neolateral

Hi friends,

Today I want to talk about the learning of art, or in fact any other skill. I believe that in the early days of learning, we will not be so good. The embarrassment, discomfort or shame that we may feel about our own drawings or paintings - is a serious impediment to moving further and faster. The very thing we are concerned about - fussing about it makes overcoming it more difficult.

We must maintain an innocence about our sketches and paintings, a neutral stance, neither proud nor ashamed. The faster we can get through the early stages of learning …

A new version of the homepage site is now live. It's a static website generated with Pelican. The website is still work in progress, I'll add back all the old content alongwith a new structure over the coming days. However, I want to keep the site simple and uncluttered.

More on this to follow!

Hi Guys,

In this post I want to discuss my personal journey over the last few years learning to draw and paint. I’m learning from books and online resources, but I have not enrolled in a course. There are areas where I have made steady progress, and then there are areas where I’m almost at a standstill and have made not much improvement. Along the way I’ve also learnt to do a few things differently. I want to record this and share it with you and a future me.

Fundamentals

When I started learning, I had no …

Hello amigo,

Once we’ve identified the words of the language - shape of hair, shape of head, the neck and upper torso (specifically shoulders), we should think about what these words can convey. What language is created from these words.

Movement versus Stability

Diagonals signify movement.

• If the hair is flowing in the wind, or as if the person is moving fast and hair follows, the

• The head is usually inclined during movement. Especially during fast movement like running. And when describing movement when have to show it going across the scene, otherwise it becomes hard to describe a sense …

Heads and faces are the most recognizable objects for humans. We have developed an acute sense of the silhouette of the head and features of the face to recognize fellow humans.

Today I’m just going to talk about the silhouette of the head. At a distance the head aids the most in recognition, and when developing an illustration or drawing of the head, the silhouette should be kept in mind. If the silhouette is not “right”, the viewer will have the feeling of something being wrong, although they might not be able to articulate.

At a distance the head …

Hi there,

I want to continue of this theme of still life in this post and why one should draw and practice with still life.

Drawing What You See

Over time as we look at the same thing over and over again, we build a simplified version of an object in our head. And since most of the seeing is done in the brain - we start looking at the world as caricatures. For those not used to seeing the face in all its complexities, the mental model of a face is similar to a caricature (like a smiley) than the …

Dear Reader,

In this rather longish discussion, I want to talk about why everyone should draw still life - and what we stand to gain from this practice.

Train your eyes to look

Our brain uses a lot of shortcuts while looking. We make very quick judgements about what we see based on things we have seen before. And most of the time we spend as little time as possible on a single object. The brain might build a simple caricature of what we see in our head and move on. This might be enough interacting with the world in our …

Dear Reader,

As the initial steam of writing this blog runs out I find that I want to reduce the frequency of posts. I’m going to write and review posts everyday, but only send them out three days a week. This will allow me an average of two days to review each post.

So the horse is slowing down to a trot - not running away 😎.

Talk to you soon,

Abhishek (art noob)

Hello Dear Reader,

Once in a while I would like to write about a piece of great art in this blog. In this age of constant barrage of “content” - we spend too little time on perusing great compositions which changed the art world.

“The Raft of Medusa” by Théodore Géricault (pronounced zeriko in English) is one such painting. Géricault was a classically trained painter, who pioneered the French Romanticism movement movement, but died tragically young.

“The Raft of Medusa” is a huge painting - roughly 16ft by 24ft. It depicts the aftermath of the wrecking of the french naval ship Medusa …

Hello Reader,

We’ve all had it - the dreaded creative block! Can’t write, can’t draw, can’t act, can’t play music - whatever be our specific craft. So have I found some magic cure for this? No, not really - but I’ve found stuff that works for me. I’m gonna share this with you - you can try it if it works for you too.

Schedules and Commitments

If we have committed to doing something to friends or family or clients then we feel compelled to do it. In fact if we have committed something to ourselves, especially …