The artist was a native of Philadelphia who continued his studies in Florence, Rome and Paris. In the 1850s, he befriended Frederic Church and Thomas Cole and became a member of the Hudson River School. By the 1870s, the artist became interested in the American landscape movement known as luminism, which explored, among other concerns, the immensity of the sea and the untapped frontiers of America. The show, titled William Trost Richards: Land and Sea, will feature oil paintings, small studies in watercolor, and pencil on loan from private collections, New York City galleries and several regional institutions.
The Suzanne H. Arnold Art Gallery is open at no charge on Wednesdays from 5 to 8 p.m., Thursdays and Fridays from 1 to 4:30 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and by appointment for tour groups. For more information, please call 717-867-6445.
Dinotopia also began with a map—though in the first map I called the island “Panmundia.” Once I had an idea of the overall shape and the kind of physical geography I wanted for the island, I sketched the island quickly in markers. The mountain and canyon relief is accentuated by an imaginary light source from the from the upper left. The original painting, below, was rendered in oil on illustration board.
It’s a good idea to add more place names than the ones you’re planning to use in a given story. This gives the feeling that the world exists beyond the boundaries of what you have revealed so far, and it also sets the stage for sequels. 
Airport benches are designed with rigid arms to prevent people from stretching out to sleep, so it takes some ingenuity to get comfortable. 
I spent a sleepless night in London last month. There was a little community of sleepers sneaking glances at each other to see how their neighbors solved the sleep problem. Some made beds out of their luggage carts or their suitcases.
Even though strangers didn’t say a word to each other, there was an unspoken bond between us as we triumphed together over the little trials of our humanity.
This was a bit of a fantasy, because the Romans more often used cement and faux painted plaster, avoiding the cost and hassle of real marble as much as possible. But in Tadema’ vision, white marble was everywhere, and he was good at painting it. 
One secret of getting the marble to look translucent is to use lighting from above and slightly behind. This plays up the effect of subsurface scattering along the illuminated edge.
Remember that besides transmitted light, there’s a lot of light bouncing around from all directions, so save the dark accents only for deep hollows or pits in the stone.
“In drawing a whole figure from nature we should be three times its length from it, to oversee it properly. If we draw normally, we must draw on the scale on which we should trace, if our sheet of paper were a sheet of glass held up, and if, instead of pencil, we traced with a diamond on this interposed pane you will find that a five-foot figure then comes about seven inches high on your glass, or its substitute, your paper.
On this scale the comparison is direct and not proportional. On this scale, and, largely, in accordance with this law, are drawn all studies from nature by masters of all periods. Of course, I am not speaking of cartoons. The studies I speak of could be squared up and enlarged to cartoons on any scale required for decoration in fresco, or on canvases.
Now, if Rubens and Longhi and Watteau and Fragonard and Ingres and Millet and Puvis and Keene, and all the company of the blessed drew on that scale, they probably knew what they were about.”
“In drawing a whole figure from nature we should be three times its length from it, to oversee it properly. …..you will find that a five-foot figure then comes about seven inches high on your glass, or its substitute, your paper.
Here are five new foreign editions of Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara. Can you guess which languages they're translated into?
The ferry terminal building looks like a space station in the foreground of the scene. The view is from the rear deck of the ferry. Since the ferry took a long time to load, I had lots of time to do a watercolor painting.
In his new book Autophobia, Brian Ladd examines the history of our hostility to automobiles, balanced against the long history of the undeniable triumph of cars, from the Model T to the SUV.Cars are the scourge of civilization, responsible for everything from suburban sprawl and urban decay to environmental devastation and rampant climate change—not to mention our slavish dependence on foreign oil from dubious sources abroad. Add the astonishing price in human lives that we pay for our automobility—they kill the equivalent of a dozen jumbo-jet crashes every day—plus the countless number of hours we waste in gridlock traffic commuting to work, running errands, picking up our kids, and searching for parking, and we can't help but ask: Haven't we had enough already? After a century behind the wheel, could we be reaching the end of the automotive age?Do we hate cars more than we love them? Here's a test: Next time you go on a gallery crawl, count the number of car-free paintings you have to walk by before you see a canvas that features an automobile.
Austrian painter Ludwig Deutsch (1855-1935) painted A Palace Guard in 1892.
The archetype still exists today, though modern guards lack the colorful garb. Deep in the labyrinth of the medina of Fes, Morocco, I met a man named Hassan whose job was to stand watch over the doorway of an antique store.
He patiently posed for me while I drew his features in brown and black water-soluble colored pencils. (Photo ADF)
I love a science fiction premise that mixes the bizarre and the banal, and I relished the opportunity to include a Rambler, a Mobil sign, a fish flag, and a TV antenna.
We didn’t end up using that particular sketch, though, because it didn’t have quite enough immediate impact. Instead we used a design that put the machine more in silhouette.
In less than a month since its inception, they have hit the ground running with dozens of posts on Armand's traditional painting instruction, mainly in oil landscapes. There is also a rich collection of biographical spotlights from art history, focusing on realist/impressionist painters of the 19th and 20th centuries, complete with quotes and bibliographies.
And the shaded buildings on the left are warm where they receive reflected light from the warm illuminated buildings.
"I was a member of a gang," he said, "but I don't do that no more. I don't need to worry about no terrorists. I got a Smith and Wesson next to me all the time.
If you make a 3-D schematic maquette, you can do the study while looking at the model. This study uses white and black charcoal on brown Kraft paper. The goal is to study the chiaroscuro: and to consider which things are light on dark and which things are dark on light.
Here’s a small sketch with watercolor pencils of a church in Geneva. I left out a lot of detail, mainly because of a lack of time, and I gradated the tones of the tower to a light tone behind the two figures.
Here are ten aphorisms about art. Only eight of them are attributed to Ingres. Two statements hiding in the list are from other people. Can you guess which two statements do not belong to Ingres?
Born in Hawarden, Iowa, Mr. Youngkin served in the Marines, and then worked in industrial design. He patented several inventions before returning to Art Center to teach. He taught in a rigorous and demanding manner that brought out the best in all his students.
Blog reader (1833-1905) Daroo asked to see more gouache paintings by William Trost Richards. This 9x14 inch gem, called Lake Squam from Red Hill (1874) is from the Metropolitan Museum's collection, link.
Here's a plein air seascape that captures the full range of big waves, ripples, foam, and recoil. WTR is best known for his seascapes and his Adirondack mountainscapes.
I try not to get nervous when a soldier with a machine gun watches me paint. But this guy in the medina of Tunis was very cool. There was a language barrier, so after I exhausted my pleasantries in French and Arabic, he just quietly watched.
I actually spent two sessions to capture this watercolor of the minaret at the Sidi Youssef mosque in Tunis. The sun was rapidly setting and the moon rising, while the light of the souq was brightening. I used gouache on this one just for the sky, because I couldn't capture the even gradation in transparent watercolor.
Here's the narrow street where I was painting (photo courtesy Alan Dean Foster). The loudspeakers from the minaret resounded with the call to prayer, and behind me in the government square, a brass band accompanied the daily flag ceremony.
Yesterday me and the missus took a ride into our hometown of Rhinebeck, New York to see what was up.
Just the usual. A dragon was seen flying low over Market Street.
Lenny's draft horses pulled a wagon around the downtown.
The stilt band played New Orleans jazz in front of the Beekman Arms. A dozen Grumpuses stopped traffic at the main intersection.
By nightfall the marching Highland pipe bands and giant snakes marched through the streets. Kids with crowns and decorated branches joined the parade.
And Sinterklaas arrived on a white horse in the old Dutch tradition. The catalyst for all this wonderfulness is celebration artist Jeanne Fleming and Wonderworks, well known for her Halloween Parade in New York City. She got thousands of people to work together for months building giant puppets and performing.
How you answer these questions lays at the heart of how you approach a drawing.
The second drawing is a bit more subjective. The pepper shaker on the right melts into the background a little more, and tones of shadows blend the bases of the objects into the table surface.
This is not merely a matter of style or technique. One approach is not better than another. There’s no right or wrong way to see the world and no right or wrong way to draw it. Different people actually see things differently.