Western music is founded on a phenomena in nature. Certain relationships between frequencies create a harmony, a certain sweetness, where there is little dissonance. Art seems to have a similar counterpart in composition through the Golden Ratio.

I've been having fun crawling through the One Perfect Shot Twitter account to find film screens of this composition principle in action. A few of my favorites below:

A farewell to Boulder 👋

There's this park near our new place that has these miniature mountains for the dogs to climb. Lucy loves them!

A series of studies done as part of Jeremy Vickery's Painting Light course.

One fellow student left a note saying that the course felt a little like the draw the owl meme. There's some truth to that — for the most part, Jeremy is providing a set of photos, telling you what sort of aspects of light to look for, and then having you take a jab at it on your own.

I was having this conversation recently where I shared that, looking back, great teachers do a lot for their students. But I think the benefit many people are really looking for is permission to do a project, and holding a container for doing the work. On the surface, that's a low bar. In practice, though, it's highly valuable and not so simple to do.

The drop into the deep end of observation is part of the strength here. By starting in observation, it's possible to paint anything you see. From there, then technique, construction, lighting principles, etc. can help streamline that process and lend to further creation from imagination.

The biggest "Aha" for me was in the images above and below. Both highly reflective material, I assumed they were advanced subjects. At the end of the day, though, once you sit down and really observe what you're seeing, there's not much more you need to know or do. You simply draw whatever truth is in front of you.

More to do next year in the course! Excited to keep going. I've also added this to my handy-dandy page of learning resources.

Enjoying the breeze.

Been a while! I've missed the digital workflow.

*psyyy~*

It's been a while since I've shared something from the sketchbook!

The night-time desk.

Wahoo!

There's a piece I've been meaning to write about how Super Mario 64 was my medium for curiosity growing up. That running around in these worlds expanded my own, that taking to the sky in game made me curious as to what would happen if you flew into the skyboxes. What other discoveries could be made out there?

But, then again, maybe the painting says it all.

A scene from my walks with Lucy around our new neighborhood!

The bird out of the box!

Been eating lots of these guys!

🌺🐝

A farewell to Dallas House. 👋

Just moved to Boulder, CO! Lucy's going to love it here.