So you wanna be a pro?

[Karin Wells]

Alexei Antonov said this - and I wholeheartedly agree with him!

"My experience has shown that the classical school of painting can be studied without having a special "talent." The only condition is a passionate desire to learn and a little patience..."

[Steven Sweeney]

One More Note for Sight-Size Practitioners

I'm duplicating a post from elsewhere, because it implicates sight-size procedures discussed earlier in this thread:

One last note on one-eyed viewing, and that relates to sight-size drawing. In order to view your subject "through" the plumb lines, you're going to have to close one eye. Because one eye is dominant (it may or may not be the one you decide to close), it's important to always close the same eye when you take your measurements. Don't switch back and forth. One of my instructor's first questons when beginning a drawing critique was always, "Which eye are you looking with?, because he'd do the same in order to assess my accuracy.

Incidentally, if you want to know which is your dominant eye, pick out an object across the room and hold out your arm with index finger raised and sight "through" the finger to the object, with BOTH EYES open. If, when you close your left eye, the relative positions of the finger and object stay about the same, your right eye is dominant. Keep the left eye open and close the right, and the finger "moves" some distance to the right of the object. The opposite effects with left-eye dominance. In a non-art context in which this really "matters", if you're trap shooting and you hold the shotgun on the right but you're left-eye dominant, you'll swear your aim is perfect but the clay pigeon will just fly away unharmed. Switch to the left side and you'll probably have much higher percentages.

Finally, this is important to know because the "'Artist's Perspective' Eyepatch" is to be worn over the nondominant eye.

Steven