Art used to be a lot easier to explain

You know, back in the day, nobody asked what was the meaning behind a piece.

Obviously, a rich guy really wanted a picture of himself to hang on his wall.

Or the Church wanted something to praise the Lord!

None of this examining the interdependancy of man and nature as it changes due to the influence of technology on our society as viewed through the lens of deconstructvist humanism..

And it's a fucking Platonic solid on a podium.

What am I doing?

The Sons of Martha

The sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited
   that good part;
But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother of the 
  careful soul and the troubled heart.
And because she lost her temper once, and because she
  was rude to the Lord her Guest,
Her Sons must wait upon Mary's Sons, world without
  end, reprieve, or rest.
It is their care in all the ages to take the buffet and
  cushion the shock.
It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care that 
  the switches lock.
It is their care that the wheels run truly; it is their care
  to embark and entrain,
Tally, transport, and deliver duly the Sons of Mary by
  land and main.

They say to mountains, "Be ye removed." They say to
  the lesser floods, "Be dry."
Under their rods are the rocks reproved-they are not
  afraid of that which is high.
Then do the hill-tops shake to the summit-then is the 
  bed of the deep laid bare,
That the Sons of Mary may overcome it, pleasantly
  sleeping and unaware.
They finger death at their gloves' end where they piece
  and repiece the living wires.
He rears against the gates they tend: they feed him hungry 
  behind their fires.
Early at dawn, ere men see clear, they stumble into
  his terrible stall,
And hale him forth a haltered steer, and goad and turn
  him till evenfall.
To these from birth is Belief forbidden; from these till
  death is Relief afar.
They are concerned with matters hidden - under the
  earthline their altars are-
The secret fountains to follow up, waters withdrawn to
  restore to the mouth,
And gather the floods as in a cup, and pour them again
  at a city's drouth.

They do not preach that their God will rouse them a
  little before the nuts work loose.
They do not teach that His Pity allows them to drop
  their job when they dam'-well choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark
  and the desert they stand,
Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren's
  day may be long in the land.

Raise ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path
  more fair or flat - 
Lo, it is black already with blood some Son of Martha
  spilled for that!
Not as a ladder from earth to Heaven, not as a witness
  to any creed,
But simple service simply given to his own kind in their
  common need.

And the Sons of Mary smile and are blessed - they
  know the Angels are on their side.
They know in them is the Grace confessed, and for
  them are the Mercies multiplied.
They sit at the Feet - they hear the Word - they see
  how truly the Promise runs.
They have cast their burden upon the Lord, and - the
  Lord He lays it on Martha's Sons!

-Kipling 1907 

I spent 50 minutes listening to Heart Station

And I ended up with this.

On that note

Google Art is hella sick and everyone should check it out.

Modern Art

I was never one for modern art.

Part of the problem is that it is all so opaque and meta, that you can't really understand what's going on by just looking at a piece in isolation.

Like, Lynda Benglis is known for her feminist sculptures.

  

Why is this feminist? It's just a lumpy piece of shit. Except you have to know that her contemporaries were predominantly males making really angular lumpy pieces of shit in hard colours (how they got to that point is a whole other story). This has obviously more feminine characteristics in its soft curves and softer colours and served as her rebuttal to the masculinity of the art world. It's like a back and forth discussion in a secret language; they are saying things about their society, but you have to be in the know.

What happens if you try to make the same thing today? Well I guess you'd be full of shit, really.

Warhol and his likes are noteworthy not because of any sort of technical excellence but because nobody in their time would've thought about doing what they did. They were taking the lowest forms of consumer culture and trying to make it into art. Now that it's become accepted, what meaning is there today for you to do what he did? Now not only can anybody paint a terrible soup can, but anybody can think of painting a terrible soup can.

Which brings me to Damian Hurst, who I think is a total hack and people need to stop giving him bags of money for animal carcasses and crystal skulls. I think he derives a lot of success because his works are aesthetically pleasing in a way that many are not. So if you don't really know what the hell you're looking at but want to act sophisticated, why not at least pick up something that looks cool?

That is to say, I think some modern artists are full of shit.

But most of their appreciators are definitely full of shit.

Never too late to quit

FUCK IT I QUIT

On the Precipice of Darkness

The art looks strange because the style is not how Gabe usually draws women.

Oh..I liked that piece

Kate Beaton's cover of course, is a nod to Jean-Honoré Fragonard:

$120M Scream

What a ripoff; that guy wouldn't even be able to say he's got the only one in the world.

Finished

Going to enter a t-shirt contest.

Whoa

This album art is poppin':

Addendum

Artists traditionally limit their pallet because depending on the pigment used the colour will behave differently.

For instance, winsor yellow is transparent, cadmium yellow is opaque and bismuth yellow is in-between. Mixing transparent pigments yield vibrant secondaries and tertiaries but mixing opaques give mud.

You see, there are only so many minerals we can use to create colours and each one of them has their own properties. Do you know how long it took us to find alternative blue pigments? A hell of a long time!

There are tons of other factors too, like the consistency of the mixture and the permanence of the colour.

So artists would stick with the same pigments and learn them intimately and only expand their pallet slowly and carefully.

That's why it's noteworthy enough for literature when artist x switches from viridian green to cadmium green or when artist y picks up emerald green.

Some artists, like Turner, would make their own paint from scratch.

Of course, this is all becoming somewhat of a lost art these days, especially with the advent of digital paints, where your yellow behaves like yellow and your blue behaves like yellow.

But the more that you know, right?

Rain, Steam and Speed

My favourite artist is J.M.W. Turner; unfortunately his presence in popular culture is virtually non-existent.

It's not on Wikipedia, but I do believe that he went quite mad in his later years due to his favourite green being toxic.

Paris green perhaps?

Perhaps he'd warrant an appearance on Dr. Who; showcasing the industrial revolution Britain, maybe. What of it? Hmm?

I will assume this is an accurate representation of her life

Aesthetic fail

What I see:

What I think:

On second thought

Damn.

Made her too robot-like.

*quit*

Apparently digital is the new traditional

Creating the Art of Innistrad

New Phyrexia was rife with digital painters, not only to really sell the terrible sheen of metal, but also so I could redirect for the look of Innistrad, which is a more grounded, relatable and straightforward place, and would benefit from a more "traditionally painted" feel.

From that point on, I count finished Innistrad pieces 5,6,8,9,14,15,16,17,18,20,21,25,26 and 28 are almost certainly digital, and pieces 2,10,13,19,20,27 stand a pretty good chance of being digital.

That's 19/28.

Also, Painter is pretty tank, so even ones that look real might still be digital. <_<

No, I haven't done May yet

If the cup is spilt, just pour more water in

Minecraft is one of those games that means something different to everyone.

This naturally makes it difficult to administrate a server.

I don't even know what you two want from Minecraft!

What do I want from Minecraft?

That's easy.

I want to create beautiful things, I want others to see what I create and I want to see what others create [1].

I've spent unreasonable amounts of time on the old server, everybody has spent unreasonable time on the old server, and we've built quite an impressive piece.

I want to toss it all.

Why?

I like to think of it like illustration; nobody works on the same piece forever. There always comes a time to stop, and there are two reasons for it [2]. First, is that the picture is perfect and adding more would do nothing but spoil it. The second is burnout: either it's flawed and not worth salvaging, there is nothing more to be learned from it, or just boredom from working on the same thing for so long.

And for me, it has gotten to be all three.

Of course, not everybody is me and is understandably reluctant to throw away man-months of work.

I can't really convince anybody otherwise if they really think that the old world is a masterpiece, or if they really want to complete that project they've been slaving away on for weeks.

But fear of starting anew? Maybe I can say something about that. Don't get me wrong, there are tons of things I love about the old world; I love Joe's town, I love my basement and, yes, I even love your vault room, Overmeyer. There are things to like about my old art too, and people ask me often why I toss as many pieces as I do, or even something like why I work in one layer. Aren't I afraid of losing the work? Not particularly. I did it once, I can do it again and moreover, I will get better at it in the future. And then it becomes easier and easier to see the flaws in past work, despite their redeeming features.

No, I haven't got any big art projects lately, but I am infinitely more pleased with the sketches I pound out on a whim now than what seemed like massive undertakings many years ago. It's easy to tout the persistence of Minecraft, but let's not discount stagnation either, which is a trap easy to fall into. Keep the old world, archive it as a record of our achievements. But let's start something new, and make it better than before.

So here's to fresh starts: cheers, mates.

1) I was also going to talk about my view of mods, and it relates, but this post already crept so long, so I'll save it for another day.

2) There's also the "commission deadline is approaching so I need to maximize my effort to money ratio" reason but I think we have the luxury of ignoring that one.