ARTIZEN: Critiquing the critics

WHAT are the areas to see when you want to judge a piece of art or a piece of design?
Here are some critical points to consider before one ventures into art critiquing and they are very interesting and fun to know: First there is (A)Elements of Art and then (B) Principles of Design.
So, what are these elements of art? They are 1. Line, 2. Perspective, 3. Shape, 4. Colour and 5. Texture. Once you know these, your art critiquing process gets easier. I have seen many art critics committing the same mistake: they write about when the painter started his career, when and where his first exhibition was held and what paintings are on display at the current exhibition. But they simply miss out on the very subject of art, the description and depth of an artist’s paintings. Whenever you have these points at hand, start working on them, and it will be an amazing piece of work. Both the biography of the artist and his work of art are important.
Principles of Design includes: 1.Rhythm and Movement, 2. Balance, 3. Proportion, 4. Variety and Emphasis and 5. Unity or Proximity.
The first one is formative, the second one is descriptive. Some say that art critiquing process needs description, analysis, interpretation, judgment and creditline. But it’s entirely up to the critic to consider which points to emphasise once his subject is identified.

FONTASIA

Hi everyone,

I WANT to share with you something an aspiring designer needs to know. I had a casual chat with a magazine head who wanted to improve the design of his pages. It seemed to me that the head was not very proficient with the idea of designing, nor the designers who were making their pages had good colour sense. Sometimes it’s offending to see abrupt use of direct colours. It's better for magazines and supplements not use direct pinks and magentas and cyans. And some have been using age-old logos that look like government seals and stamps. In this post, you will find some solutions:

COLOURS: It's important not use DIRECT colours; a mix of TWO or THREE on the DARKER TONE is advisable. If you already have a colour palette made or a colour style prepared, just pick up your choicest colour. Spend some time to prepare a colour chart.

STORY LENGTH & DISPLAY: Two equal sized stories placed side by side everyday is most likely to spoil the display. It’s like a children’s design. Everyday, a page cannot look the same. In this case, working with varieties helps. One story (the lead) has to be at least bigger than another in preferably a 6 against 2 column display one day, and 5 against 3 another day.

PHOTOGRAPHS: Photographers are toiling on the field while a designer sits in an air-conditioned room spoiling their efforts by abruptly cutting pics and to rub a pinch of salt to their wound, by giving a byline. Cropping of photographs needs some technique. For readers too, an unmanaged cropping is offending. All designers should also have some sense of photography. Discuss with your photographers what kind of pictures will alleviate your page. The editor will not bar a designer from talking to the photographers. Good designers have always liaised with photographers and production department.

DESIGNING IN A HURRY: Again, keeping a colour palette ready and available at hand will definitely save the time. Maintaining a library of stock photographs also helps.

HORIZONTAL VS VERTICAL: Making best use of the page space, one can play with horizontal and vertical display even in intros, blurbs and headlines. Playing vertical against horizontal automatically improves a page.

LAST BUT NOT THE LEAST: Don’t take it seriously. Designing is fun. If you don’t enjoy designing, maybe it’s not your job.

Joy and celebration

HAPPY DIWALI
THIS Diwali, wish you prosperity and good health. Let us make a pledge on this occasion: Let our actions be driven by conscience and not tendencies. Let us learn how to respect environment and the greens, for they are the resources we need to make our living. Let us embrace one another in true friendship and bring cheers in everyone's heart.

Still Growing

GUWAHATI has become a big city. Sometimes I feel it may have already surpassed the size of Pune. Though, populationwise, Pune is a much bigger city. I have to go to Nagaon through Guwahati, there is no other option and I had never liked Guwahati some ten years back. And I used to lament the bad condition of its roads. Now, it’s a different scenario altogether: Wide, polished roads passing through Maligaon and Lokhra and big shopping complexes: a city rapidly changing and all spruced up particularly after the India-Indonesia-Thailand tour, the National Games and the Asian Athletics—all events happening one after another. For Guwahatians, it may sound a bit weird, I missed the floating restaurant experience as the water had receded in Brahmaputra this time around. And if I had an inkling that it would take two hours without any traffic jam to reach the passport office in Beltola from Maligaon, I would have hired a helicopter service, if I could. But I enjoyed the ride as the city bus service is really good. We should now have a sky train or metro to connect it from one end to another.

The leaves

My tribute to four Spanish masters

Hi everyone,
IT'S BEEN long time since I have posted anything on the blog.
Here is my small tribute to four Spanish masters.

Four Spanish Masters
Calatrava, I bow down to you,
For, someone said, “why is Taj Mahal a wonder”?
“Because it's wonderful”, I said.
If appreciations could express themselves,
they would dance around your majestic bridges
And make them look as simple as ‘wonder’.

One master has influenced Carlo’s canvas
And adorned Boccioni’s brush
For how does one adore you
If not with lines, shapes and lights, where words fail?

The king of guitar has awed all with his tunes,
The black magic woman itself succumbs in front of his
Lilting notes.

Neruda is not a man of charming chants
But his words of a mundane world has caused flutter
across the globe.

Four Spanish masters, whom I revere.
Their magic wands touched the frames;
All lifeless dull canvases sprang back to life.
.......................................

Hi all,
FIRST, let me be honest with myself. I am not a fan of Picasso. I personally find Gockel or Kandinsky better painters than Picasso. Maybe, because I love easy flow of the brush and not twists or angles or cubes. If I become an artist, I would not draw anything cubic or hard edges or anything futuristic. I would rather draw something easy and flowing, something very contemporary. Though I respect Picasso for he is an artist in his own right. If I ask you what is the most important monumental work of Picasso? You’ll definitely say, Guernica. Right? But what moves me the most is his work Violin Jolie Eva, 1912 and Girl in Front of a Mirror, 1932.
The first one is the best example of his experimentation with collage and assemblage, where simple art has become three dimensional and sculptural. In Girl in Front of a Mirror, we see the harmony and sensuality of colour and patterns. In this, there is not hard geometric pattern, but pure rhythmic flow. Many art critics see Picasso only as a proponent of Cubist art. Well, he does represent the genre of cubo-fururistic art, but if you closely view details of his arts segment-wise, you will see three main periods that gave birth to such wonderful works of art as Family of Acrobats with Ape, 1905 and Two Brothers, 1906, which I think have been largely ignored by art critics.
The first period is his experimentation with colours: Picasso’s Blue and Picasso’s Pink: a well-balanced colour composition with brilliant tones creating warm moods. The second period is experimentation with shapes, for which he is famous as a cubist painter. The surreal Picasso does not impress me as other such artists do. The third period is his work with rhythm and flow, which is visible in Girl in Front of a Mirror.
.......................................
I LOVE Neruda for the simplicity of his renderings and the mundane, down-to-earth voice that speaks as clearly and simply as never before.
“And it was at that age…Poetry arrived
In search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where
It came from, from winter or a river.” ---- Poetry, from Isla Negra
Neruda’s words are simple, vivid, clear and there is no hidden aesthetics, it’s pure language for language’s sake.
“Then up the ladder of the earth I climbed
Through the barbed jungle’s thickets
Until I reached you Macchu Picchu” ---- The Heights of Macchu Picchu
He is very candid and there is no hypocrisy when he says “I loved her and sometimes she loved me too.” His love is not platonic and he is not worried about it.
.......................................
SANTIAGO Calatrava is perhaps the most revered architect in the world. I wish to see his masterpieces personally, and I don’t know when that will happen.
.......................................
I REVERE Santana for one or two of his musical pieces. Though I am not a great fan of rock music, I do love new age world music, semi-classical Indian and fusion. Those who have a little bit of taste of Indian music classes, must have known how rigorous Indian music is unlike its Western counterpart. For, we have a tradition of rich and varied music which is centuries old. I remember, my music teacher used to beat students with a wooden-ruler if any of them failed to perform or did not do the homework.

ROADSIDE BEAUTY

P.O.E.T.R.Y . L.O.U.N.G.E

I am happy because you live

I am happy because the sun shines,
I am happy because it rains,
I am happy because the other person is how he is,
I am happy because flowers bloom in the gardens I have seen,
And in the forests I haven't seen,
It does not matter whether I look at them or not,
I am happy that they are.
I am happy because right now

some people are walking on the street,
some people are working somewhere,

some children are playing in some country,
Someone is buying new clothes from a clothshop in distant China,
Some kids are romping and whistling

in some school in some country.
A salesman is negotiating somewhere in US,
A shop boy is placing the newly-ordered books

in his book store in some city in Australia,
It does not matter whether I look at them or not,
I am happy that they are.
There are forests in the world,

some I know and some I have not seen,
There are various plants, ferns, animals, birds in those forests,
some I know some I have not seen,
It does not matter any way, I am happy that they live.
I am happy that the oceans are flowing,

I am happy that clouds form rain.
I am happy that tomorrow will be a new day.

I do not want to manipulate anybody,
I am happy that things are the way they are.

FROM THE DESIGN DESK

STANDARD DESIGN
When your design does not carry texts, it's better to keep the subject at the centre.

CLASSIC LAYOUT: A STUDY IN DETAIL

Hi friends,

You have seen that the fonts used in a Classic layout is very different from the fonts used in either a meta or a contemporary layout. While in meta (which acually means 'beyond'), I have used very strong fonts and given an experimental digital distortion. In a Classic layout, designers have been successful in using ornamental fonts or fonts that are anywhere near them.

Check in detail the colour combination. I have experimented with absolute black with cool colour combination, since black is a negative colour, it goes well with both warm and cool colours.

Hey folks, isn't page designing wonderful and fascinating? It's as interesting as Twenty-20 cricket, I bet.

Bye for now.

CLASSIC LAYOUT

CONTEMPORARY LAYOUT

META DESIGN

COLOUR, DESIGN AND LAYOUT

ONE of the emerging trends in modern layout design is the use of unique combination of colour patterns in page-designing. “The most important thing to understand is that we never see colour in a vacuum; we perceive colour in relation to other colours, in an environment. When you choose a second colour you must first envision how that colour will enteract with the rest of your design” --Binns. In a different context, they could be called background and foreground.

Contemporary design has taken mainly two types of symmetry in magazines and newspapers: vertical and horizontal, and most others are a combination and permutation of these two. This is what I have observed: You could hardly find radial rendering in a page, while it has been effectively used in other media or other forms of art, such as textile design, carpettry, pottery, porcelain, discs, etc.

The same page can look absolutely different in different colours and layouts. It's not that only light colours make a better page or using too much of dark colour is “disgusting”. A design with too much of hue and value needs a better newsprint to effectively etch out details. The better the newsprint, the more visible the details. Secondly, don’t stick to lighter and darker part of a design. That is part of colour pattern for which the technical term is “value”, which can also be defined as “tone”.

Both light and dark can be used under different circumstances and page layout for a magazine is definitely going to be different from the layout of a website page.

I love to work with designs. Whenever I take a magazine in my hand, I go through the designs, layout, pictures and every detail of it, and I have observed that black and blue make perfect background colours for many designs, and many designers have agreed with that. Another colour for superb background is pantone mixed with chocolate brown. Dark heena green is also a perfect background colour depending on what is the foreground.

Easy Post

Hi friends, I have been receiving mails and calls asking me why comments coming to my blog are to be registered. I know the complications of this and the difficulties you may find and that's why I have now opened them for you, so that you can post your views even without being a registered member.

Digital painting: Series 1

CLAY MODEL

I started experimenting with clay when I was a student. The model of Adam and Eve was made sometime between 1998 and 1999. Before that I made several other models, some in wood and others in paper. Wood curving and sculpture are some finest examples of fine art. And how could I miss them?

Adam and Eve in Clay

Digital painting

THE FLOAT 2

Digital Painting: Series1:A

Flower vase

A Very Simple 3D Rendering

Simply Design

YOU have seen that a good design has a balanced colour combination, with rhythm. Today’s modern designs were envisaged by great aestheticians and philosophers in the past as well. Plato felt that beautiful objects incorporated proportion, harmony and unity among their parts. Here you will see types of balance and symmetry in design or any form of art. While designing something, we can keep in mind the colour patterns that go along in one design and don’t in another. Then we are more aware of why a design clicks and another doesn't. And then we also know how an apt use of colour can make something look better.

A Small Note on Primitive Art and Civilisation

ART started with man’s desire to improve and improvise. It is the inherent desire of the primitive mind to explore which gave birth to science, and of the same mind to make things better that gave birth to art. When we talk about primitive art, we also have to take into account the advent of civilisation. The most significant works of art that stood the test of time and stayed with us since the advent of civilisation are the stone works and pottery. When the primitive women made the beautiful pots (all emerged out of necessity, i.e. why someone would need them? To store water), using the rotating wheel, the selection of sticky clay, and fire to heat them up to a certain degree so they become hard, they were using the knowledge of science to make them. When the pots and jars were made, they were taken to the market for the purpose of bartering them against food or other articles or for selling. Pure business. Then the potters were told to design better styled pots with designs on them. Thus art played its role. Art came to the scene not only for art’s sake but also to improve business, which is seen even today with manufacturers needing designers to artists to advertising agencies to sell their products. In the primitive age, they worked hand in hand.

For understanding art, we start with the advent of civilisation itself. Art is one of the strongest modes of communication till today. And art has remained as the barometer of comparing and justifying cultures and civilisations. Archaeological finds and excavations tell us of the story of civilisations and how art, sculptures, pottery and architecture solve the jigsaw puzzle of the lost civilisations and also tell us how historically important they are. “Though archaeology shows excellent pottery made on the fast wheel as long as five thousand years ago in the Indus region, prehistoric archaeology in the Deccan also shows cruder pottery made without the wheel. Such pots of all sizes are being made today, by exactly the same methods, on the slow turning disc or without any disc at all. The remarkable feature is that this potter’s disc is to be handled only by the women.” (D. D. Kosambi: The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India in Historical Outline: P. 45)

More interestingly, you will see that the history of applied art goes hand in hand with the history of fine art. Today though these have become two separate disciplines of art, it helps us to know a little bit of the other.

Really easy and fun to draw

Simply art

SOME say art and design are different, it's true in one sense and also they are correlated. For what we call design today could well have been called aesthetics in older time. A good piece of art or design will move even those who don't have an idea of it. For we know how to appreciate an orderly created object. Things placed in order is also art, just like decorating your own house, you don't have to learn anything for it, you know it because you appreciate it. You don't have to be a scholar to design your living room. So,... let us keep it simple.. Graphic art is really really simple, very simple.
POSTED ON SEPT 5, 2007

Simple Graphics for Today

Simple Graphics for Today

AN IMAGE is what makes half of the image of a page layout. Very few working professionals have the idea of a neat, packaged and decorative style that can stand out. We need symmetry, balance and also variety. Now how to do that is a long way, you cannot expect such things in just one day. Today here are two pieces of graphic art for you all. The first one is about applicatin of how textile designs can be worked out, from the second, you will learn why too much of designs have a different area of application and usage. In Principles of Design, Joshua David McClurg-Genevese has pointed out five principles: Balance, Rhythm, Proportion, Dominance and Unity. I suggest that all aspiring designers read the article which is posted on the net.
Posted on Sept 5, 2007

Gerontion, let us keep it simple

Hi everyone, this is nice to see you here again. Illustrations, photographs and sketches have always attracted us whether we understand them or not. Can we try out something which is simple at the same time abstract, which is attractive and we feel like respecting them. Here is an attempt to understand sketching, I don't know how much I have succeeded (the one above), if you have liked it, it is enough for me.... So.... let's keep it simple.

Hi, everyone, it's wonderful to see you on this blog. This is my simple attempt to remain just connected always.

P.O.E.T.R.Y. L.O.U.N.G.E

Words

In the beginning was the word.
I uttered many words. They rose to the sky,
Took the shape of clouds, and started raining.
From today, I promise to utter better words.

I closed my eyes and said: People are in place and things are in order.
I opened my eyes to find that people are in place and things are in order.

Peace be on earth.
God, let the sun shine every day.
Let there be mornings and evenings.
Let the mornings be mixed with fresh fog and mist.

Let the plants grow,
Let there be a rainbow and butterflies and flowers
Let the ponds be filled with fishes,
Let the King’s godown be filled with grains
Let the people I know be happy, and the people I don’t know be happy.
Let there be health, wealth and happiness for all.
Bless the world with riches.
And make us innocent again.

My words rose to the sky
Took the shape of clouds and started raining.
It is harvesting time.
Jyoti Nath, Posted on September 4, 2007