life by Marietta McCarty), notes about art history, postcards from the art gallery and various newspaper clippings.
For me creativity is very much a holistic process. Reading from all sorts of sources, as well ... An Easy Drawing Lesson - Here's an easy lesson in drawing from life - sketch a piece of fruit in pencil. Drawing from life is the best way to develop confidence and more importantly, develop your own style - not slavishly copying a photograph or someone else's art. This easy beginner lesson is ideal for people who claim they "can only draw stick figures", and it's a great warm-up or refresher for more experienced artists, too.
Try an easy drawing lessonAn Easy Drawing Le... Draw Portraits in Pencil - Not Plastic - Structure and anatomy are topics I constantly return to - and once again today, while searching for an image, found what should have been a really nice celebrity portrait, spoiled by the melted-plastic-doll effect. It happens when you've gone straight for the detail, without using any kind of structure. Variations of tone and slight errors in placement make it look as though the subject is a plastic model - no bones, just skin - and left too long... Drawing Architecture - If you're including architectural features in your sketches, a solid grasp of perspective drawing is critical. You don't have to do anything fancy - just understand how perspective 'works'. If you trust your eyes and draw what you see, you shouldn't run into any trouble; but often we subconsiously try to 'correct' things and so create errors. Understanding the basics of perspective will help you identify and issues.
Straight lines can be a probl... Draw Dogs' Eyes - Even non-artists will tell you that the eyes are the most important part of a portrait. Human or animal, getting the eyes right is critical both in terms of realism, and in capturing the character and spirit of the subject. In this tutorial on drawing dogs' eyes, Janet Griffin-Scott shows you how to build the layers of detail and color to create vivid, expressive eyes in colored pencil. In this example, she is drawing a portrait of a German Sheph... Advice for Graphic Design Art Students - When I was an art student, we thought that Design students were too hip for their own good, envied their access to the computer lab and resented them for Selling Out to The Man. These days though, the arts are far more integrated. Fine Artists use typography and create design, industrial designers make art - and we all appreciate the importance of actually making a living from what we do. I love the word 'creatives' used to describe people who wo... Keys to Drawing with Imagination - Most of the drawing books I recommend are 'how to' books full of step-by-step demonstrations. Bert Dodson's 'Keys to Drawing with Imagination' is a little different. It explored the process of creativity and is loaded with ideas and examples - it's a very visual resource. He looks how to take a starting point such as a shape, pattern or object - and give it a twist to create something exciting. His thoughts on creativity are really useful. I rec... Draw a Superhero - Draw a classic comic book superhero following this short tutorial by Shawn Encarnacion. Modeled along the lines of our favorite Marvell superheroes, this dynamic comic book super hero combines a powerful look with graceful action. Shawn's example shows you how to use a simple skeleton-like framework to establish the pose before completing the outline drawing. Experienced artists can modify the drawing to create their own look while less practice... Tinted Charcoal - I love charcoal drawing, and love subtle colors - so when Starrpoint* mentioned Derwent's Tinted Charcoal range my interest was piqued. They look absolutely gorgeous and I'm curious to see how the colored undertones will work with the dense, velvety black that charcoal usually gives. I've tried the Graphitint tinted graphite pencils, and found them quite interesting but tricky, with the bright undertones being difficult to control with water. I h... Life Drawing: Drawing the Human Figure - Attending a life class is an essential part of traditional art training. Often life drawing groups are run by community centers and art groups, so that even if you can't attend one at an art school, you can still have access to a model. Getting started can be a bit daunting - the figure is such a complex subject. I like to begin with drawing structure - building the figure from the inside-out. 'measuring up' using the thumb-and-pencil method is a... Copyright © 2010, Answer the Telephone. All Rights Reserved. |