If you know how to use brushes in Photoshop, this one’s ready to go. It’s just something I stumbled on while experimenting with all the different options and capacities of Photoshop’s extremely powerful brush machine. Making custom brushes is now part of my arsenal of available techniques, and it’s phenomenal what you can do with…
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On this day in 1888, which is 130 years ago, Vincent Van Gogh cut of a piece of his right ear in a bout of anguish brought on by his fight with Paul Gauguin, who was leaving Arles and their shared yellow house. Earlier in the evening Gauguin had threatened Vincent with a saber, and…
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To see more about this series, go to this explanatory post. Of course I put the artist and the text around the banana. Are you getting bored by being shocked by just how boring shocking art is? If so, this series is for you. The least we can ask of shocking, revolutionary art is that…
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“The paintings I created were intended for my eyes only. I felt I couldn’t exhibit them because they were so visceral, horrifying, and disturbing. I knew that I would be stigmatized.” ~ Suzzan Blac. A Savage Painting “During my teens, teachers would berate me for my ‘dark’ drawings and persuade me to draw ‘pretty’ things.”…
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I used to work in the marketing department of a computer memory company. One day on the sales floor a giant banner appeared that read, “HAVE THE KILLER INSTINCT!” I had an idea what that meant, and it had something to do with knowing when to close a deal. But the metaphor was horrible. I…
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Apparently I’m the first person to ask this question, or type it up and publish it online. At least a Google search turns up nothing. What everyone asks is, and I’m pretty sure you’ve heard it, “Can you like the art without liking the artist”? And by “without liking” they mean hating, or shunning, or…
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I was about to take a shower. I stood nude before the mirror in my bathroom and realized that my entire perspective on art is anathema to the contemporary art world. The people who are in the inner circle, who are rich, along with the big art institutions, and even the art critics are in…
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“Maurizio is a pure genius… I see the magic happen on various occasions.”~ Emmanuel Perrotin, of Galerie Perrotin. The same artist who gave us the golden toilet has now affixed a banana to the wall, in an edition of three, at Art Basel Miami Beach. It used to be that you were considered stupid if…
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More moral quandaries Recently I wrote an article which was critical of the Baltimore Museum’s plan to only buy and primarily exhibit women’s art in 20/20. I objected on moral grounds, because while it is ostensibly rectifying past ostensible sexual discrimination, it is undeniably applying absolute sexual discrimination in the very present. Two wrongs don’t…
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In 2020 you can’t define people by their biology and call it progress. The Baltimore Museum revises art history, aesthetics, and its collection with an ideological sledgehammer. Some people think nostalgia (especially for discredited scientific theories) is sentimental at best, and pathological at worse, but without even suffering cognitive dissonance some of us can excavate…
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These are just curiosities for entertainment, folks. You aren’t meant to assess them as serious works. They’re my kid stuff! When I was growing up my favorite things were sci-fi shows I could see on TV, frogs and lizards, and drawing (not to mention girls). Fortunately, I had the foresight to document most my early…
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I watched a mini-documentary “Beauty: Explained” on Netflix, and a few pieces fell into place regarding how art is considered today. Before I connect the dots and introduce what the new science suggests, I will need to review what the dots are, and what they signify. If you already know your contemporary art history, you…
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What do Flat-Earthers have to do with contemporary art? I was watching the 2018 documentary Behind the Curve, which is about the Flat Earth movement and some of the people involved in it. Two things hit me in quick succession. One was that the paintings and models of the Flat Earth were conceptual art, and…
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The New MoMA aspires to reconstruct art history through the lens of a revolutionary political agenda, but in the process sacrifices both art and justice. MoMA, along with the art world in general, has by hyjacked by a revolutionary political movement. The new MoMA happily subordinates art to postmodernist philosophy and social justice, which, while…
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I reached into the archives to retrieve these horrible classics (not for the little kiddies, though). Feel free to share, print, decorate, worship, & whatever: The Human Fly: Alien Autopsy: Awakening Upon Death of the Bride of the Creature: The Agony and the Extraterrestrial: Golgolon: Monster Maiden #1 Monster Maiden #2 The Giant’s Den: Now…
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Some of you know I’ve been doing a lot of study over the last several months, and now it’s paying off. I’m working on portrait #32 in my SFAU series, and I decided to put in an earring from a photo. [Decided to do another portrait to practice some of the techniques I’ve learned.] There…
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THEY’RE HERE! Prints of my original fine art digital paintings are now available. I’m using INPRNT as my printing service for several solid reasons. Prices are fixed, fair, and a bargain. They use archival papers and inks. Creators keep half the profits. Artists have to be approved. The interface is streamlined. It looks like this:…
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The Salvator Mundi, a portrait of Christ attributed to da Vince and sold to the highest bidder as such, is in the news again, now because it hasn’t arrived for a blockbuster da Vinci show scheduled to open in about a week. I’m more perturbed that people take this painting seriously. “for me the most…
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Renoir is an object of hatred and scorn, but the criticism is myopic. When I said to reconsider Renoir, it’s from the last critical update, at which point, if you don’t already know, his status was solidified as a horrible painter and sexist pig-man. And while there are some cringeworthy bather paintings, if we were…
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Artists can make whatever kind of art they want, and it’s totally legit. I’m all for it. It mostly just comes to good or bad examples of the kind of art in question. People might think that because I am pro-visual art, and because I criticize certain conceptual works, that I am against conceptual art…
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When I was a little kiddie and went to Sunday school we glued pasta to empty tomato-sauce cans and spray-painted them gold (or was it silver?). Maybe they were supposed to be chalices or something. I forget the religious import. True, the world’s richest artist is using better materials — dead butterflies no less —…
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#23 – Bare Knuckle Brawl A bloody outdoor boxing match without gloves or fanfare. This is one of the rare images where I used references [stills from a YouTube video] and ordinary people to create a tableaux. Why I chose it: It has a traditional painterly feel reminiscent of Hopper, and the subject matter and…
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Hope you all like the new design and layout. Above is the snappy new logo I designed. Because my theme keeps the header at the top at all times, I needed a logo that would be easily visible against any background, but unobtrusive. I got the idea of using that old tape that you could…
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Comedy as Unintentional Conceptual Art Anyone who watches YouTube prank videos and is familiar with conceptual art and its pseudo-philosophical underpinnings should experience some cognitive dissonance when YouTube comedians do performance and installation art without giving it a second thought. This short clip from the Impractical Jokers includes a viable contemporary art installation: Everything in…
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The only artist I’m aware of who has received any recognition for digital painting in the contemporary fine art world is David Hockney, and that’s just because anything and everything he creates is automatically reviewed. Gerhardt Richter has the same kind of status, and some of his threadbare digital art is taken seriously, but it’s…
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Each entry in my Top 25 will have: a descriptive paragraph. a sentence or two about why I chose it. one or more close-up details. a link to my original post about the work. thumbnail gallery with all artworks included so far. prints for sale. Links for all previous entries. a poll for picking your…
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Each entry in my Top 25 will have: a descriptive paragraph. a sentence or two about why I chose it. one or more close-up details. a link to my original post about the work. thumbnail gallery with all artworks included so far. prints for sale. Links for all previous entries. a poll for picking your…
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Above is the final demo in the class, and all credits go to Andrew Hou for the digital painting, which I recreated as part of learning his process. As my regular readers know, I’m a trained “fine artist” working in digital media, and currently learning the industry standard digital painting techniques from illustrators in order…
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