A technique familiar to printmakers involves adding layers to a print, like an etching. The artist begins by checking their progress in printing a 1st state. Then the plate is reworked or additional plates are added. The image proceeds through … Continued
A zig zag, meander, or serpentine pattern offers much to the artist. It can help unite disparate areas of a painting. It can serve as a metaphorical shape packed with mythical meanings. And, through foreshortening it can provide a strong … Continued
Social upheaval and challenges find their way into art. Sometimes they appear heavy handed and unpersuasive as when countless artists tried to depict the horrific experience of 9/11 with ineffective visual pantomimes. An oblique and piercing way to transmute our … Continued
Da Vinci observed problems with linear perspective and hard outlines. We don’t see like that! He saw that natural perspective curves, perhaps as the result of our eye’s convex lens. He further observed that edges were not sharp and hard … Continued
You and I create the picture of our world more from within than from without, that is we are less reliant on our eyes or more precisely, the photons that touch our neural tissues than on our cortex. Our cortex … Continued
We credit Leonardo da Vinci with introducing the theories of chiaroscuro and S’fumato to painting. To clarify how chiaroscuro (light against dark) works let’s look at a detail from the dark in da Vinci’s “Virgin in the Rocks” (example 1). … Continued