Proportion, Order, and Harmony are the core of the success and vitality of any art form. This is true of all the Fine Arts, i.e., painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and poetry. All things out of proportion are devoid of harmony. Though the subject of proportion is often associated with the human form, it is much more than […]
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This type of genre realism was greatly out of favor when we attended the Layton School of Art in the mid-60s. They are still not held in high regard by the art establishment. Their social-realism and folksy genre scenes tend toward Rockwellism and contain too much illustrative narrative to be taken very seriously. What can […]
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Jean Siméon Chardin was born in 1699 and came to manhood a when the Rococo of Watteau, Fragonard, and Boucher was the style de jour. Rococo rivaled in decadent frivolity, depicting erotic nudity, romantic trysts, and carnality. The reality we associate with painting how we see in the manner of Velasques, Vermeer, and Chardin was […]
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Let us begin with what is known as the Boston School of Painters. Key figures in the Boston School were Edmund C. Tarbell, Frank Weston Benson, and William McGregor Paxton, all of whom trained in Paris at the Academie Julian and later taught at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Other painters associated […]
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In his book ‘Secret Knowledge’ Hockney and Professor Martin Kemp, discuss known visual procedures of past Masters. This evidentiary material allows the reader to arrive at their own conclusions. There is more than enough scholarly evidence that Vermeer, and many others, used a form of ‘Camera Obscura’ or curved mirror as a visual aide in […]
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The apprentice’s advancement requires a careful study of figure structure, as elucidated by Richer, Bridgman, and Hale, familiarizing themselves with the bony structure of the skeleton, and the location, origin, insertion, and function of the muscles. FIGURE STRUCTURE Architectonic Disengno The Architectural Design and Structure of the Human Form The skeletal system is compliant with […]
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THE FOUR ELEMENTS OF MASS CONCEPTION The elements of mass conception are; the Idea or concept of the Form, determining the precise shape of the Form, establishing Form lighting, and the positioning of the Form in Space. The apprentice should make a daily practice of drawing cubes, spheres and cylinders. In the architectonic drawing, all […]
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In the basic Renaissance Tradition, a point is a line on end, a line is the edge of a plane, and the plane is the skin on a form. In this system there is no such thing as shapes only planes which are always part of a form unit. We first visualize the form units […]
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