Monday, August 4, 2025
Which Colors Are Primaries?
Full story on Substack today.
Wednesday, July 30, 2025
I'm Editing a Video, and I'd Love to Include Some of Your Questions
I’m editing a YouTube video, where I paint this little plein-air study of a stranded sailboat:
It’s painted in gouache over a casein priming.
If you have a quick question about the process, you can ask it here in the comments. Or, even better, you can ask a voice question on this Speakpipe link.
Tuesday, July 29, 2025
Painting from Imagination
Thursday, July 10, 2025
'You should be sketching always, always'
Abbey wrote to an art student: "You should be sketching always, always. Draw anything. Draw the dishes on the table while you are waiting for your breakfast. Draw the people in the station while you are waiting for your train. Look at everything. It is all part of your world. You are going to be one of a profession to which everything on this earth means something." More on Substack
Monday, July 7, 2025
Is the Computer a "Bicycle for the Mind?"
Steve Jobs wanted the personal computer to be like a “bicycle for the mind.” Has it worked out that way for you?
More on my Substack.
Thursday, June 26, 2025
Cesare Tallone's Sight-Size Paintings
Tallone's artistic legacy was further cemented through his teaching positions at the Carrara Academy in Bergamo and later at the Brera Academy in Milan, where he passed away on June 21, 1919.
Sunday, June 15, 2025
Reflecting on My Dad
I was never sure what my dad did for a living, because I never got to visit his workplace. He was in mechanical engineering jobs that were either highly technical or top secret.
Once he mentioned that he was in “high vacuum technology.” To my grade-school imagination, that meant he drove around in a giant Hoover vacuum cleaner.Dad read widely, and he must have had a lot of deep thoughts. But he kept those them mostly locked up inside his head. Maybe I didn’t have enough wit to ask him the right questions to unlock those thoughts.
But also, American dads were probably more remote to their kids in those days than they are now.
He’s been gone now for almost 25 years, and I still think fondly about him. When I clear my throat, I realize I sound exactly like him. I can’t help imagining him riding around on that giant vacuum cleaner.
Wednesday, June 11, 2025
Painting a Monkey Skull
The Akin Free Library in Pawling, New York is like a time machine that takes you back to a different way of organizing and presenting knowledge about nature.
It's worth a visit, but it's only open Saturdays and Sundays 1:00-4:00d, May - October. Ask to make sure, but it's usually OK to bring stools neat sketch supplies, such as pencil or watercolors.
LWatch this painting bbeing made Here's a link to video
Friday, May 23, 2025
Remote Control Models
This is high-school-age me with a Hobie Hawk, a two-servo glider with elliptical dihedral. The kit was invented by Hobart Alter, same guy who created the Hobie catamaran.
I also designed and built a flying-wing glider. No tail assembly, just wings. The airfoil changed from a lifting airfoil at the root of the wing to a reverse airfoil at the tips of the swept-back wings. That held the lifting surface at a good angle of incidence. The rudder and elevator controls went through a mechanical mixer on the servo brick that activated the elevons.
This is the kind of thing I thought about in high school during my free time. I’d be standing on the ground, with my imagination soaring 300 feet above me, dreaming what it would feel like to be a red-tail hawk.
My dad was a mechanical engineer, and he would occasionally give me pointers on tools and build techniques.
I also made a tugboat out of pine planks stacked and glued, carved to a hull shape, and fiberglassed over. This one took me all summer to build. The motor was powered by a motorcycle battery. It took some perilous voyages across the chop of the Palo Alto duck pond. It had lights inside and looked pretty realistic at night.
I didn’t know this at the time, but my fascination with scratch-built, remote-controlled airplanes and boats set me up for building the fantasy world of Dinotopia. Making these models helped project my imagination into places. Working for months on a single project gave me an instinct for delayed gratification.
There was real peril for the gliders. I once handed the stick to another pilot, inviting him to try flying the wing inverted, and he snapped off both wings by half-looping out of it. Poor guy, he felt so bad. But no problem. I went home, fixed it, and flew on.
My dad built his own glider and put a strand of piano wire in the leading edge of the wing “in case of a midair collision.” That day arrived: CRASH! Down went the other guy's plane. But Dad's plane survived. He kind of grinned, but didn't tell the other guy about the piano wire.
Saturday, May 17, 2025
Flower Pastels of Laura Coombs Hills
On Substack today, a look at the Life and work of Laura Coombs Hills.
Wikipedia Laura Coombs Hills