In a natural setting, leaves get lighter in value at the top of the plant because they receive more illumination than the ones farther down the plant. It’s safe to say that all leaves are lighter than their background, unless they are against the sky, in which case it’s safe to generalize that they’re darker than their background.
Thursday, March 23, 2023
Painting in Gardens
In a natural setting, leaves get lighter in value at the top of the plant because they receive more illumination than the ones farther down the plant. It’s safe to say that all leaves are lighter than their background, unless they are against the sky, in which case it’s safe to generalize that they’re darker than their background.
Wednesday, March 22, 2023
BAM Logo
While I was a college student at UC Berkeley, I got a part-time job as a designer and paste-up artist at BAM magazine. BAM was a music magazine in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was kind of like the Rolling Stone of California.
They asked me to redesign their logo. Back then designing a logo meant using ink pens, T-squares, compasses, circle templates, photostats and waxers. The gradient tone was made with Zipatone, a pre-printed grid of black dots on a self-adhesive clear plastic sheet. I would stick it on the pen drawing and cut away everything outside of the design.
BAM used my Broadway-on-neon-style logo for a while, but it really was too complex for a magazine logo, so they adapted it to a simpler design.
Tuesday, March 21, 2023
Etching by Callot
Monday, March 20, 2023
'I'm Done with Girls on Rocks.'
After painting dozens of successful calendar illustrations, Maxfield Parrish felt that his subjects were getting stale, and he wanted to paint pure landscapes for his own pleasure.
"I'm done with girls on rocks," Parrish said in 1931. " I've painted them for thirteen years and I could paint them and sell them for thirteen more. That's the peril of the commercial art game. It tempts a man to repeat himself. It's an awful thing to get to be a rubber stamp. I'm quitting my rut now while I'm still able."
He continues: "Magazine and art editors—and the critics, too—are always hunting for something new, but they don't know what it is. They guess at what the public will like, and, as we all do, they guess wrong about half the time. My present guess is that landscapes are coming in for magazine covers, advertisements and illustrations...."
"There are always pretty girls on every city street, but a man can't step out of the subway and watch the clouds playing with the top of Mount Ascutney. It's the unattainable that appeals. Next best to seeing the ocean or the hills or the woods is enjoying a painting of them."
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From Associated Press, April 27, 1931, quoted in the book Maxfield Parrish by Coy Ludwig, page 129.
Sunday, March 19, 2023
Maxfield Parrish's Edison Mazda Calendars
The theme was the history of humanity's relationship to light.
The calendars were extremely popular, in part because they came out during a time when electricity was making its way to rural America.
The name Mazda comes from Ahura Mazda, the chief deity of Zoroastrianism, which divided the world into realms of light and darkness.
Saturday, March 18, 2023
'To Quicken Our Souls'
Friday, March 17, 2023
What Do Watercolor Societies Say About Gouache?
Thursday, March 16, 2023
Bistable Percepts
Most people are familiar with the face / vase illusion (below). Psychologists refer to it as a "bistable percept."

A bistable percept is an image that can be perceived in two different ways. The perception can switch back and forth between the two interpretations, but you only see one at a time.

Another example of a bistable percept is the Necker cube which switches from appearing above you and projecting to the right, to appearing below you and projecting to the left.