Art Instruction Blog
Forward from The Power of Positive Painting
Forward from "The Power of Positive Painting" A lot has changed in the art world in the forty plus years since I embarked on my career. Academia is finally embracing contemporary realism – realism that has something important to say about our world. Meanwhile, popular...
Private Lessons Are the Way
Virtual or In-person Private Lessons Covid19 has everybody making adjustments. As an artist, I am going about my business very differently than usual. The Pandemic is an interrupter to the art business, in a lot of ways. Fortunately, as a visual artist, a lot of my...
Form, Character and Likeness
Excerpt From "The Power of Positive Painting," the Upcoming Color Book, by Robert Maniscalco Shedding Light on Values In the beginning, there was light. Long before Thomas Kinkaid turned “painter of light” into a ridiculous slogan, the masters knew of its critical...
Portrait Demo Via Zoom
Zooming Right Along Last evening was a grand experiment. The Charleston Artist Guild presented a zoom portrait demo. It was an interesting experience for me. I have come to enjoy the interplay between the people, all gathered in a room together. I derive energy from...
mARTtyrs
People are Starved for Meaning Like the Fishfly, which are born to be consumed by fish, artists are born to be consumed by humanity. I'm talking about being consumed as in nurturing the consumer. Artists provide meaning to actual people, not some idea of people out...
Online Painting Instruction
Online Painting Instruction and Virtual Learning Robert has created a series of live streaming videos available to rent or purchase. There is lots of free content, as well as paid, on subjects ranging from drawing what you see, releasing your creative genius to...
Learning Can Be Painful – Part One
Here is my response to a fascinating blog about my Alma Matter/professional acting school, Circle in the Square. Much of what we learned at Circle was about neutralization, where the goal is to find our neutral, so we might then add or take away any color, behavior,...
Learning Can Be Painful – Part Two
Is the Old School Effective? In Learning Can Be Painful - Part One, I didn’t get into my experiences in music school with my clarinet teacher. Nor did I delve into my experiences learning the craft of painting from my father. These, and many of the examples I describe...
A Virtual Art Opening
In these tricky times, it is often difficult to get out and enrich the soul. As so many creatives are doing now, Robert leads you on a virtual tour of his work, now on exhibition at Uncork Charleston. Rob's artist talks are always fascinating and filled with...
NETI Statement of (His Lack of) Purpose
I am that I am not. I am Neti. See NETI RUN (Remove Unnecessary Nonsense) "There is a war on beauty in the world. There is a war on intellectualism. There is a war on history where only the new is cool. But the only new thing is that which has not yet been experienced...