Drawing Advice From Leonardo da Vinci

Drawing Advice From Leonardo da Vinci | Third Monk image 1

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When we practice a skill, an insulator-like substance called myelin thickens around our neural circuitry, which in turn makes us more talented.

The type of practice one engages in is the determinant of how quickly our myelin sheaths thicken around our neural circuits.

Good practice must test us and stretch our abilities right up to the edge of frustration. Talent without the motivation to ceaselessly improve will never lead to mastery.

Leonardo Da Vinci himself and his students used the following sketching techniques repeatedly. They are meant to challenge you and stretch your drawing capabilities.

1. Be a Student of Movement

Because we cannot depict every detail of the world around us, good drawings, one could argue, are simply the result of a series of decisions made by the artist about what to include, and what to leave out.

“Art is the elimination of the unnecessary,” Picasso famously said.

There is no better way of training yourself to eliminate the unnecessary and notice the most important elements of a particular object, than by drawing it while it’s on the move.

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Do as Leonardo instructs. Go to a bustling place and make quick notes of the people going about their business. Go to a park and draw the birds or the ripples of a lake. Watch a gymnast or a wrestler on YouTube – without pressing pause. Draw moving objects.

2. Copy From The Master

Leonardo was an assistant artist to Andrea Del Verrocchio for roughly 10 years.  It was quite common for assistants to learn their trade by painting small sections of their master’s paintings such as shrubbery or sky and work their way up.

The artist ought first to exercise his hand by copying drawings from the hand of a good master.

And having acquired that practice, under the criticism of his master, he should next practise drawing objects in relief of a good style, following the rules which will presently be given. – Leonardo da Vinci

3. Draw Both The Beautiful And The Ugly

While we now think of Da Vinci’s work as things of divine beauty, a few centuries ago, they were infamous for the exact opposite reason.

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In the Victorian era all around Europe, these ‘grotesque’ heads, as they came to be known, were Leonardo’s most reproduced pieces of art.

Da Vinci provides a hint at his reasons for producing these drawings in his notebooks.

The painter should aim at universality, because there is a great want of self-respect in doing one thing well and another badly, as many do who study only the [rules of] measure and proportion in the nude figure and do not seek after variety; for a man may be well proportioned, or he may be fat and short, or tall and thin, or medium.

And a painter who takes no account of these varieties always makes his figures on one pattern so that they might all be taken for brothers; and this is a defect that demands stern reprehension. – Leonardo da Vinci

Draw obese people; slim people; muscular people; landscapes; strange animals; things you are not accustomed to drawing. It will make you better at drawing the things you wish to excel at.

4. Draw The Same Thing From Multiple Angles

Da Vinci, understood that a good artist doesn’t just copy.

A good artist simplifies, deconstructs, reinterprets, and understands his subject matter.

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All our eyes see is raw jumbled light. Our brain takes this light and sorts it out into objects with form and texture.

Sketching things from multiple angles makes our brains better interpreters of light.

Children draw what they think something looks like; amateur artists copy what they see; master artists draw what they understand.

Sketch a person from multiple angles. Imagine you need to make a record of how they look but you have no camera at hand. Even though you’re using different viewpoints, there should be a basic likeness between them all.

5. Draw A Story

Leonardo wasn’t just an artist who could shade well and draw clean lines. He placed just as much emphasis on the composition and content of his art as he did it’s technical rendering.

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The triangular composition, the eye lines, and the curved centreline which extends into a finger pointing to the heavens, were all carefully chosen by Leonardo to tell a story.

Our minds are natural hallucinators. When we lack external sensory input our brains manufacture their own. This phenomenon can be seen in full effect with the use of sensory deprivation chambers.

For inspiration deprive your mind of interesting stimulation so it comes up with it’s own. Stare at a stained wall, the clouds, into space or close your eyes and let your mind wander. Design a composition with the results of this exercise.

Sketching Techniques Leonardo da Vinci Used To Achieve Artistic Mastery | High Existence

Neuroscientist Paints Sumi-e Style Brain Art (Gallery)

Neuroscientist Paints Sumi-e Style Brain Art (Gallery) | Third Monk image 1

Neuroscientist Greg Dunn decided to trade in his microscope to become a professional artist. 

He still uses a microscope in his art though. Meta much? What gives! Greg is an interesting dude, and his brain art offers deep food for thought when it comes to interconnectivity and the fractal nature of the universe.

The patterns of branching neurons he saw through the microscope reminded him of the aesthetic principles in Sumi-e art, which he admires. Dunn realized neurons could be painted in this sumi-e (minimalist ink wash painting) style to wonderful effect.

The microscopic world belongs in the world of Asian art. There’s no distinction between painting a landscape of a forest and a landscape of the brain. – Greg Dunn

Enjoy his beautiful creations!

 Sumi-e Style: Brain Art

Cortical Columns

Cortical-Columns[4] Brain Art

It’s almost a zen quality to the branching pattern of a neuron that I was interested in capturing initially. – Greg Dunn

Basket and Pyramidals

Basket-and-Pyramidals-small[1] Brain Art

Gold Cortex II

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Cortical Circuitboard

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Electron Micrograph of Micro-etching

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Brainbow Hippocampus in Blue

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The image above was inspired by the Brainbow process, a neuroscience technique for coloring neighboring neurons by combining colored fluorescent proteins.

Brainbow Hippocampus Variations

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Glia and Blood Vessels

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Glial Flare

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Spinal Cord

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 Art has the power to capture people’s emotions and inspire awe [in a way] that a lot of charts and graphs don’t have. – Greg Dunn

Dazzling Images of the Brain Created by Neuroscientist-Artist | Live Science

Mark Ryden – The Gay Nineties West Art Gallery

Mark Ryden - The Gay Nineties West Art Gallery | Third Monk image 6

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Mark Ryden’s The Gay Nineties West at the Kohn Gallery was a wonderful success.

The artist explores Victorian decorative design, clichéd notions of “Main Street USA,” small business and immigration (“The Meat Shop”), and vaudeville shows with a dark and complex sentimentality. Integrating the Christ figure and Abraham Lincoln with his wide-eyed, petticoat clad ingénues, Ryden presents the viewer with an unreal and very oddly camp version of American history.

His is an exploration of what becomes cliché, what becomes kitsch and what becomes forgotten.

Yet through it all Ryden makes some of the most richly rendered, beautifully glazed, idealized yet disturbing works of contemporary art. Like his contemporaries John Currin, Lisa Yuskavage and Neo Rauch, Mark Ryden uses a skillfully honed technique to render his polished and emotionally charged works.

The Gay Nineties West Art Gallery

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 Mark Ryden Sketches and Framework

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> The Gay 90’s | Kohn Gallery

Psychedelic Hand Made Mixed Media Collages – Joe Webb (Photo Gallery)

Psychedelic Hand Made Mixed Media Collages - Joe Webb (Photo Gallery) | Third Monk image 25

Joe Webb’s work eschews the neo-traditional standard of digital manipulation, opting to meticulously craft his psychedelic work by hand.

Sourcing two to three images at a time, Webb’s finished collages probe the unreality of modern-life, with an emphasis on his disdain for technology.

I started making these simple hand-made collages as a sort of luddite reaction to working as a graphic artist on computers for many years. I like the limitations of collage…using found imagery and a pair of scissors, there are no Photoshop options to resize, adjust colours or undo.

I suppose I’ve become fairly anti-technology… although I now promote my art on websites, own an iPhone and use Facebook…It’s confusing, I wish I had been born 100 years ago. – Joe Webb

Joe Webb – Surreal Hand Made Mixed Media Collages Gallery

 Thirst

Thirst

Thirst II

Thirst II

Storm in a Tea Cup

Storm in a Tea Cup

Room with a View

Room with a View

International Response

International Response

Armageddon

Armageddon

What a Lovely Day

What a lovely day

Twelve O’Clock

Twelve O'Clock

The Chill

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Juxtapose

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Infatuated

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Star Dust

Antares and Love II

Star Dust II

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Sunny Side Up

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Playing God

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Small Steps

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Seaside

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Calm and Chaos

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Comfort

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Star Dust III

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Star Dust IV

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Star Dust V

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Wonder Basket

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Sunny Day

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Plough

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Harvest

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Spoiled View

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Everything is Fine

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Art School

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Distraction

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Cuts

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Time Storage

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Joe Webb Collages

A selection of work from UK based collage artist Joe Webb.

Pavel Tchelitchew, Surreal Paintings Art Gallery

Pavel Tchelitchew, Surreal Paintings Art Gallery | Third Monk image 2

Pavel Tchelitchew was a Russian-born surrealist painter, set designer and costume designer. Tchelitchew continuously experimented with new styles, eventually incorporating multiple perspectives and elements of surrealism and fantasy into his paintings. His body of work was an exceptionally and hauntingly beautiful contribution to mid-20th-century art.

Inacheve

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The Fat Man

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Childhood of Orson

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Phenomena, Draft

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Anatomical

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Fight for Wheat

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Hide and Seek

Pavel-Tchelitche-art-gallery-hide-seekIn Hide and Seek (1940–42), Tchelitchew’s most celebrated canvas, he related the seasons to procreation and growth, showing plant and human forms to be similar in their physical structures and purposes.

Combining an interest in alchemy with the anatomical illustrations of the Flemish anatomist and physician Andreas Vesalius (1514–64), he showed the human body, with its veins and arteries, as transparent, in order to suggest the transcendence of the spirit over material substance.

Unicorn

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Tilly Losch

NPG 5304; Tilly Losch by Pavel Tchelitchew

Mask of Light

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Set

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Figures in Clouds

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Naissance

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Spiral Head 1

Pavel-Tchelitche-art-gallery-sprial-head-1Tchelitchew’s process of reduction from material to spirit was completed in a series of heads, which he regarded as the spiritual centre of human beings, precisely drawn in light colours on dark grounds.

Sprial Head 2

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Whirlwind

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Lion

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Bonne Anne

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My Father

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Inacheve

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Fate Morgana

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Eye

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Phenomena

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Ruth Ford

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Sleeping Pinheads

Pavel-Tchelitche-art-gallery-Sleeping Pinheads

Savonarola

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Energy

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Sketch Master Ilustrator, Kim Jung Gi Art Gallery

Sketch Master Ilustrator, Kim Jung Gi Art Gallery | Third Monk image 11

Kim Jung Gi is a korean artist who enrolled into a Fine Arts School at the age of 19. After 3 years of absorbing fine art, he dropped out to become a cartoonist.

I observe things all the time. I don’t take references while I’m drawing, but I’m always collecting visual resources. I observe them carefully on daily basis, almost habitually. I study images of all sorts and genres. -Kim Jung Gi

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Kim Jung-Gi-sketch-art-photo-gallery-animal-warriors

Kim Jung-Gi-sketch-art-photo-gallery-riding

Kim Jung-Gi-sketch-art-photo-gallery-anima-soldiers

Kim Jung-Gi-sketch-art-photo-gallery-warriors

Kim Jung-Gi-sketch-art-photo-gallery-sex

Kim Jung-Gi-sketch-art-photo-gallery-love-snipe

Kim Jung-Gi-sketch-art-photo-gallery-war

Kim Jung-Gi-sketch-art-photo-gallery-gengis-khan

Kim Jung-Gi-sketch-art-photo-gallery-pulp

Kim Jung-Gi-sketch-art-photo-gallery-sin-city

Kim Jung-Gi-sketch-art-photo-gallery-ink-work

Kim Jung-Gi-sketch-art-photo-gallery-guns-rides

Kim Jung-Gi-sketch-art-photo-gallery-heart

Kim Jung-Gi-sketch-art-photo-gallery-sketches

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Kim Jung-Gi – Sudden Attack, Drawing Demo

Kim Jung Gi – Conflict, Drawing Demo

Kim Jung Gi – Epic Hour of Illustrating Mastery, Drawing Demo

You can support this awesome artist by checking out the sketchbooks on his website, kimjunggi.net

Tattoos – A Permanent Art, PBS Feature (Video)

Tattoos - A Permanent Art, PBS Feature (Video) | Third Monk

It seems that no matter how far we advance into the digital age, our bodies remain a place where we want to express ourselves. In this episode of Off Book, we talk to three tattoo artists of differing styles. – PBS

Vinny Romanelli embraces pop culture, tattooing detailed portraits of entertainment idols. (Red Rocket Tattoos)

Kiku works with the traditional Japanese form.  (Invisible NYC)

Stephanie Tamez embodies an eclectic mix of influences, with the occasional use of nice typography. (Saved Tattoo)

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