Diaspar Was Not Always Thus

I found a great book called Landscape into Art, by Kenneth Clark at the library. In the chapter called “Landscape of Fantasy”, Clark explains that fifteenth century artists, such as Grunewald, Altdorfer, and Bosch, began to explore the “mysterious and the unsubdued” and that they used the landscape to “excite a pleasing horror.” He continues to describe their methods as romantic and even compares them to J.M.W. Turner’s. Pictured below images that are directly and indirectly related to the reading. I found some of them through searches in http://www.wga.hu and http://www.artstor.org. I was specifically looking at how each artist depicted the landscape and architecture, as well as the overall composition and the sky.

In order from left to right:

1. Scenes from Monastic Legends. Paolo Uccello or the Karlsruhe Master
2. Saint Barbara (unfinished panel). Jan van Eyck
3. The Two Hermits from the Isenheim Altarpiece. Grunewald
4. Saint Nicholas of Tolentino Saving a Ship. Giovanni di Paolo
5. View of Toledo. El Greco
6. Mount Sinai. El Greco
7. Scenes from the Life of Saint Ursula. Meeting of the Betrothed Couple and the Departure of the Pilgrims. Vittore Carpaccio
8. Journey of the Magi. Benozzo Gozzoli

Bibliography:

Clark, Kenneth. Landscape into Art. Britain: HarperCollins, Publishers, 1991.

The following tip works in Photoshop CS3 & CS4.

If you have ever merged multiple layers (Layer > Merge Layers) that have different blend modes you may have noticed that the blend mode effects are not maintained and the merged version looks different than the un-merged version.

Try this method instead:

1. Make sure that the layers you want to merge are the only ones visible.
2. Create a new blank layer and select it.
3. Use this keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E. This merges all visible layers onto the selected layer.
4. That’s it! You can now delete the layers that were merged and all of the blend mode effects should be maintained.

Eliasson ends with a nice comment about experience:

“Experience is about responsibility. Having an experience is taking part in the world. Taking part in the world is really about sharing responsibility.”

I just read an article about logo design by Paul Rand, titled Logos, Flags, Escutcheons. You can read it at Graphic Design Forum. Rand explains what a logo is and is not, what makes a logo effective, what to expect of a logo, and he cites some great examples.

Here are two quotes from the article:

“Should a logo be self-explanatory? It is only by association with a product, a service, a business, or a corporation that a logo takes on any real meaning. It derives its meaning and usefulness from the quality of that which it symbolizes.”

“A design that is complex, like a fussy illustration or an arcane abstraction, harbors a self-destruct mechanism. Simple ideas, as well as simple designs are, ironically, the products of circuitous mental purposes.”

I especially like that second quote. It is worth remembering for the times when I think I can just rush through something or wait to start a project at the last minute.

The article was also published in a book, titled Looking Closer: Critical Writings on Graphic Design (Allsworth Press, 1994).

Video by Scofield Editorial.

Sometimes it is useful to imagine yourself as the pencil when drawing. It moves your large-scaled mind into a small scale – the scale of the paper and the image.

Here’s a goodie for Adobe Illustrator CS3:

To delete stray anchor points:

1. Select > Object > Stray Points
2. Press Backspace.

British painter Glenn Brown is interviewed by Lynn MacRitchie in the April 2009 issue of Art in America. You can also read it online at the Art in America website. I tend to agree with most of what Brown has to say in the interview, especially with the fact that the avant-garde is dead. I have yet to see Brown’s work in person. Check out the interview, it’s worth the read.