3.20.2008

Other things, et cetera, and so on #2

Good Things in the Art World

I have been following the progress of Bryan Larsen's latest oil painting over the past month or so, and so far the results are pretty amazing. He posts updates on his progress to his blog RationalArt, and through his posts I have been learning about techniques in oil painting that 1) I never knew, and 2) never thought I'd be interested in. Perhaps it's because I really enjoy his work and respect his talent that I can appreciate the technique. Strangely, when someone throws paint at a canvas or uses "found objects" (i.e. trash) to adorn a childlike rendering of roadkill, I'm not that interested in their "craft".

Also, he has a nice large reproduction of a commissioned painting he did for the cover of the BB&T 2007 Annual Report. (it's at the end of the post, and click the image for a larger version) You may remember BB&T as the bank that gave a $1M donation to Marshall University with the stipulation that Atlas Shrugged be taught.


Don't Mock the Muhammad

Bin Laden is in the news again, this time ranting against the Pope and Europe for Muhammad mockery. On top of all the other supposed evils that the West has perpetrated on the Muslim world, the Danish cartoons are apparently among the worst:
"You went overboard in your unbelief and freed yourselves of the etiquettes of dispute and fighting and went to the extent of publishing these insulting drawings," he said. "This is the greater and more serious tragedy, and reckoning for it will be more severe." [bold added]
If you're wondering how it's possible that cartoons could create such a fuss, now is a good time to point you to an excellent article by Elan Journo in The Objective Standard, called "The Jihad on America". This article goes into great detail regarding the Islamic assault on America, including an insightful analysis of the Danish cartoon issue, and how Islamic leaders stirred up the outrage in their own people. You can see the opening paragraphs of the article without a subscription, but I can't recommend highly enough that you just buy a full subscription. It's a great journal.

2 comments:

Lynne said...

Thanks for pointing out Rational Art. Not only is the artwork really good, it's great to be able to follow the artist's process in working with oils (my husband painted the one I use as my icon)! I think it's fascinating to see the model's fully realized skirt against just a sketched arm.

C. August said...

I really like the sense of life Larsen portrays in his works. It's heroic, representational, and really well done.

If you read back in his blog a few months, you can see that he recently found a new way of painting fleshtones that he is now perfecting. It's really interesting to see his older works compared with the newer using the different techniques. Since I can't see them in person, I can only go by the photos. But from what I can see, the new technique is a big improvement.

I saw his work on the Quent Cordair site, and his work stood out and drew me in more than any others. Then the blog was a real treasure of a find.

OK, the wind the made some loud noise and now my 2yr old son is yelling for me. Gotta go.