Painting and Drawing Course

Ralph Steadman (born Wallasey, 15 May 1936) is a British cartoonist and caricaturist who is perhaps best known for his work with American author Hunter S. Thompson.

Born in Wallasey, Cheshire, and brought up in Towyn, North Wales, Steadman attended Ysgol Emrys Ap Iwan (high school), Abergele, East Ham Technical College and the London College of Printing and Graphic Arts during the 1960s, doing freelance work for Punch, Private Eye, the Daily Telegraph, The New York Times and Rolling Stone during this time.

Steadman is renowned for his political and social caricatures and cartoons and also for illustrating a number of picture books. Awards that he has won for his work include the Francis Williams Book Illustration Award for Alice in Wonderland, the American Society of Illustrators’ Certificate of Merit, the W H Smith Illustration Award for I Leonardo, the Dutch Silver Paintbrush Award for Inspector Mouse, the Italian Critica in Erba Prize for That’s My Dad, the BBC Design Award for postage stamps, the Black Humour Award in France, and several Designers and Art Directors Association Awards. He was voted Illustrator of the Year by the American Institute of Graphic Arts in 1979.

Steadman had a long partnership with the American journalist Hunter S. Thompson, drawing pictures for several of his articles and books. He accompanied Thompson to the Kentucky Derby for an article for the magazine Scanlan’s, to the Honolulu Marathon for the magazine Running, and illustrated both Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72. Much of Steadman’s artwork revolves around Raoul Duke-style caricatures of Thompson: bucket hats, cigarette holder and aviator sunglasses.

Steadman appears on the second disc of the Criterion Collection Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas DVD set, in a documentary called “Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision”, which was made by the BBC in 1978, of Thompson planning the tower and cannon that his ashes were later blasted out of. The cannon was atop a 153-ft. tower of Thompson’s fist gripping a peyote button; Thompson demands that Steadman gives the fist two thumbs, “Right now.”

As well as writing and illustrating his own books and Thompson’s, Glorious Mr. Ralph Steadman has worked with writers including Ted Hughes and Brian Patten, and also illustrated editions of Alice In Wonderland, Treasure Island, Animal Farm and most recently, Fahrenheit 451.

Among the British public, Steadman is well known for his illustrations for the catalogues of the off-licence chain Oddbins. He also designed the labels for Flying Dog beer and Cardinal ‘Spiced’ Zin’, which was banned in Ohio for Steadman’s “disturbing” interpretation of a Catholic cardinal on its label.

Steadman also illustrates Will Self’s column in The Independent newspaper. Johnny Depp’s anthology of songs, “Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys” (2006) surprisingly contains two contributions from Steadman. He sings lead on “Little Boy Billee”, and sings backing vocals on Eliza Carthy’s song “Rolling Sea”. Depp played Raoul Duke in the film adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Steadman currently lives with his wife in Kent, England.

I know it seems dorky. But making a self contract actually works.  The contract we make is going to come in the form of a spreadsheet. Don’t worry, you don’t have to sign some statement saying how comitted you are to learning to draw and hang it somewhere in your house.  Instead, we will keep track of the time we spend practicing every day in the spreadsheet, and use this as a guide to see how self motivated we really are. Nothing can take the place of practicing your craft.  Think of yourself as a three year old learning to play the violin.  Things may start out sounding terrible but as time goes on those notes will become melodies.

Malcolm Gladwell in his new book Outliers:Is there such a thing as pure genious explores the age old question as to whether geniuses are born or made.

In the early 90s, the psychologist K Anders Ericsson and two colleagues set up shop at Berlin’s elite Academy of Music. With the help of the academy’s professors, they divided the school’s violinists into three groups. The first group were the stars, the students with the potential to become world-class soloists. The second were those judged to be merely “good”. The third were students who were unlikely ever to play professionally, and intended to be music teachers in the school system. All the violinists were then asked the same question. Over the course of your career, ever since you first picked up the violin, how many hours have you practised?

Everyone, from all three groups, started playing at roughly the same time - around the age of five. In those first few years, everyone practised roughly the same amount - about two or three hours a week. But around the age of eight real differences started to emerge. The students who would end up as the best in their class began to practise more than everyone else: six hours a week by age nine, eight by age 12, 16 a week by age 14, and up and up, until by the age of 20 they were practising well over 30 hours a week. By the age of 20, the elite performers had all totalled 10,000 hours of practice over the course of their lives. The merely good students had totalled, by contrast, 8,000 hours, and the future music teachers just over 4,000 hours.

The curious thing about Ericsson’s study is that he and his colleagues couldn’t find any “naturals” - musicians who could float effortlessly to the top while practising a fraction of the time that their peers did. Nor could they find “grinds”, people who worked harder than everyone else and yet just didn’t have what it takes to break into the top ranks. Their research suggested that once you have enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That’s it. What’s more, the people at the very top don’t just work much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder. Continue Article here

So there you have it.  I strongly believe that your success will hinge on how much you draw more than anything else. The course requires a 3 month time commitment. The level of participation is up to you but can range from a 30 minute to 8 hour commitment every day.  Below is a time sheet (you can make your own or print this one out).  For every thirty minutes you get 1 red dot.  This will be your self contract. Every time you mark this you will be reaffirming your desire to become an artist.   As the dots build up you will also begin to see the direct correlation between how much you choose to draw and paint and your speed of improvement.

Click on the image above, and then print it out.

Let me introduce to you the brilliant and typically paintalicious (New york based) Agit-Pop artist, Ron England. Ron’s inspiration comes from a variety of sources, though mainly through an interesting mix of Pop art, Cartoons, billboards to Pop culture itself. Equally interesting is his style of painting, this could be said to be fun, bright, surreal, raucous, playful, colorful (Plutonium Yellow seems to be a favorite), odd, humorous and absolutely full of iconography and bizzare pop imagery used as a metaphor.

Ron English is perhaps one of the most controversial artists to emerge in the 1990’s, for his paintings of popular brand imagery and advertising. English is also known for his seminal work in billboard subvertising, becoming one of the “key figures” in the Culture Jamming movement. This made him an artist notorious for replacing corporate billboards and advertisements with satirical and subversive attacks on popular consumer culture. His most recent work appeared in the recent film Supersize Me, a film that reveals the truth about the fast food industry.

via paintaliscious

Welcome to the world famous 100 percent free online painting and drawing course. Here you will find information on a variety of materials and techniques. As well as an online format specifically designed for a deep self study into the rich world and history of painting and drawing.  I will take you step by step and try and give you as much information as possible. You can take these lessons at your own pace. But I can assure you, through a little bit of self discipline you too can learn how to paint and draw. Click the text below to get started immediately!

Acrylic medium is a great medium to play with. Here is a video tutorial of how to use it. You can play with it and collage images into your paintings. Whatever you wish.

It’s a never ending problem that all artists face no matter how disciplined they are. The problem is what you want to paint/create. You are, well, You. And only you can decide what subject matter interests you the most. But many times the problem arises that artists either focus too much on technical ability and not enough on concept. Or they are all concept but lack technical knowledge to pull off what they want to do. Let me tell you a big secret. 90 percent of a day in the life of the average art student at any of the top art schools in the US will revolve heavily around 1 question. The question “what should i paint” inevitably evolves to “should I even bother to paint?”. These questions can be great for people who have been painting for years, but can serve as a detriment to beginners. You have to first cleanse your mind of all the bs reasons you come up for not painting. Think of it like this. Are people who just begin guitar lessons expected to write a song? No, first they learn the chords and scales of music, then somebody elses song, then they write a song based off of that song they learned previously. The same is true for painting. You have to learn to mix colors before you put them on the canvas. Strangely this step is rarely taught in most schools. Anyway. So you’ve got a problem. You don’t know what to paint, and are completely blocked.

First. Go and look at artists you like. This could be at the museum, this could be online. Join stumble upon and stumble different artists. Or check out the list of artists and links over at Gawker Artists. Or don’t even look at art, loook at NASA photos and chipmunks playing the guitar. Doesn’t matter. Just look at stuff that inspires you. Google knows there is a lot of content on the internet

Think about you, and your story. Pardon the new ageyness of that last statement. But every one of you has a fairly interesting story to tell. I think many people in general want to see art that reflects the artists personality. And this doesn’t have to be taken literally. You don’t have to paint your childhood. But just think about where you’re from, where you are now, and where you think you’re going.

Keep a pad of paper and a pen, or write down ideas you have. Save them on your mobile phone, call your own answering machine and leave a message, text it to yourself or a friend. Most phones also have voice recorders in them as well. You’ve got to capture the ideas before they vanish. Don’t expect to just remember. You won’t.

Do a series. The more you focus on a subject the clearer and better your work will become. This can be equated to writers writing vignettes. No one expects a beginning writer to sit down and write a novel before they’ve even written a short story. Focus on one subject and paint it multiple times. You’ll get a better idea of what you like and dislike as well as gain the technical abilities to get paint to do what you want it to do.

Then there’s always paintings of your friends, your family, your door, room, bathroom, little things around your house, whatever. Duane Keiser is a painter who is very skilled and he just paints little objects from around his house. Check his blog and you’ll see that what you paint doesn’t necessarily have to be something profound and large. It could be that pen lying on your desk right now.

And if you are just beginning to paint. Screw the idea of worrying about “what to paint” too much. If you need a foundation, build that foundation of basic skills first. Then worry about what to paint later.