The Call-Chronicle recently featured an article written by James J Kilpatrick in which he lamented the plight of the humanities in our colleges and universities. In that article, he summarized a report written by William J. Bennett, director of the National Endowment for the Humanities. “College students, for the most part, are not learning the humanities properly, and this is […]

Did you know that there is evidence to indicate that painters have organized their palettes to the color wheel in much the same way that manufacturers of musical instruments design their products to a twelve tone scale? An interesting notion, isn’t it? A palette upon which to perform. A palette designed to change keys and function in different registers. Wouldn’t that make things easy? Have you any reason […]

The Barnstone Studios were mentioned in Robin Longman’s editorial essay, “A Serious Look at Art Education”, in the July, 1985 issue of The American Artist magazine. It is gratifying to have one’s views considered along with those of nationally important educators who are associated with undertakings such as The Getty Center for Education in the Arts and the Metropolitan Museum of […]

This article is for the video students who are participating in the Barnstone Studios drawing exercises. Some of the bottles can be hard to find, especially the small Perrier bottle which set the standard for small bottles. It’s design…its internal geometry…all of the other bottles stood in awe of it’s elegance. But alas, the Perrier bottle is so elusive, that it […]

The master painters are an excellent source of inspiration and technique. One of the most important techniques we can learn from them is called Figure-Ground Relationship (a gestalt psychology principle). This is a technique that can help clearly define the subject by use of contrast. It’s also known for creating illusions, but for today we’ll just focus on some great examples containing a light […]

Today we are going to take a look at this excellent painting called “The Wave” by William-Adolphe Bouguereau. We’ll see how he uses the root 5 grid to inspire the model’s pose which is full of rhythm. Just by looking at the painting we can “feel” that something masterful is going on in the background. What is it though? Why does it appeal to us […]