Modern Public Architecture
By Claude Thomas | November 10, 2008
By Jeremy G. Presley
Modern architecture is all about the utopian. The solid and stolid monuments to the oppressive hierarchies of the past made way for light, clean lines and open, inviting spaces. Public spaces, in this line of reasoning, should be light as air but make themselves felt as art. Architecture is perhaps the perfect modern art because of its anonymity and seeming purity: the space exists, as it were, for itself. Of course that’s not technically true.
Architecture serves a purpose, and a pretty mundane one at that. Architects design buildings for people to use-to hang art in or make banking transactions, work in or wait for trains or planes in-so there are limitations to the purity of architecture as art. Interior designs must accommodate people and their actions and motions. A good architect has to design space with a consideration for how people move through it and use it, how they congregate in it and how it makes them feel to be in it. A computer generated architectural rendering will often include a 3-D tour of the space.
Good designs work, and hopefully they’re also pretty. The minimalism of modern architecture calls for the purity of a white on white space. Combined with light, slender, curvaceous modern materials and opulent curving motifs, a light airy color scheme makes a public space feel like a floating palace. Spaces where crowds can feel penned in, like stairways, should feel open, not oppressive, and facilitate movement, not hamper it.
If you are interested in architecture or interior design, we have good news: the world needs your talent. Public spaces don’t just invent themselves, they need creative minds and dedicated hearts to bring them into being, and the world needs more public spaces all the time. Someday, your work of art might be a source of inspiration for the people who move through it, work in it, and pass by it every day.
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Learn How to Draw a Cityscape
By Claude Thomas | November 4, 2008
By Annette Labedzki
Architectural drawings are absolutely a different ball game, as compared to normal sketches. It takes a brave attempt at capturing another person’s conception of space. However, having decided to draw a building, there are a few salient points that need to be borne in mind.
• Subject. One should have a very clear idea of the subject one sets out on while drawing a building. Architectural drawings encapsulate the whole gamut of spaces from Greco Roman buildings to Avant Garde structures. Each has its own character. Even an architectural drawing of a thatched house follows a rigor that a casual sketch cannot capture.
• Space View. Having decided on the object, the artist must, as far as possible, try to “see” the three dimensional views of the space. As an artist, you must find out the bare minimum character of the building. Is it curvy? Is it angular? Is it slim and tall? Is it squat and broad? What was the basic flow of lines on which the designer has built the building? You should have answers to these and more such questions before you start. Even if they are not clear, you should have a general idea.
• Reality Check. Architectural drawings require some degree of reality. It is not an option but a necessity. You should therefore start drawing architecture initially on a graph sheet to “free” your hand.
• Vanishing Point & Perspective Lines. First, locate your drawings’ “vanishing Point.” Vanishing point is the point where the “perspective lines” of buildings tend to meet on the horizon. Having done that, place it somewhere in the three fourth corner of your rectangular chart paper. From the top of the paper, draw at least ten pairs of “perspective lines,” all ending at the “vanishing Point.”
• Building Majors. Place the building within the framework of the perspective lines to resemble rough cuboids. Use a ruler, held at arm’s length, to get the basic proportions of your architectural drawing, correct. Draw the “major lines” of the building. Major lines are the lines that visually divide the building laterally and horizontally.
• Ignore the surroundings. Highlight major light and shade areas in the architecture/building you are trying to draw. They will define the area and the volume of the structure.
• Support Framework. Fill in the small details of your architectural drawing such as windows and pillars, working towards finer details as you proceed. Do not try to be too caught up in trying to draw each fold of the window curtain. It is futile and you rather concentrate on the solid lines, which curve around the architecture.
• Surroundings. When you are satisfied with your capture of a particular building, start with the surroundings. It is a thumb rule to paint the surroundings of your architectural drawing, more in a broad stroke style than details, for they will take the attention away from the main building. However, avoid putting additional imaginary items into the surroundings. They will not add anything but a degree of cheap make up that can quite clearly be made out.
• Perseverance. Last but not the least; do not expect yourself to become the next Rembrandt in the first architectural sketch itself. There are only three rules to architectural drawings, patience, patience, and more patience.
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Pencil Drawing - The Best Painting Form to Start With
By Claude Thomas | October 29, 2008
By Murtaza Habib
Colors are not necessary to make an efficient art; just a few sketches can give perfection to your work. Color just provides glamour to your paintings and you just need a paper and pencil to create a magnificent quality of art. Today many people have taken up the drawing hobby and it is done in various parts of the world, by different artists creating a lot of masterpieces. You can find a vast number of this art form in different art galleries around you. Making drawings with a pencil is an art that makes an awesome impact on their onlooker, showing them dreams to be an artist.
Pencil Drawing is one of the easiest and efficient arts, which you can take as a pass time as well as full time hobby or job. Interested ones do not have to invest on the colors or brushes, which is almost essential with other forms of painting. Here, you would just need a piece of paper and a good pencil to sketch your imagination. As far as the investment is considered, you just got to buy some of the specially made pencils of different grade and some good quality papers.
Numerous people around us think themselves as a terrible artist and hence stay away from the word painting as much as they can. Yet they should be ready to try to draw. You don’t have to be a professional artist nor need you to create a masterpiece. You just have to know how to grip a pencil and how to differ pressure on your grip, to build different sketches on the paper and the rest would fall in place itself.
A little devotion put into practice can transform a learner to an expert artist. You just need to have the power to transform your imagination and ideas on a paper. An intense observation and little months of practice can turn your work to a work of genius. So, if you have even 10 percent of interest in pencil drawing and you really want to come out of the category of immature to an expert, start practicing straight away.
There are various procedures of Pencil Drawing, but this does not matter for the beginners. It should be clear to you that no great things or art become famous without hard work, and also there is no short cut to achievements without success. This world has produced a variety of famous artists, and they showed their excellent masterpiece to the world. These artists also started from the base and worked firmly towards their art.
Being an artist, I would prefer Pencil Drawing as the best drawing art to start with, for the beginners. I have tried many painting techniques, but the best one suited as learner was mastering how to use the pencil. Gradually, you can develop your skills by practicing hard, in various painting styles and following the various necessary steps to your expertise.
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Acrylic Painting - Tools For Acrylic Painting
By Claude Thomas | October 28, 2008
By Murtaza Habib
Acrylic is a manufactured fiber derived from a polymer of colorless, flammable liquid. It is soft, resistant to wrinkles and shrinkage and has a property of drying up quickly. Acrylic paints can be used in high gloss or matte finishes. As with oils, the pigment amount and particle size can alter the paint sheen. In the same way, matting agents can be added to give a dull look. Topcoats or varnishes are used to alter the sheen as well.
The major advantage as well as disadvantage of acrylic painting is that it dries really fast. So, it is better that you expose your painting to its advantage and at the same time envelope your painting from its disadvantage to reap maximum benefit. However, before you go into the intricacies of this type of painting, you need to understand some of the tools for this type of painting because any artist is incomplete without his tools.
Tools for Acrylic Painting:
Colors:
While selecting the colors, one should not use too many at once single. By using only a few colors, any shade can be created. Colors that are usually recommended are: Burnt Umber, Ultramarine Blue Titanium, White Alizarin Crimson or Cadmium Red and Lamp Black.
Brushes:
1. Fan Brushes - These are used for various things like for painting fur, grass or to produce foliage etc.
2. Tooth Brushes- These are usually used to give the spraying effect, the abstract splattering, stone texture etc. An example being, to give the effect of a star-studded sky.
Painting Surface:
1. Wood - One of the most commonly used surfaces for acrylic painting is wood. It has a grainy texture which is sometimes essential for the concept of the painting. However, it should be first sealed with glue gypsum or acrylic medium. If this is not done, the liquid gets quickly soaked-up by wood resulting in failure or frustrating efforts.
2. Maisonette - Maisonette is a very smooth surface to paint on. Again, this surface should be primed using a gypsum.
3. Canvas - It is the most widely used surface for acrylic painting. The extra-smooth and prevention of the liquid drying up quickly is done using plaster of paris.
Medium:
Water and acrylic mediums are used to dilute the acrylics. Water works really well but with the passage of time, cracks are produced in the paints. The usage of mediums further delays the cracking of process for many more years to come.
Last but not the least; a large plastic palette is a must or something that is sturdy and waterproof to hold under the paints. Here all the color-mixing is done.
Technique of painting:
The entire canvas should be vertically painted by a layer of gypsum and the entire system should be left for about 30 minutes. Then using a course sand-paper, one is supposed to sand the surface. Now the second layer of gypsum is applied, but in a horizontal way. The sanding technique is repeated after the gypsum gets dried. The painting-sanding technique is repeated on a personal choice -till the time one thinks, the canvas surface has become smooth enough. In case of wood or Maisonette, required sealing and priming should be done.
Now with a nice canvas, one can transform his/her imagination into the pictorial reality. It is however suggested to the rookies that they should begin with their ideas on a piece of paper, board or cheap canvas, then move on to the surface; they want to present their paintings on.
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Patriotic Music
By Claude Thomas | August 24, 2008
By Sturat Mitchel
Music has long been a powerful force in inspiring people and rousing their feelings to do something worthwhile, something huge, something constructive and even something patriotic. Music can be so influential that it can even influence itself, with a composition or a song being produced after being inspired from another composition or song.
One particular type of music that continues to fire the passions of people from all over the world are patriotic music. Perhaps no country right now is ever more concerned with patriotic music than America due to the upcoming presidential election. Even Hollywood politics are strongly felt in numerous presidential campaigns where celebrities support their respective candidates of choice.
The lyrics of Francis Scott Key’s Star Spangled Banner (1814), America’s national anthem continues to fuel the nationalistic spirit of the nation. Such patriotic music continues to be played in major events be in the fields of sports, entertainment, education and so forth.
Hollywood politics is very evident when it comes to the national anthem since most famous singers are invited to perform it like Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey among many others. The legendary African-American guitarist, Jimi Hendrix rendered an exceptional performance of it in 1969 at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair.
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Drums, An Ancient Instrument That Rocks the Modern Music World
By Claude Thomas | August 6, 2008
By Vin Hayes
I personally prefer the drums because of the loud and solid base they provide for a song. Without them, the song would sound washed out and dull. How many times have you listened to a hardcore rock song and head-banged to the beat of the drums? It’s what keeps the music afloat.
The drums have been around for ages, longer than any human alive today can remember. Although we use drums today mainly for musical purposes, drums served as a source of communication for ancient tribes. Africa uses what is called a “talking drum”, which can convey messages using pitches and inflections used in languages.
To motivate soldiers, drums are used. The beat sets a pace just like it would for a rock band who needs their solid pace to create a successful song. In the old-time based movies about colonial wars and such you often see a drummer at the front of an army procession, rat-a-tat-tatting away for the men behind them.
Traditional cultures use drums for ceremonies of a religious nature. The beats of the drum in an American Indian pow wow aren’t there for pleasure, you know. Some say that drums can eradicate unruly spirits or bring up good ones during a ceremony.
In addition to being used for those purposes, drums can be used in music therapy. This can provide motor skills to someone in therapy to regain them. There are many reasons why the drums are specifically used for music therapy, among them being their easiness to use and tactile nature.
Of course, the same kind of drum is not used for everything. For instance, a rock drummer would like something loud and with a low pitch, whereas a jazz drummer might prefer a softer and crisper drum sound. because of this, not every drum is made the same. The tone of a drum depends mostly on the shell, the different type of drumheads, and the tension of said drumheads.
The drumheads, or the material on the top and bottom of a drum, are the things that effect the sound of a drum the most. Thick drumheads are deep-sounding and are loud. Plastic drumheads produce dull overtones, making the pitch stay relatively the same. Drumheads that have dots near the center dull the overtones even more. Finally, drumheads with outside “sound rings” get rid of the overtones nearly completely.
A secondary factor that affects the sound of a drum is the tightness that the drumhead is fastened to the shell of a drum. This is just as important as the type of drumhead because when the hoop that holds the drumhead to the shell is put on, the bolts around the hoop can be adjusted to reduce or increase the amplitude and frequency of the sound the drum produces.
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First Inversion Chords
By Claude Thomas | August 3, 2008
By John Aschenbrenner
You must first fully understand “root position” chords before you attempt to understand inversions. Inversions are based on a full knowledge of root position.
Read the essay on ROOT POSITION CHORDS if you haven’t already.
First of all, what is an “inversion?” It means, literally, “to turn upside down.”
Remember that in the root position chord, the name of the chord (C, for example) was always the same as bottom note (the key furthest to your left.)
So if you played a C chord, the lowest key of that chord IN ROOT POSITION is always C.
Here’s a C chord:
G
E
C
The C is on the bottom, the E is in the middle, and the G is on the top.
Now take that bottom note C, and put it on the top of the pile:
C
G
E
Now you have a C chord in which the bottom note is no longer the root of the chord ( C ) but has been changed to E. The chord is still a C chord, except that it is now a different “flavor” of C.
Let’s do it with an F chord. Here’s an F chord:
C
A
F
The F is on the bottom, the A is in the middle, and the C is on the top.
Now take that bottom note F, and put it on the top of the pile:
F
C
A
Now you have an F chord in which the BOTTOM note is no longer the root of the chord ( F ) but has been changed to A. The chord is still an F chord, except that it is now a different “flavor” of F.
The principle is universally the same with all 12 chords: to make a “first inversion” of a chord, take the bottom note of that chord and move it to the top.
Do this with the basic chords C F G D E and A. Don’t go further until you fully understand the idea and can play C F G D E and A chords in first inversion and root position.
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