Daub

One of the things that made seeing this painting a valuable experience for me was the plentiful background material it was shown next to… drawings, paintings, sketches etc. it showed the depth of creative process that Picasso employed.

One thing I have not seen discussed here is the fact that this painting was commissioned by the (Spanish) Republican government. Effectively, there is a degree of propaganda to the painting. No shade on the guy… my other favorite war crime painting is the executions of the third of may by Goya, and it was also a political commission.

> it's rare for photographers to use scopes for color

True, but that is there loss. A scope is a visualization of the color properties of a photo and any problem-solving individual should value visualization highly. I am certain that Rembrandt would have murdered to get his hands of a histogram.

In Madrid’s military museum there is a little known painting done as a right wing responce to Guernica - The Paracuellos Massacres" (Las matanzas de Paracuellos) by José Gutiérrez Solana. The subject is the massacre of Spanish civilians by the Republican forces. It is almost as large as Guernica and done in a realistic style. As an obscure counterpoint to Guernica it has a curiosity value. It borrows heavily from the magnificent Executions of the Fifth May by Goya. Btw… All three paintings were commissioned as political statements. I remember seeing all three in one day when I was a young art student. A decidedly odd experience.

I teach design and art and routinely supervise photo projects. The low level of expectation that even the best students have of color editing amazes me. Few can think further than brightness/contrast adjustments. Lightroom is seen as the pinnacle yet its hue tools are beyond dreadful. The hue curves in DaVinci are pretty much the only act in town for sophisticated hue adjustments.

> I'm looking for something novel and interesting, that isn't absolutely crowded that I could meaningfully contribute to.

I would say that a hobby is a bit like a fetish in that it is derived from our interior psychology. My father’s hobby was repairing old scientific instruments, which was perfectly suited to his disposition for quantifying everything in his life, including his family (bless you dad).

The most available lidar is found on your iPhone, but the results are orders of magnitude less detailed than that derived from photogrammetry. How ever an advantage is that lidar is not confused by reflections.

I wrote some teaching material on the rise and fall off Palm for which I produced a graphic showing how the palm split and merged over the years. Quite honestly it's one of the most complex and insane graphics i have ever made.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/7hh5uzoaj2x7zq60yv9vz/palm_ti...

Thanks for reminding me of this. Used it once or twice to prank co workers.

I belive that an early beowser, possibly Mosaic, had an edit button. Think of that and the fundamental change of internet philosophy it implies!

OK, maybe my use of that phrase was a bit ill-judged. However, aside from supporting artists, what did the initiative achieve? Keeping artists off the dole should not be, IMHO, a goal in itself. The reputation of Dutch culture at the time was not brilliant, though neither was it bad. A strategic attitude would have been more effective... maybe target one or two artists and promote them.

The Young British Artists (YBA) boom of the 80s was a product of the innovative teaching environment of Goldsmiths' college plus the drive of people like Damien Hirst, who organized the ground-breaking Freeze exhibition. The British Council did their best to capitalize on this.

Oddly enough I have just finished making the same observation and used the word 'crap' to describe the result, without even seeing your comment.

Artist speaking. A similar scheme was employed by Holland for many years. The state committed to buy at least one artwork from each artist per year and predictably their warehouses became filled with crap art that no one wanted.

That being said, wise governments recognize the value of some kind of support of the arts. One reason for the incredible esteem that Korean culture is held in within Asia is the Korean government's active support of its filmmaking, TV and music industry. This was also true in Renaissance Italy (courtesy of the Medici family) and in 17th Century France (courtesy of Louis XIV). It was even true of the CIA's active support of abstract expressionism. The payoff of such support is soft power, which is a very real force.

To a degree you have a point. Indeed, this is exactly one of the points of attraction that Asia holds for me. Anecdote: my Japanese girl friend showed me a bunch of Japanese coins. I thought they were cool and asked if I could have one. She agreed and I selected the oldest, to which her response was 'that so British'.

However.... the point I was making was somewhat different. The buildings of Borough market are still there. What has changed is the community, which has been replaced outright. Moreover, it has been replaced with a 'pseudo community' akin to what you might find in an airport - transient office workers looking for somewhere a short distance from city center. It is the commodification of community - sold to the highest bidder.

I used to live next to Borough market and saw it devolve from a genuine working class market to a chi-chi hive. The old pie and mash shop was replaced by offices and high-end trinket shops, as were all the other old-school business. It was like watching someone you love being embalmed whilst still alive. I now live in Asia where the market tradition are still vivid and alive.

For those who are not familiar with Bruce MacEvoy’s Handprint website, this guy knows more about color theory than almost anyone who has ever lived. Not the world’s best organized site…. Start here: https://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/water.html

The Jetsons was honored by the Power Puff girls with a number of Easter egg appearances. Just search ‘power puff firms and jetsons’ for examples.

Certainly some art critics and artists over-apply and over-think so-called 'golden' geometry. What I think is happening is very simple... that artists avoid regularity (e.g. two lights of the same color and intensity, exact center placement, exact placement at thirds, corner placement, two regions at the same angle, two hue spreads of equal sides on opposite sides of the RYB hue wheel etc etc). These loose 'rules' of avoidance can be confused with 'rules' of prescription such as color harmony, golden section etc.

> Natural Laws Within Us

We did some statistical analysis on the golden ratio and its use in art. It does indeed seem that artists gravitate away from regular geometry such as squares, thirds etc and towards recursive geometry such as the golden ratio and the root 2 rectangle. Most of our research was on old master paintings, so it might be argued that this was learned behavior, however one of our experiments seems to show that this preference is also present in those without any knowledge of such prescribed geometries.

One advantage of using hello as a greeting is that it is agnostic of social rank. This made it the perfect choice for greeting people of unknown social rank on the phone.

Having traveled the world quite a bit I can attest to the ubiquity of the word hello… almost everywhere I go it is understood. ‘OK’ has a similar ubiquity, and it is interesting that both words are relatively new additions to the English (universal?) language.

Of course, what we need now is for someone to store those books. A book being catalogued before it has been written - a cool idea.

I used to demonstrate PS1 in my digital painting class. I would show that without a layer-based system it was still possible to create a composite using calculations feature. The process is incredibly simple… an alpha, a foreground and a background plus some addition and multiplication. Even art students understand it. I’m still blown away by how much functionality they managed to squeeze into an executable small encounter to email to someone.

FYI.., the version I used was registered to Apple. Apparently, the Knoll brothers demoed PS to apple and they promptly shared it amongst themselves and their buddies. Almost all illegitimate copies of it are derived from that pirated copy.

Fun fact… John knolls wife was the founding member of the Photoshop ‘Widows’ club… a home to people who have lost loved ones to software.

That is certainly how oil painters paint. But painting on absorbent stone is likely very different - more akin to fresco, and would probably not support a very layered approach.

I used to teach in a UK university and encountered many American students on exchange. It was almost their standard policy to claim disability when something did not go their way.

> a good understanding of color theory is also necessary.

Agreed. I would also speak out again the uninformed use of pre-configured color combinations. As someone who teaches art/design these are the bane of my life… students use them as a replacement for color theory. A designer should at least know how to parse a color into its hue, saturation and lightness components. Most everything else should follow naturally.

To these fine tips I would add: ‘test on as many devices as you are reasonably able’. Something can look fine on your laptop but lousy on the platform for which you are aiming to disseminate.

'I'm sorry for how you feel' is in the same class as 'I'm sorry if my words hurt you'. They are both classes of non-apologies.

'I'm sorry that our actions caused such distress' come a bit closer to being a true apology.

Importantly, 'if' was changed to 'that'.

Online shopping of fashion items can never replace the experience of physical shopping, especially with friends. Geeks are no different... shopping can be a delightful experience if you are up for it. Part of which might be the thrill of discovering things you are not searching for.

For those of you puzzled as to how three separate apps (Photo, Designer and Publsher) have become one (Studio), as a long-time user it was always clear that under the hood this was always the case. Indeed such interoperability has clearly been built into the Affinity suite from the ground up.

This is 100 miles away from the interoperability of Adobe's Dynamic Link whereby apps such as Premier and After Effects are 'united' in a manner that feels clunky and forced. Almost all Adobe apps were acquisitions, and most of them are now horrendously long in the tooth. Uniting them seamlessly would be impossible.

I adore Affinity photo for its top to bottom support for high dynamic range images. Editing RAW images is a buttery smooth dream, compared to Photoshop, which feels like I am banging my head against the software.

> (I think for now my unhelpful response is: manipulate your RGB images as much as you like; just do it in the OKLAB color space.)

Good advice. I am often introducing photographers to color editing in Lab. They are always amazed at how much more sensitive their lightness and saturation adjustments are.

The brushes are editable to a degree that I have not seen in other apps. For this the authors have employed a node-based system which they call 'programable'. Not sure how valid that it, but it is certainly novel.