Art
Blog posts about art.
How Pale Silverpoint and Metalpoint Drawings Really Are?
Looking at online images of silverpoint or metalpoint drawings, you will probably notice that many of them look very light and pale. Is this the norm? Why are they so light? And most importantly—how comes that only some metalpoint drawings look so pale while others appear much darker? Different computer monitors display images differently, thus you cannot be certain whether some artwork appears on your monitor the way it was intended to look like by the artist who scanned/photographed their work. Moreover, with image editing software like Photoshop, it is possible to alter how light or dark some digital image looks like. So how do these drawing actually look like in real life?
Metalpoint Drawing Tutorial: A Step by Step Guide to How I Made the “Snarling Wolf Tribal” Artwork
This tutorial is going to be a step by step guide in which I explain how I made my “Snarling Wolf Tribal” metalpoint drawing. This drawing was made with 24 karat gold, palladium, and aluminum, but the same instructions would be applicable also for making a silverpoint drawing (the word “silverpoint” is used when a drawing is made with silver).
Metalpoint Drawing: Snarling Wolf Tribal
This is a metalpoint drawing of a snarling wolf in profile. Image size is 8×10 inches. It is made with 24 karat gold, palladium, and aluminum. The more commonly used name for this drawing technique is “silverpoint,” but since I didn’t use silver for this artwork, I’m using the term “metalpoint” instead.
Portrait Commission in Metalpoint
This is a metalpoint drawing. It’s size is 8×10 inches. It is made with 24 karat gold and aluminum. Metalpoint drawings are made by dragging a piece of metal across a surface prepared with an abrasive ground. It’s somewhat similar to drawing with pencils except that the drawing surface must be akin to a very fine sandpaper. This drawing is a commission, my client wanted me to draw his portrait.
Silverpoint Art Beyond Silver: What Other Metals Artists Can Use For their Metalpoint Drawings
Silver is the most commonly used metal for creating metalpoint art. Even when discussing this art technique, the word “silverpoint” is used more commonly than “metalpoint.” Nonetheless, there are multiple other nice metals for silverpoint and metalpoint art that an artist can use instead of silver. This is going to be a guide to various metal options that are available for the metalpoint artist. In addition to silver, artists can use also other metals like copper, brass, bronze, aluminum, zinc, bismuth, nickel, tin, gold, platinum, palladium, or even harder metals like titanium or niobium.
Review and Comparison: Golden Silverpoint/Drawing Ground versus Roberson Silverpoint Drawing Ground
Silverpoint (or metalpoint in general) is a somewhat rarely used art technique, therefore only a few companies offer ready-made art materials for this technique. In this article I am going to review and compare two ready-made silverpoint grounds: Golden Silverpoint/Drawing Ground versus C. Roberson & Co Silverpoint Drawing Ground. Both of these drawing grounds are acrylic based, but they use different abrasive powders, hence the differences between them are very pronounced.
Tribal Badger T-Shirt
Here is a photo of the “Badger Forge” T-shirt I just got in the mail. I create custom stylized animal artworks for a living, and most of my clients commission me to create logotypes or tattoo designs for them. I enjoy seeing where and how my clients use these drawings, and this time I got something especially cool. My client, a knife maker for whom I had created a tribal badger logotype, used my image for some T-shirts. He sent me one as well.
What We Can Learn from Vintage Anti-Suffrage Postcards and Cartoons
As an artist, I find very interesting artworks that are meant to promote certain messages. Some messages are good or at least harmless; others are pretty nasty. This time I am going to analyze vintage anti-suffrage posters, postcards, and cartoons and take a closer look at the exact messages found in them. As you will quickly notice, some of these ancient and outdated ideas are still alive even in our more modern society a whole century after the initial artworks were created.
History of the Always Changing Female Beauty Standards
Humans have always tried to prescribe how the perfect female body ought to look like. Simultaneously, they have also been unable to stick to any specific beauty ideal for a prolonged period of time. Beauty ideals have changed significantly throughout the ages. Nonetheless, society has always tried to enforce whichever fad was prevalent at some time period, and whoever deviated from some standard got labeled as ugly. In this article, I will provide a short history of female beauty ideals throughout the ages. As you will quickly notice, what we consider a perfect female body in 21st century differs from what people considered beautiful in various other time periods and cultures. Once you realize the fleeting nature of beauty standards, you are forced to consider them in a new light and examine their tenability. Are we really justified in our clinging to some beauty standard and striving to change our bodies just to conform to the ideal? Or maybe we should rethink our obsession with the prevailing fads?
Body Hair: Hairy Female Legs
Growing up, I always felt the society pressuring me to conform. It wasn’t always verbal directions to behave in accordance with the accepted norms. Sure, I have often been explicitly told to “behave like a normal woman,” but it doesn’t need to be explicit. Humans are subject to peer pressure. We follow social cues in order to fit in. Conformity is simply something humans do. Whenever I was in a room with several other people who all behaved in the same way, I felt the pressure to conform and imitate their behavior.
