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I am a painter. www.StephenCefalo.com, http://twitter.com/#!/CefaloStudio

Thursday, May 26, 2011

What I think of Picasso's Blue and Rose Periods



I like them.

These are all to me very emotionally powerful.  The background there looks straight out of Redon.

During the time my parents were working in a realty office in New Jersey we often spent a lot of time coloring in a conference room.  A reproduction of this painting either sat on a shelf or hung on a wall there, but I remember being inwardly flabbergasted and embarrassed that the boy in it was not wearing clothes, and nobody seemed to mind the picture.


Mother and Child by Pablo Picasso
This is one of my favorite mother and child drawings.  It's all about the gesture in that top hand.

 I find the perfectly melancholy that I want in these compositions.  So full of love and anxiety.


This is my favorite Picasso piece, and one of my all time favorite paintings.  I feel that in many of my own paintings I have unwittingly referenced it and continue to.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Great links to free on-line and pdf scans of classic art books

Many of the great classic books on drawing and painting are difficult to find or out of print.  Recently I got an iPad which is beautifully comfortable to read on, so I'm re-enjoying some and reading some for the first time.  I discovered that if I email myself a pdf book I can read it in ibooks on my iPhone or iPad. Many of the books on these archive.org links are google books and can be downloaded directly to the google book app.  My desktop somehow  actually automatically puts the google book downloads on my iPad though, which is nice.  If you can possibly get the ibook version I find that this is recommendable, since you can highlight, bookmark, and take notes in the margins, but google books is still nice.  For you Kindle-readers, many of the oldies are available in that format too, and there are even some audio classics from Librivox, my favorite source for free audiobooks.   

If you're not a mobile device person, though, these are perfectly readable on your desktop or laptop, although it's harder to lean back in a chair or recline in a bed with a desktop.

There are actually scores of these old books, but I have chosen links to the ones I have personally read and enjoyed.  I'd love to know what you find on there too, though.


The Human Figure
John Henry Vanderpoel


















































Landscape Painting
Birge Harrison

The Practice and Science of Drawing
Harold Speed


The Painter In Oil
Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst


Seven Discourses On Painting
Sir Joshua Reynolds



Lectures On Landscape (audiobook)
John Ruskin
 http://www.archive.org/details/lectures_landscape_librivox

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Interesting Study On the Effect of Painting on the Brain


This was originally posted on Gawker here, but I found it amazing.

Gawker


6,184 views, May 8, 2011 4:26 PM