How I learned to be an artist:

I choose to face a blank canvas again in 2004 after nearly 40 years since I last worked as an artist. During the hiatus, however, I continued to use my artist hands and eyes, filling several sketchbooks with drawings and notes. I visited museums and exhibits throughout North America and Europe to study styles and techniques of celebrated artists. I learned from their works as I sketched and took notes.

I got my first steady job as commercial artist in 1959. It was an opportunity to look over the shoulders of experienced artists. I signed up for the Famous Artists Schools correspondence course at that time. I returned to the University of Georgia in the summer of 1961, finished working towards an art degree there and graduated.

All of the experiences mentioned above taught me to be an artist, but nothing was more beneficial than seeing up close what others had done ... and drawing.

Someone looked through my sketchbooks in 2004 and asked me to again work as an artist. I unpacked stored materials, art books included. Some of the books are shown stacked along with the following picture of the Famous Artists Schools faculty at the time I began its course. Three tall (red, yellow and dark blue) FA workbooks are on the left in the stack. The other books are listed below the picture of the stack.

Famous Artists Schools: Shown standing below are (left to right) Jon Whitcomb, Norman Rockwell, Austin Briggs, Fred Ludekens, Edwin Eberman, Robert Fawcett and Albert Dorne. Seated are (left to right) Harold Von Schmidt, Dong Kingman, Stevan Dohanos, Alfred Parker, Peter Helck, Ben Stahl and Milton K. Breslauer. (circa 1954).

Books pictured from left to right:

(1)(3)(4) Famous Artists Schools workbooks; (2) The Styles of Ornament by Alexander Speltz; (5) The Hudson River School by Louise Minks, (6) A Manual of Engineering Drawing for Students and Draftsmen, French Vierck; (7) Extraordinary Chickens by Stephen Green-Armytage; (8) One Nation, Patriots and Pirates Portrayed by N.C. Wyeth and James Wyeth; (9) The Passing Perspectives of Rural America, paintings by Jim Harrison; (10) American Realism by Edward Lucie-Smith; (11 / top book on vertical stack) Itten: The Elements of Color, a treatise on the color system of Johannes Itten; (12) Creative Color by Faber Birren; (13) Wondrous Strange, The Wyeth Tradition; (14) Visions of Adventure, N.C. Wyeth and the Brandywine Artists; (15) The Complete Etchings of Rembrandt from the John Villarino Collection; and, (16) Old Masters, Impressionists & Moderns from the Pushkin Museum, Moscow.

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Famous Artists Schools was founded in 1948. (It) was started by a man named Al Dorne, who was a personal friend of mine, and Milton Breslauer (1901-1968) ... according to a transcript of an interview with Bennett Cerf maintained by the Columbia University Libraries Oral History Research Office. Cerf went on to say in the interview that ... Breslauer put up most of the first money. Dorne had the idea. Breslauer became active in it as it started growing ... (source of quotes).

Now owned by Cortina Learning International as Famous Artist School, FA was founded Westport, CT—CLI History of FAS. According to a 1962 issue of the Securities and Exchange Commission News Digest, Famous Artists Schools filed a registration for shares of common stock as a New York corporation. The SEC item pointed out that FAS provides home study courses by correspondence in the fields of art. It also mentions that Milton K. Breslauer was a former FAS vice president.

Floreo.com has additional comments about FAS and its first course offering. See A New Project: Famous Artists School (1954) posted at the website. The posting contains links to other resources, including information and FAS-related artwork examples at Today's Inspiration Blogspot. Select the linked names associated with the above 1954 FAS faculty photograph for more information and examples of their works.

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Suggestions are available for searching the Web for more information about the faculty of the Famous Artists Schools shown in the above photograph as well others such the artists of the Golden Age of Illustration and those who came along in the USA after World War II, many of whom first learned their skills as so called veteran artists.

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abstract art

The website of Worsley Central School of Worsley, AB offers an explanation of abstract art. The explanation includes the 1952 confession by Pablo Picasso. Here is what Picasso had to say in about making a living as a rich and famous artist:.

From the moment that art ceases to be food that feeds the best minds, the artist can use his talents to perform all the tricks of the intellectual charlatan. Most people can today no longer expect to receive consolation and exaltation from art." The 'refined,' the rich, the professional 'do-nothings', the distillers of quintessence desire only the peculiar, the sensational, the eccentric, the scandalous in today's art. I myself, since the advent of Cubism, have fed these fellows what they wanted and satisfied these critics with all the ridiculous ideas that have passed through my mind." The less they understood them, the more they admired me. Through amusing myself with all these absurd farces, I became celebrated, and very rapidly. For a painter, celebrity means sales and consequent affluence. Today, as you know, I am celebrated, I am rich." But when I am alone, I do not have the effrontery to consider myself an artist at all, not in the grand old meaning of the word: Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, Goya were great painters. I am only a public clown--a mountebank." I have understood my time and have exploited the imbecility, the vanity, the greed of my contemporaries. It is a bitter confession, this confession of mine, more painful than it may seem. But at least and at last it does have the merit of being honest.

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blank canvas

Generally, its the artist as a painter who stands before the blank canvas with brush in hand. The expression defines the time just before getting started. It's an expression that implies challenge. The artist sees and contemplates what is to be done. Actually, anyone about to engage in something creative can metaphorically face a blank canvas. Related are easel, drawing board, sketchbook and drawing pad. Also, creative people using the right sides of their brains may interpret what they hear and mind map on blank note pads or even the backs of envelopes. Using blank space is a creative process.

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Edwin Eberman (1905 - 1988)

Artist, designer, educator: According to a 1954 faculty picture, Famous Artists Schools, Westport, Connecticut, Eberman was art director. >Eberman produced guides with titles like How to Make Money in Commercial Art and Illustration. He published a Nantucket Sketchbook. Query the Web for more information by copying and pasting the following to a search engine: "Edwin Eberman" illustrator

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egallery

The advent of the Internet gave new meaning to E. The letter is now commonly accepted as a prefix abbreviation for Electronic or Electric. An online definition of gallery states that it is a building or room devoted to the exhibition of works of art; therefore, an egallery or e-gallery is a place on the Web that virtually functions as an art gallery. Its an online presentation of artwork at a museum website ... the display of a fine arts collection. The links for the names of artists associated with the photograph of the faculty of Famous Artists Schools on this webpage were chosen because they e-exhibit examples of illustrations and sketches. For a similar example, take a look at the website of the National Museum of American Illustration, Newport, RI. Look down the webpage about N.C. Wyeth to see a list of the illustrators (The Stars in our Flag). Some artists' names are linked to e-exhibits of their work like the one for Wyeth.

An e-gallery here at BobGover.com is laid out for you to use your horizontal scroll bar to move to the right as if walking through a real-world exhibit. Also this website has a list of museums and exhibits online. You can conveniently search the Web from here for e-exhibits of artists' works by copying and pasting suggested words and phrases.

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veteran artists:

After World War II the GI Bill became available to those who served in the US military as they returned home. There were veterans in the late 1940s and 1950s who wanted to be illustrators because of their exposure to the works of artists of the Golden Age of Illustration, a time period designation that ... generally speaking, refers to commercial art created in America between 1880 and 1920, when legendary illustrators such as Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, and Charles Dana Gibson produced their finest work. (source of quote). The generation of illustrators that came along after WWII, whether veterans or otherwise, were productive in much the same way as those of the Golden Age, but began to phase out in with the introduction of computer generated art during the last 20 years of the 20th century. Many retiring traditional illustrators shifted to fine arts. In the final analysis, when art historians of the future look back on the Golden Age of Illustration they may perhaps redefine it as beginning in the the late 19th century and continuing throughout the 20th.

Notably, the last of the American traditional illustrators turned to landscape painting as they retired from commercial art. Many of them focused their attention on the American West and continued to use their skills at producing picture stories as well as landscapes. For examples of some of the western picture story artists see Cowboy Artists of America.

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