THE CHINESE AND THE JESUITS
From The Mustard Seed Manual of Painting. 1679. Eastern artists, such as the ancient Chinese, did not accept the linear perspective. The Jesuit missionaries found that when the Chinese were shown images with...
Category: HISTORY
SKETCHING IN THE WAKE (LITERALLY) OF LECORBUSIER
The Topkapi Palace as seen from the east. LeCorbusier I felt LeCorbusier’s presence in Turkey. And this was before I realized that Turkey was an inspiration for him. I always knew that his travels...
ON REALISM – A LETTER TO HELEN
Why not draw realistically? After all, a basic tenant of realism is that it represents truth. A completely natural drawing is done without any outside artifice. Forms, textures, shadows, etc. are all rendered...
CHOISEY TRANSPARENCY
A Choisey projection is one in which the observer is looking up at the interior of the building. It takes the floor plan, and projects with parallel lines the spacial interior. The basic beauty...
BEAUX-ARTS BLAME GAME 2
There was a building boom in America after the Civil War. American architects were very concerned regarding both the low quality of the design and construction of these buildings. Thus there was a large...
PAUL KLEE AND TRANSPARENCY
Paul Klee seems to be thinking transparently in this watercolor. He seems to be employing what to this point we would call a Byzantine space time understanding. It is not an isometric drawing where...
BEAUX ARTS BLAME GAME 1
The Ecole des Beaux-Arts has been and continues to be a huge influence on our profession. It was a very prestigious arts and architecture school in Paris. It traced it’s roots back to 1648...
BYZANTINE MOSAIC
This photograph was taken from a mosaic on the ceiling of the Chora Church in Istanbul. As we have seen, the medieval artist did not have a cohesive and geometrically correct framework for their...
DURAND AND REPRESENTATION
I am of course not the first to question the place of representation in the depiction of architecture. Durand, writing in the early 1800s in his Mecanisme de la composition, stated the inextricable link...
BYZANTINE SPACETIME
I photographed this fresco in the Chora Church in Istanbul. In the reconstructed image, one can see the inconsistent use of perspective geometry. This Byzantine painting was done most likely in the 1300s, well...
PERSPECTIVE POWER
Desargues was a French mathematician, engineer and architect who lived at the beginning of the 17th Century. In the 1640s, he stated that perspective theory was seen as a tool to help moderate between...
HOLLOW OBJECTS
The Natural Way to Draw was used in my introductory drawing course. I will refer to this iconic book from time to time. It continues to maintain a position of reverence on my bookshelf...
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