Journey to Abstraction

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In 18th century India Hans Raj Joshi used traditional watercolor and powdered gold leaf to paint the tiger hunt. Within his red border we find a forest with its camouflaged participants. The space feels compressed and map-like because, we do … Continued

Harmony Through Contrast

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If we return to 1872, a moment in which many contemporary European artists were testing the effects of new colors and the new 19th century  color theories, especially  simultaneous contrast.  The results of these experiments lead directly to Impressionism, Pointillism, … Continued

Neural Vision

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Because we are born diurnal, edge-detecting, break-spotters whose vision depends upon memory as much as incoming retinal data and, because we are born looking for familiar simple patterns and, because our eyes refocus 4 to 3 times per second building … Continued

Raising Contrasts

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Because our attention is drawn to edges and anomalies we build pictures around these points of contrast. The contrast can be created in color, value, scale, proximity, and a variety of other opposites. Da Vinci listed his contrasting themes in … Continued

Sketch, Design, Paint

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If DaVinci sketched before painting in 1500 and, if 500 years earlier Fan Kuan of  China’s Song Dynasty sketched before painting and, if Van Gogh sketched in 1888 before painting then, let’s conclude that sketching must be a valuable even … Continued