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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 ushered back to the surface, where it is 35 °C, a day of dazzling Arctic sunshine and heat that makes the skin prickle. Here, as elsewhere in Russia, it has been a searing summer, turning large swathes of the landscape into kindling. The apocalyptic scenes in European Russia ? thousands burned out of their homes, millions of hectares of crops destroyed, Moscow wreathed in smoke from smouldering peat bogs ? have dominated news reports. But vast areas of the Far Eastern Federal District were damaged too....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 invasion. Ambushes turned the highway into a death trap until the victorious Taliban swept into Kabul in September 1996, eliminating all security problems once again. The only threat when I travelled the highway a few weeks later was colossal discomfort. After years of neglect, the road was close to collapse. Long stretches rippled like a corrugated roof, making travel in our hired minivan unbearable even at five miles an hour. What should have been a six-hour journey took 23.... 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 become accustomed and, perverted by custom, addicted.? The deep link between spiritual state and bowel habit was well known to the ancients ? viz the Aristotelian catharsis ? but too often since then has been bypassed, though everybody knows in their gut of guts how real it is. What a relief then when the doctor diagnoses Serge?s condition, prescribing enemas, massage and many glasses of the disgusting local water. Not that any of it works.... 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... Draw a Dog in Colored Pencil -
Learn to draw dogs in colored pencil, following this step by step tutorial by artist Janet Griffin-Scott. Janet takes you through the process of designing the dog portrait and building layers of colored pencil to create rich, lifelike textures. Draw a Dog in Colored PencilDraw a Dog in Colored Pencil originally appeared on About.com Drawing / Sketching on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 at 08:59:31.... 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 as viewing art, and indeed life experiences, are inspiring, and find expression in text as well as images. So this approach works pretty well for me, even if my sketchbook does end up looking like a porcupine, with all the bits of paper sticking out o... 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 Lesson originally appeared on About.com Drawing / Ske... 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 in the hot sun, and undoes all that careful detail. Good realist artists might not use drawn structure, but they are able to do so, so can visualize it even if they don't draw the lines - and they know their anatomy. They can take a step back and look at the drawing, identify the key planes and look for danger areas. They'll recognize inconsistent perspective, misaligned features or pencil marks or lighting effects that translate to blemish... 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 problem. A ruled edge looks artificial when placed among freehand lines. Try placing the ruler or other straight-edge parallel to the line you want, so that you can run your finger, not the pencil, along the edge to guide your line. This can take a bit of practice to get right, but it's a useful way to create a more natural-looking straight line.
Of course, I'm thinking here of a cottage in a landscape or a simple... 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 Shepherd dog, but the principles apply to any breed, and you can simply adjust your color selection to suit. Learn to draw a dog's eyesDraw Dogs' Eyes... 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 work in any - and many - creative media. It helps to open up the possibilities for collaboration and cross-pollinization.
Swiss-Miss is the blog of designer Tina Roth Eisenberg. She has an astute eye, making her blog a must-read if you are a lover of beautiful (and variously functional, interesting, minimalist or quirky) design. She's also thoughtful; a recent post picks out her favorite ... 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 recommend it highly for use at home or in the classroom. Next time you hear "I don't know what to draw", just hand it over! Read my full review of Keys to Drawing with Imagination
Follow me on Twitter | ... 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 practiced artists might like to print and trace or copy. Draw a SuperheroDraw a Superhero originally appeared on ... 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 haven't had a chance to get to the art store this week, but I hope to give them a spin soon. I'd love to hear your experience with tinted charcoal if you've tried it. You can check the Derwents out at the Blick affiliate link here - Buy Direct.... Copyright © 2010, My Ebay Secrets Revealed. All Rights Reserved. |