Eyeborg

A COLOUR-BLIND artist who could only recognise black and white shades has learnt how to paint with a full palette by “hearing” the hues he cannot see. - full text

-via Neatorama

Trendy?

According to the San Francisco Bay Guardian, skulls are in!

...skulls are on display everywhere right now, within galleries, on record covers, and spray-painted on the wall next door.

I like the idea, myself.

Pencil on... IN the brain?

I haven't made much time to draw the past week or so, and I noticed that when I don't draw for awhile, I start thinking about it more and more frequently. But there's a big distinction between someone having pencil work on their mind and having a pencil in their brain!

The pencil measured 8cm (3.1 inches) long, and had narrowly missed damaging an optical nerve. At the time of the accident doctors said it would be too dangerous to operate because it was so close to the brain.

Ouch! But I can't help thinking that Mrs. Wegner just lost her best excuse for getting out of unpleasant things. I mean, no more: "I'm sorry, I'd love to, but I have a pencil in my brain."

Thanks to Slywy for the link!

Excessive

Damian Hirst's $98M diamond-encrusted skull

I'll stick to pencil, if no one minds.

If You Sell Your Art Online

The latest email scam indicates they are an art dealer or gallery and some emails arrive where a client is indicated. Most emails indicate they want to buy an artwork but are usually vague about what it is they want to purchase. All the emails indicate along the way that there is an overpayment due to them and the certified check will be made payable in a higher amount than their purchase.

Known Scammer Names used in Art Scams

Artistic plagarism?

Roy Lichtenstein, 60's art idol, a thief? Some people think so.

"The critics are of one mind that he made major changes, but if you look at the work, he copied them almost verbatim. Only a few were original."

The side-by-side comparisons are pretty damning, in my opinion. Call me stuffy, but I don't consider changing 1 or 2 little things - in some cases, just the colour of them - sufficiently significant alterations to consider something "original".

Considering Lichtenstein paintings sell for millions of dollars, this statement from Jack Cowart of the Lichtenstein Foundation, is as annoying for its hubris as it is for calling the original artists "drawers" :

"We are all in favor of having the drawers and writers receive as much credit as humanly possible. We owe them esteem but can't pay them back for the royalties they might have received."

Maybe they can't compensate them financially (Ha!) but what about paying them the respect of admitting that they were the original creators of Lichtenstein's "works"?

As it happens, the Lichtenstein Foundation uses an exact copy of a Kubert picture of a fierce dog, titled ``Grrrrrrrrrrr!!" to illustrate a warning to copyright violators on its website.

Read more: Lichtenstein: creator or copycat?
See the comparisons: Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein (image heavy, but worth it)

Wait. I'm confused.

Ran across this news piece about watercolour workshops being brought to NW Indiana. Husband & wife instructors, reasonably priced, etc. Okay, so some people might balk at the fact that they have students work from reference photos (despite holding class in a park!) but I get their point of having the students all do different scenes as opposed to everyone painting the same thing. But here's the part I got stuck on:

[They] already have drawings of the roughly 6,000 pictures, so students can transfer them to canvass and paint from the pictures. Drawing skill isn’t needed. “Our focus is technique. We want people to know how to paint,” he said.

Students don't even do their own under-sketch? "Drawing skill isn't needed" to paint? Not even the loosest, crudest wielding of a pencil? While I can see the need to concentrate on one discipline during a limited class time, the shrugging off of drawing as unnecessary bugs me.

That's all I'm going to say, really. (Don't you think I've stirred the pot enough this week?) It just bugs me.

Read the whole article here, and feel free to tell me your opinion. (And no, the reporter is no relation to me.)

See...

...this is precisely why I don't drink:

"...people who were given a simple visual task
while mildly intoxicated were twice as likely
to have missed seeing the person in a gorilla suit..."

Read the rest here.

Artists Walk Across America

United Souls for Peace are a group of independent artists, and musicians who are walking across the USA to meet with artists and individuals concerned for our country.

As we travel and interact with different communities we will be spreading information, love, art, and music.

Check out The Walk

Art that responds?

British and American computer scientists have developed artwork that changes according to how the viewer feels. Special software picks up facial cues and adapts the color and brush strokes of the digital image.

(Read the entire article)

I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I know I'd be very inclined to sit making faces at the camera. But that's just me.

Artist does not = genius

Artist Trevor Corneliusien, 26, chained his legs together while camping in an abandoned mineshaft so he could draw a picture of what his legs looked like chained together. When he realized that he had lost the key, he spent 12 hours hopping 5 miles through the desert north of Baker, Calif., to a gas station. Reporting that rescuers needed bolt cutters to free Corneliusien, who suffered bruised ankles, sheriff’s Deputy Ryan Ford added that the drawing “was a pretty good depiction of how a chain would look wrapped around your legs.” AP 1-04-06

Creativity's Bum Rap
from Psychology Today

"Serious depression strikes writers, artists and musicians up to 10 times as often as the general population, a tendency often attributed to the creative spark.

"But according to a new study, it's the artist's propensity for rumination that often leads to the blues, not creativity itself. In a study of young adults, psychologist Paul Verhaeghen of Syracuse University in New York found no direct relationship between creativity and depression. The tendency for self-reflection, however, seems to breed both depression and creative behavior. The study appeared in Emotion."

Anatomy and Manga. Huh.

"Anatomy Revised: Thanos Zakopoulos"

A decidedly different take on anatomical art.

"a dialogue between opposites as well as a confrontation between classical anatomical images (Western) and Manga comics..."