Pigments through the Ages is a web feature that explores artists’ pigments and their history in a series of brief, interconnected articles.

From the navigation at page top you can Choose a Pigment, though I found it more informative to Browse Colors, as that gives you an overview of the limited list of pigments included in the feature within that range.

From either page you can arrive at a detail page about an individual pigment and get some information about the pigment’s history, composition and method of production, as well as short glimpses of the pigment’s use by an artist or two.

There is also a timeline that marks time periods in which various pigments became available. I wish this feature were more complete and easier to use (you have to roll over a line in the chart to see the pigment name) as I think it’s a particularly interesting aspect of the way artists through history have worked with the color ranges available to them.

Though not the most in-depth resource, it’s nonetheless interesting and may pique your curiosity and prompt you to go looking for additional information.

Pigments through the Ages is part of the larger WebExhibits website, that also includes features on Color Vision and Art, an analysis of the investigation of Bellini’s Feast of the Gods, and a fairly extensive feature on Van Gogh’s Letters.

I don’t know about you, but I find photos of other artists’ workspaces fascinating.

The fascination is probably partly simple curiosity and partly looking for ideas, with perhaps a touch of finding reassurance that other artists function in spaces that are as messy as mine (grin).

Where They Draw is a Tumblr blog devoted to photos of artists’ working spaces that seems particularly focused on the spaces of cartoonists and comic book artists.

Whether that’s an intentional focus or just the way it’s worked out so far, I don’t know. The blog’s curator doesn’t give much indication, and the blog is relatively new. Most of the spaces would feel somewhat familiar to other artists who work in comics or related fields.

For those who want a more general look at artist studios and working spaces, see this extensive Flickr group titled Art Studio.

(Studios above, from Where They Draw: Jim Woodring, Lucy Knisley, John Martz, Roman Muradov, Michael MW Kaluta, Tom Neely)

[Via Stuart Immonen and Eric Orchard]

Among artists who work in the medium of digital painting, most notably visual development artists, comic book artists and illustrators, the two most popular applications for painting and drawing directly on the computer with a ressure-sensitive stylus and tablet are Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter.

Photoshop, because of it’s much broader range of use in photo manipulation, compositing and prepress, is the subject of far more instructional material than Painter, which is much more focused on the direct creation of digital art. Those of us who love to work in Painter are always interested to see books on the subject, and are always hoping for a greater range of instructional topics and approaches.

Secrets of Corel Painter Experts by Daryl Wise and Linda Hellfritsch is a welcome addition to that list.

The book is subtitled “Tips, Techniques, and Insights for Users of All Abilities”, but I think it’s best suited for those who already have a grasp of Painter basics and are looking to take their skills to a more advanced level.

The book calls on a range of digital artists who are working in Painter and are recognized for their expertise in their field. Each chapter in the book is devoted to one of the 17 artists and focuses on an aspect of Painter techniques in which they are proficient.

Each artist is profiled, with background on their work and influences and a brief question and answer, as well as relevant links. The main feature is a step by step instruction on the technique or process that particular artist has been called on to demonstrate, along with a gallery of the artist’s work.

In addition, the artists also frequently contribute more general tips about their Painter working process.

Many of the artists included are familiar names in digital painting circles, drawn from the fields of comic art, illustration and concept art, as well as fine art and photography, and include John Derry, one of the original team that worked to develop Painter in its early stages at Fractal Design.

The accompanying DVD is a bit less that I might have hoped for, with mostly mid-resolution and a few high resolution images of the artists’ work, but not conveniently arranged for browsing. It is nice, however, that the DVD sections for each artist include clickable versions of their “Favorite websites” links from the book.

Corel Painter is a very powerful and flexible application, and can also be complex and somewhat daunting, with over 900 brushes by someone’s count and numerous other tools and settings. Secrets of Corel Painter Experts is not meant to be a comprehensive manual, but a focused series of instructions on specific techniques from working professionals.

(Images above, Andreas Rocha [main cover image], Waheed Nasir, Wonman Kim, Brian Haberlin, Benjamin, Thorston Wolber [2 images], Chet Phillips, Mike Thompson, Dwane Vance, John Derry, Pete Revonkorpi)

in the 1940′s well known illustrator and art instructor Andrew Loomis wrote a series of drawing books that have become standards in the field of art instruction, prized by generations of illustrators, comic book artists, concept artists, character designers and others, particularly those who must “invent” the human form without constant recourse to a model.

Ironically, these tremendously valuable and influential texts were long out of print, leaving artists to discover them by word of mouth and prowl used bookstores, and later the internet, hoping used copies would turn up for a reasonable price. Copies of them in good condition would often sell for $250.00 to $300.00, sometimes more.

We all scratched our heads, wondering why these obviously popular books hadn’t been reprinted, until this summer, when Titan books finally reprinted the most prominent title, Figure Drawing for all it’s Worth (see my review here).

Much to the delight of myself and countless other artists, Titan did a superb job, bringing to life the character and appearance of the book in a facsimile hardback edition that actually surpassed the printing quality of the original.

The edition has been a tremendous success, and Titan has followed up with what is considered the second most important and sought after title in the series, Drawing the Head and Hands, and they provided me with a review copy.

As I expected, Titan has once again done Loomis justice with a superb job of reproducing the book. I can say without hesitation that the original book and its content are of tremendous value, and the beautiful reproduction makes it a joy to follow the instruction.

Here, Loomis expands on demonstrating how to draw the human figure in correct proportion by constructing it from a knowledge of its basic forms, and goes into the details of the head and hands with subtle, yet clear and strong drawings and diagrams.

In addition to building his approach on the fundamentals of human anatomy, he gives construction methods based on the underlying geometry, allowing you to turn and move the head and hands in your mind and position them in space when drawing. By marking off spatial divisions related to the major features, Loomis guides the reader through an understanding their basic proportions, and how those of the face in particular can vary from individual to individual.

He also demonstrates the correct proportions of the face relative to the head (solving one of the most common problems of those learning to draw people — making the face too large), and shows how to construct the head not only from different angles, but in perspective.

The book goes into better detail than I have seen anywhere else on understanding the change in proportions that the human face and head undergo as we move from infancy through childhood into adulthood.

His section on hands brings similar focus to the proportions of the various parts of the hand, an understanding of the hand’s underlying geometry, and the distinction between the hands of the young and old, male and female.

In case I haven’t gotten it across, I can’t recommend these books highly enough for those learning to draw the human form without reference to a model. For those who are drawing from a model, you might be surprised how much a study of the Loomis construction methods can inform your drawings with an underlying strength and dimensionality.

Priced at under $40.00 US, the book is a bargain. Don’t allow yourself be put off by the fashions and hair styles in the drawings, which reveal the book’s origins in the 1940′s (I rather like them myself); the drawings and instruction are as relevant as if the book had been written today.

In addition, I think the drawings are beautiful, and the book serves as an art book as well as an instructional text.

The great news is the series has been so successful that Titan is extending it; the next title, Successful Drawing, is due to be released in May of next year.

For more, see my review from earlier this year of Figure Drawing for All it’s Worth.

[Important note: with the exception of the cover image, the sample pages above, with which I've tried to give you a taste of the content, are taken from poor scans of the previous editions and do not do justice to the quality of the images in the new book. Those, in fact, are superbly printed on a lightly off-white paper, bringing out the beautifully subtle quality of the drawings.]

I’m most familiar with Victorian writer, art critic, draftsman and watercolorist John Ruskin for his critical defense of the fledgling Pre-Raphaelite group of painters, vital at a time when their ideas and approach were at odds with the prevailing values of the Royal Academy and the British art establishment in general.

His defense of their ideals is unsurprising, given that they were largely influenced by his own writing, particularly his elevation of “truth to nature” as a high ideal for artists in the midst of aesthetic philosophy that demanded idealization in artistic interpretations of the world.

That philosophy, and Ruskin himself, first attained prominence with an essay in Modern Painters in 1843 in which he defended the work of J.M.W. Turner.

Ruskin was also the author of a treatise on drawing entitled The Elements of Drawing, that is still relevant and continues to be reprinted and valued today.

Among his other accomplishments, Ruskin was a professor of fine art at University of Oxford, where he established the Ruskin School of Drawing, which continues today as The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art (usually referred to as simply “The Ruskin”).

Also associated with the university is the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, which has placed online a resource titled The Elements of Drawing: John Ruskin’s Teaching Collection at Oxford.

It features digitizations of much of Ruskin’s collection of almost 1500 works that he assembled for use in his school. The collection includes drawings and watercolors by himself and a number of other artists as well as prints and photographs.

You can browse and search the collection in several ways, but the best introduction is probably the highlights assortment of 50 objects.

The objects listings have pages describing the works (click on “Details” for medium and size), and most are linked to larger versions of the images.

(Images above: top six: John Ruskin, bottom three: Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Samuel Prout, J.M.W. Turner)

[Via MetaFilter]

A gamut is a range of colors. More specifically it is a range of colors that can be created or reproduced on a particular device or with a certain set of beginning colors.

Those working with print reproduction are very familiar with the concept of the CMYK gamut, or the range of colors that can be reproduced using traditional Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black printing inks, a smaller subset of the colors available, for example, on a computer monitor.

It’s not a term that painters use as often, but “gamut” also applies to a painter’s palette. When starting from a particular set of colors, the gamut is the range of colors that can be produced by mixing those colors (usually with the addition of white).

You will often hear me mention a “carefully controlled” or “limited” palette when talking about specific artists, particularly those working in film and gaming concept and visual development art, where limited gamuts are used to dramatic effect.

James Gurney, a highly experienced artist who works both with paintings for reproduction and for easel painting, has posted a series of articles on his blog, Gurney Journey, that delve into this often misunderstood aspect of color choices.

He started several years ago with a three part series on Color Wheel Masking, The Shapes of Color Schemes and From Mask to Palette.

His recent posts on the Gamut Masking Method, (Part 2 and Part 3) carry the principles into the creation of variations in color scheme for alternate versions of the same painting, making the process even clearer.

The most recent post, Part 3, Gamut Masking Method is particularly informative in that Gurney has included an excellent short video in which he explains the essential principles of gamut masking in a demonstration.

These principles are also covered in some detail in Gurney’s excellent recent book, Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter (my review here).

Even though the end of the summer is rapidly approaching for those of us who live in then northern hemisphere, the time for plein air painting is hardly over; and many, myself included, find this time of year ideal for painting outdoors.

In 2008 I wrote a rather extensive article on pochade boxes, those combinations of palette and portable easel, often with provision for carrying panels and supplies, that mount on camera tripods and have become a staple tool in the modern plein air painting revival.

In attempting to find the right pochade box for my own use, I went through a fairly exhaustive search of all of the pochade box makers and models I could find at the time, as well as researching articles on making your own pochade box.

The result has been a popular Lines and Colors post in which I listed all of the resources I could find for the various kinds of pochade boxes.

I’ve just revisited the post, adding to it two more makers of pochade boxes, Sienna and Mabef, as well as expanding on the sections on tripods and painting panels.

I’ve also included an additional resources on building your own pochade box from Jim Serrett and Fazwan Barrage.

(Images above: Sienna, Mabef, Jim Serrett, Fazwan Barrage, Open Box M, Alla Prima Pochade)

Wacom is the venerable maker of pressure sensitive tablets and styli that have been the standard for digital artists for many years. My understanding is that the name is a combination of “wa”, from a Japanese word meaning harmony, and “com” from computer, meaning a device that puts one in harmony with a computer.

They make several lines of products — their industry standard Intuos line of professional tablets, of which I have been a dedicated user in one form or another for over 15 years, their newer consumer oriented line of Bamboo tablets and touchpads and their high end Cintiq models. The latter incorporate computer displays in the tablet to allow for drawing directly on the screen.

To these lines (and their smaller items like the Bamboo stylus for iPad) they are adding a new product called Inkling, a “digital sketch pen”.

This is a ballpoint pen that incorporates some electronics and is accompanied by a small receiver box that clips onto the top of a sketchbook or drawing pad, allowing the user to draw with the familiar tool of ink on paper and simultaneously have that drawing stored electronically as a digital image for later download to a computer.

There have been other “digital pens” that perform a similar function, but this is the first to offer pressure sensitivity, that quality in traditional digital drawing tablets that allows artists to vary the line weight (and often other characteristics of a stroke) with the amount of pressure applied to the pen. It also provides the ability for artists to add “layers” to the digital file, so that different parts of the drawing can be easily separated out on the computer.

The digital image can be downloaded to a computer via USB and into the Wacom software provided. The included Sketch Manager software can transform the lines into vector paths or leave them as a bitmap. The files can then be exported into Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and other common applications used by digital artists.

This is obviously meant to accommodate quick sketches and rough drawings as opposed to the more finished work one would do directly on the computer with a tablet and graphics software, but it should be a welcome addition to the digital artist arsenal, and perhaps spread the appeal of digital drawing to those more comfortable with traditional drawing tools.

One of the barriers traditional artists face when starting to use a pressure sensitive tablet is getting used to drawing while looking at the screen instead of one’s hand, which takes a little getting used to. This is certainly a less expensive way around that than the deluxe Cintiq models.

The Inkling digital sketchpen retails for $199.00 U.S.D., and should be available in mid September.

In addition to the Wacom product page, there is an introductory video on YouTube.

(The product page link given is for the Americas; see the general Wacom site for links to other world regions.)