DORKTHROPOLOGY

Art forgery is the best crime tbh. It requires absolutely incredible artistic talent, technical skill, and attention to detail to make convincing fakes. Does anyone get hurt from it? No! The only people who suffer for it are the extremely wealthy who want the prestige of having original paintings in their own homes. It’s full of international intrigue and mystery. Perfect.

Also… art forgers like van Meegeren sometimes become a kind of folk hero. A swindler, sure, but a gentleman’s swindler.

I liked this guy’s story, Mark Landis, who conned several dozen museums into displaying his forgeries, but when the FBI came after him they couldn’t do anything because he had always given them away as donations. They said if they could have found that he’d ever taken anything in exchange they would have prosecuted him, but all he wanted was get to out of the house and meet people.

“The first painting Landis “donated” was a copy of a work by Maynard Dixon, an artist well-known for his paintings of cowboys and Indians. It started as impulse, Landis says, but then “everybody was just so nice and treated me with respect and deference and friendship, things I was very unused to — I mean, actually not used to at all. And I got addicted to it.”” And it looks like all his forgeries are done with cheap materials, like markers and Hobby Lobby frames.

Ok, but Wolfgang Beltracchi is probably one of the best Fraud Artists in the world.

His career brought him millions upon millions of dollars and lasted almost 40 years. He finally admitted to painting fraudulent art after the white paint he used came under scrutiny. 

In The interview with Beltracchi, he said that none of his forgeries are copies, they’re all original works that the famous artists could have painted.

His wife was also in on the scam, she would dress up in old clothing and take pictures holding the paintings with old cameras to fake proof of the paintings’ ages.

At the end of the interview with Wolfgang Beltracchi he was asked if he felt he had done anything wrong, his answer was “ Yeah, I used the wrong kind of paint”

Just … the levels of con there, the fake photos and … wow. That’s incredible. 

Heroes

Also fun fact we learned in class today: Michelangelo carved a sculpture of a Roman god, broke off the arm, and then buried it. The sculpture was dug up and was considered to be an authentic Roman artefact, until Michelangelo came along with the missing arm and called shenanigans on himself, just to prove he was as skilled a sculptor as the ancient Romans.

If somebody can recreate a master artist so well it’s nearly impossible to tell the works apart, the forger should get more fucking credit for being so amazing at art. Seriously.

“By day she made herself into a cat” Illustration from “Jorinda and Joringel,” from The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, 1909.

Landscape photographer Stephane Vetter captured the complete Total Solar Eclipse in Tiny Planet form from a beautiful spot at Magone Lake in Eastern Oregon. Vetter explained all the careful planning that went into creating this shot over at Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Visit Stephane Vetter’s website to check out more of his photographer.

[via Colossal]

kept getting requests for gryphons so heres a bunch of them At Once

Happy belated world ocean day. Every day is world ocean day.

(A nice write-up on thresher sharks and their fastidious dedication to personal hygiene here)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Robert S. Duncanson was a self-taught, African-American painter whose determination facilitated his entry into the exclusively Caucasian art community that predominated the mid-1800’s. His work is infused with African-American sensibilities, however subtle, and is notable for having been received by an audience without being strictly categorized as African-American art.

Duncanson spent much of his career living and working in Cincinnati. An 1858 city directory identifies him as a local landscape painter. He had associations with the Hudson River School, whose influence is evident in his paintings of the Ohio River Valley. Duncanson was highly regarded by many local citizens including Nicholas Longworth who commissioned him to complete a series of murals in his home, what is now the Taft Museum of Art.

Blue Hole, Little Miami River. 1851. Image from the collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum, Mary R. Schiff Library.

“Medea, almost bursting with rage, uttered precisely such a hiss as one of her own snakes, only ten times more venomous and spiteful; and glaring fiercely out of the blaze of the chariot, she shook her hands over the multitude below, as if she were scattering a million of curses among them.”

From Tanglewood Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, illustrated by Edmund Dulac.

This.

a public service announcement

and i thought only bob ross knew what was up

this single post is more useful to me then four years of art school 

We did it in color study class on my college and it’s incredible the difference between using red/blue/yellow than cyan/magenta/yellow. The purple was colored like shit, so as the greens. Than we tried the actuall primary colors and it FELT SO GOOD!

I JUST TESTED IT IN MY ART PROGRAM AND HOLY SHIT 

IT WORKED REALLY WELL

On the left we have dissapoinment; on the right, love.

Then why do they teach us that RBY are primary colours in Pre-KG????

To mess with our heads….

Or because they think that cyan and magenta are too difficult for kids to learn? Lame either way

Reshare to save lives

Okay, no. No no no no no no no no NO.

Listen up you fucks because I’m not wasting thousands of dollars on an art degree to watch y’all fuck up basic color theory.

Red, yellow, and blue are the primary colors

If you’re using p i g m e n t.

Do you hear me? When you’re using traditional media, fucking actual goddamn paint, Bob Ross style, your primary colors are!

When you use paint, your primary colors are red yellow and blue and don’t forget it.

NOW THAT CHANGES COMPLETELY WHEN YOU GO FUCKING DIGITAL.

THE DIGITAL PRIMARY COLORS ARE RED BLUE AND GREEN IF AND ONLY IF YOUR WORK IS GOING TO STAY DIGITAL, ON THE SCREEN, AND NEVER LEAVE THE SCREEN, AND OF COURSE IF YOUR WORK IS GOING TO BE PRINTED. ON A PRINTER. WITH INK. THEN. AND O N L Y  T H E N.

ARE YOUR PRIMARY COLORS.

CYAN. 

MAGENTA.

AND YELLOW.

So say it with me folks!

Red yellow and blue, are the primary colors for traditional pigment that’s mostly used in paints and shit. You use red yellow and blue when you’re painting traditionally, Bob Ross style. 

Red blue and green is light, which is what you’re painting with when you pick up your tablet and go digital.

CMYK is ink, and ink only. You could use cyan, magenta, and yellow as your primary colors in paint if you wanted to be a complete dick, but they’re not your primary colors unless your work is going to be printed using. i n k. The only time they could be considered the primary colors in a traditional medium is if you’re using ink.

Good day.

Also thatswhiskytoyou’s color mixing is bullshit because THIS:

Is my icon. I painted this using RED. GREEN. AND BLUE. AS MY PRIMARY COLORS and they turned out fine. Of course, I used the finger smudge tool first and then the color mixing tool and then the blur tool, but hey what do I know.

Clearly using the blur tool only doesn’t cut it.

“Oh but Leo!” You say. “You used cyan and magenta in that color wheel!”

Well bitch guess what.

this is the digital color wheel. I’d say I mimicked that pretty well, don’t you think?

Oh and one other thing, notice how Blue and Yellow are directly opposite each other on this color wheel? That’s because we’re dealing with light, and with light, yellow and blue are complimentary colors.

Which is why when you mix them, it looks like this:

Which is a pretty neutral gray tone: They cancel each other out on the rgb color wheel when you mix them together.

BUT WITH PIGMENT THE PLACEMENT IS DIFFERENT

If you’ll notice, yellow and violet are now opposite each other, meaning they’re complimentary colors and if you mix  them, they’ll make a neutral gray.

But if you mix yellow and blue, same colors as before, YOU GET THIS:

Now keep in mind that the person in the video uses a darker blue, so they get a darker green, but the point is that it doesn’t make that neutral gray.

Now what happens when we mix yellow and violet paint?

Ah yes, you get a bunch of muted colors the more evenly you mix them.

What happens when you mix yellow light and purple light?

I see, I see.

OH AND ONE MORE THING.

They didn’t teach you about red blue green and cmyk in pre-k because when most of us were in pre-k digital art was still in its early stages and what fucking seven year old knows how to use a printer.

GUESS WHO’S NOT FUCKING DONE YET:

The reason the primary colors for light are so dramatically different from the primary colors for paint and ink is because your eye only receives combinations of red light, blue light, and green light. Our eyes do not have a sensor (cone cell) for yellow light. So when we paint with light, red green and blue are our primary colors. Because of our eyes.

Furthermore, paint primary colors are colors that cannot be created by mixing other colors together. For paint, they are red yellow and blue, because you cannot mix orange and green to get yellow. Mixing orange and purple paint does not make red. And mixing green and purple paint does not make blue.

Mixing blue and green paints will make cyan. Mixing red and blue paints will make magenta.

That’s why cyan and magenta aren’t primary paint colors.

However, you can’t mix yellow and blue ink and get cyan. You can’t mix red and blue ink to get magenta.

And that’s why cyan and magenta are the primary ink colors.

Brighter and stronger paints are created through tints and shades, through a thorough understanding of color theory and a few quality paint recipes. Not by bullshit posts on tumblr designed to mislead you.

“She will remember your heart when men are fairy tales in books written by rabbits…”

- Peter S Beagle, The Last Unicorn

Exquisite Textured Paintings by Justyna Kopania’s Capture Autumn’s Beauty

Polish artist Justyna Kopania has an uncanny talent of capturing the mood and heart of mother nature. 

Keep reading

Fin whale studies from photos

Illuminating Installation Features “Floating Whales” with Entire Worlds in Their Bodies by Isana Yamada 

(via My Modern Met)

People of Color in European Art, Ancient to 1800s

Ancient Art Week | pre-1000s | 1000s | 1100s | 1200s | 1300s | 1400s | 1500s | 1600s | 1700s | 1800s | Photography | Contemporary Art Week | Math and Science Week | Fiction Week | Garb Week

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

this blog never ceases to be amazing