How to Get Over the Anxiety of Public Speaking?: Watch the Stanford Video, “Think Fast, Talk Smart,” Viewed Already 15 Million Times

in How to Learn for Free, Stanford | February 14th, 2018

How many of us fear pub­lic speak­ing more than death: four out of five, nine out of ten, 99 out of 100? We’ve all heard a vari­ety of sta­tis­tics, all of them sug­gest­ing the for­mi­da­bil­i­ty — per­ceived or real — of the task of get­ting up and talk­ing in front of oth­er peo­ple. But per­haps you’ll get an even clear­er sense of that from the num­ber 15,021,560: the total view count, as of this writ­ing, racked up by “Think Fast, Talk Smart,” an hour-long talk on pub­lic speak­ing tech­niques by com­mu­ni­ca­tion coach and Stan­ford Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness lec­tur­er Matt Abra­hams.

The pedants among us, myself includ­ed, will have already tak­en note of that lin­guis­tic infe­lic­i­ty in the very title of the talk, but Abra­hams him­self wastes lit­tle time point­ing it out him­self. He also points out its val­ue: you’ve got to catch the atten­tion of your audi­ence, and a delib­er­ate­ly made mis­take (or even a non-delib­er­ate­ly made one) catch­es it as well as any­thing.

He goes on to elab­o­rate on var­i­ous oth­er tech­niques we can use not just to get oth­er peo­ple lis­ten­ing well, but to get our­selves talk­ing well, the first pri­or­i­ty being to get our­selves to stop trip­ping over our innate desire to talk per­fect­ly.

Abra­hams leads his audi­ence through sev­er­al short “games,” instruct­ing them to do things like explain­ing their week­ends to one anoth­er by spelling out loud and sell­ing one anoth­er Slinkys, with the under­ly­ing goal of break­ing the habits that have so often imped­ed our abil­i­ty to sim­ply get up and speak. He also pro­vides phys­i­cal tech­niques, like doing push-ups or tak­ing a walk around the block before giv­ing a talk in order to get your mind more “present,” and intel­lec­tu­al ones, like always adher­ing to a struc­ture, no mat­ter how sim­ple and no mat­ter how ordi­nary the sit­u­a­tion. (“I prac­tice these struc­tures on my kids,” he notes.)

Tak­ing the wider view, we should­n’t look at speak­ing as a chal­lenge, accord­ing to Abra­hams, but as a chance to explain and influ­ence. “A Q&A ses­sion is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for you,” he says, and prac­tic­ing what he preach­es, he opens one up at the end of the talk, under­scor­ing that we can improve our pub­lic speak­ing skills by doing as he says, but even more so by doing as he does. Some of those more than eleven mil­lion views sure­ly come from peo­ple who have watched more than once, study­ing Abra­hams’ own use of lan­guage, both ver­bal and body. He also demon­strates a good deal of humor, though brevi­ty, as Shake­speare wrote, being the soul of wit, you might con­sid­er chas­ing his talk with the four-minute Big Think video on the same sub­ject just above.

Abra­hams reg­u­lar­ly teach­es cours­es on Pub­lic Speak­ing at Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies. If you live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, give his class­es a look. Also see his books, Speak­ing Up with­out Freak­ing Out: 50 Tech­niques for Con­fi­dent and Com­pelling Pre­sent­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Teacher Helps His Stu­dent Over­come Stut­ter­ing and Read Poet­ry, Using the Sound of Music

NPR Launch­es Data­base of Best Com­mence­ment Speech­es Ever

How to Sound Smart in a TED Talk: A Fun­ny Primer by Sat­ur­day Night Live‘s Will Stephen

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How to Write Like an Architect: Short Primers on Writing with the Neat, Clean Lines of a Designer

in Architecture, Design, How to Learn for Free, Writing | February 12th, 2018

We have anoth­er nation­al cri­sis on our hands.

Our chil­dren are not only ill-equipped to read maps and tell time with ana­log clocks, their hand­writ­ing is in seri­ous decline.

For­get cur­sive, which went the way of the dodo ear­li­er in the mil­len­ni­um. Young­sters who are dab hands on the key­board may have lit­tle impulse—or opportunity—to prac­tice their print­ing.

Does it mat­ter?

It sure as shootin’ might be dur­ing a zom­bie inva­sion, giv­en the atten­dant break­down of dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the elec­tric­i­ty that pow­ered it.

But even in less dire times, leg­i­ble pen­man­ship is a good skill to mas­ter.

As Vir­ginia Berninger, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus and prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Washington’s Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Learn­ing Dis­abil­i­ties Cen­ter, told The New York Times, “Hand­writ­ing — form­ing let­ters — engages the mind, and that can help chil­dren pay atten­tion to writ­ten lan­guage.”

Hand let­ter­ing is also a com­plex neu­ro­log­i­cal process, a work­out involv­ing var­i­ous cog­ni­tive, motor, and neu­ro­mus­cu­lar func­tions.

There’s also a school of thought that teach­ers who still accept hand­writ­ten assign­ments uncon­scious­ly award the high­est grades to pupils with the neat­est pen­man­ship, which is eas­i­er on tired eyes. Some­thing to keep in mind for those gear­ing up to take the hand­writ­ten essay por­tions of the SAT and ACT.

Let’s remem­ber that let­ters are real­ly just shapes.

The Finns and French have long-estab­lished uni­for­mi­ty with regard to hand­writ­ing. In the absence of class­room instruc­tion, Amer­i­cans have the free­dom to peruse var­i­ous pen­man­ship styles, iden­ti­fy their favorite, and work hard to attain it.

(This writer is proof that pen­man­ship can become part of the DNA through prac­tice, hav­ing set out to dupli­cate my mother’s delight­ful, eccen­tric-to-the-point-of-illeg­i­bile hand at around the age of 8. I added a few per­son­al quirks along the way. The result is I’m fre­quent­ly bam­boo­zled into serv­ing as scribe for what­ev­er group I hap­pen to find myself in, and my chil­dren can claim they could­n’t read the impor­tant hand­writ­ten instruc­tions hur­ried­ly left for them on Post-Its.)

His­tor­i­cal­ly, the most leg­i­ble Amer­i­can pen­man­ship belongs to archi­tects.

Their pre­cise­ly ren­dered all caps sug­gest metic­u­lous­ness, account­abil­i­ty, steadi­ness of char­ac­ter…

And almost any­one can achieve it, regard­less of whether those are qual­i­ties they per­son­al­ly pos­sess.

All it takes is deter­mi­na­tion, time, and—as taught by Doug Patt in his How to Archi­tect series, above—more tools than can be simul­ta­ne­ous­ly oper­at­ed with two hands:

an Ames let­ter­ing guide

a par­al­lel rule or t‑square

a small plas­tic tri­an­gle cus­tomized with bits of tape

a .5mm Pen­tel draft­ing pen­cil

If this sounds need­less­ly labo­ri­ous, keep in mind that such spe­cial­ty equip­ment may appeal to reluc­tant hand writ­ers with an inter­est in engi­neer­ing, robot­ics, or sci­en­tif­ic exper­i­men­ta­tion.

(Be pre­pared for some frus­tra­tion if this is the student’s first time at the rodeo with these instru­ments. As any vet­er­an com­ic book artist can attest, few are born know­ing how to use an Ames let­ter­ing guide.)

It should be not­ed that Patt’s alpha­bet devi­ates a bit from tra­di­tion­al stan­dards in the field.

His pref­er­ence for breath­ing some life into his let­ters by not clos­ing their loops, squash­ing tra­di­tion­al­ly cir­cu­lar forms into ellipses, and using “dynam­ic angles” to ren­der cross­pieces on a slant would like­ly not have passed muster with archi­tec­ture pro­fes­sors of an ear­li­er age, my sec­ond grade teacher, or the font design­ers respon­si­ble for the com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed “hand let­ter­ing” grac­ing the bulk of recent archi­tec­tur­al ren­der­ings.

He’s like­ly the only expert sug­gest­ing you make your Ks and Rs rem­i­nis­cent of actor Ralph Mac­chio in the 1984 film, The Karate Kid.

There’s lit­tle chance you’ll find your­self groov­ing to Patt’s videos for any­thing oth­er than their intend­ed pur­pose. Where­as the late Bob Ross’ Joy of Paint­ing series has legions of fans who tune in sole­ly for the med­i­ta­tive ben­e­fits they derive from his mel­low demeanor, Patt’s rapid fire instruc­tion­al style is that of the busy mas­ter, deft­ly exe­cut­ing moves the fledg­ling stu­dent can only but fum­ble through.

But if the Karate Kid taught us any­thing, it’s that prac­tice and grit lead to excel­lence. If the above demon­stra­tion whips by too quick­ly, Patt expands on the shap­ing of each let­ter in 30-sec­ond video tuto­ri­als avail­able as part of a $19 online course.

Those look­ing for archi­tec­tur­al low­er case, or tech­niques for con­trol­ling the thick­ness of their lines can find them in the episode devot­ed to let­ter­ing with a .7mm Pen­tel mechan­i­cal draft­ing pen­cil.

Explore fur­ther secrets of the archi­tects on Patt’s How to Archi­tect chan­nel or 2012 book, also called How to Archi­tect.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Hand­writ­ing as Prac­ticed by Famous Artists: Geor­gia O’Keeffe, Jack­son Pol­lock, Mar­cel Duchamp, Willem de Koon­ing & More

Dis­cov­er What Shakespeare’s Hand­writ­ing Looked Like, and How It Solved a Mys­tery of Author­ship

Helen Keller Had Impec­ca­ble Hand­writ­ing: See a Col­lec­tion of Her Child­hood Let­ters

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How to Draw in the Style of Japanese Manga: A Series of Free & Wildly Popular Video Tutorials from Artist Mark Crilley

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, How to Learn for Free | December 19th, 2017

In Japan, the word man­ga refers broad­ly to the art form we know in Eng­lish as comics. But as used in the West, it refers to a com­ic art style with dis­tinc­tive aes­thet­ic and sto­ry­telling con­ven­tions of its own, orig­i­nat­ing from but now no longer lim­it­ed to Japan. Just as the past cen­tu­ry or so has seen the emer­gence of West­ern mas­ters of such things thor­ough­ly Japan­ese as sushi, judo, and even tea cer­e­mo­ny, the past few decades brought us the work of the West­ern man­ga­ka, or man­ga artist. Mark Cril­ley stands as one of the best-known prac­ti­tion­ers of that short tra­di­tion, thanks not only to his art but to his efforts to teach fans how to draw in the style of Japan­ese man­ga them­selves as well.

Apart from com­ic-book series like Akiko, Miki Falls, and Brody’s Ghost, the Detroit-born Cril­ley has also pub­lished a tril­o­gy of Mas­ter­ing Man­ga instruc­tion­al books. In an inter­view with Wired, he frames his own man­ga-mas­ter­ing process as a project sim­i­lar to lan­guage-learn­ing: “When I went to Tai­wan to teach Eng­lish after grad­u­at­ing from col­lege, I threw myself into learn­ing Chi­nese with a real ‘tun­nel vision’ kind of ded­i­ca­tion. As a result I became con­ver­sa­tion­al in Man­darin with­in about a year. More recent­ly I decid­ed to teach myself how to draw in a man­ga-influ­enced style and thus focused exclu­sive­ly on that for many months.”

Cril­ley first took to Youtube to pro­mote his then-new man­ga series, but he “soon found that peo­ple were watch­ing my videos as draw­ing lessons. As more peo­ple watched I got hooked on pass­ing on draw­ing tips to the next gen­er­a­tion, and so I con­tin­ued pro­duc­ing more and more instruc­tion­al videos.”

More young­sters seem to have an inter­est in draw­ing in the style of Japan­ese comics and ani­ma­tion than ever (at least if my friends’ kids are gen­er­a­tional­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive), and Cril­ley finds that they “appre­ci­ate hav­ing an art teacher who takes man­ga seri­ous­ly, and doesn’t dis­miss it as an infe­ri­or art form. I’m sure plen­ty of art teach­ers are all, ‘Stop draw­ing those saucer-eyed char­ac­ters! Draw this still life instead!’ ”

Not to say that Cril­ley does­n’t appre­ci­ate real­ism: he’s put out a whole book on the sub­ject, and some of his instruc­tion­al videos cov­er how to draw life­like eyes (a tuto­r­i­al that has drawn 27 mil­lion views and count­ing), leop­ards, mush­rooms, and much else besides. But for the aspir­ing man­ga­ka of any nation­al­i­ty, his Youtube chan­nel offers a wealth of lessons on how to draw every­thing from faces to clothes to fig­ures in motion to big eyes in the man­ga aes­thet­ic. But as he sure­ly knows — hav­ing cit­ed in the Wired inter­view a wide range of influ­ences from Star Wars to Mad mag­a­zine to Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus — if you want to tru­ly find your own style, you can’t lim­it your­self to any one source of inspi­ra­tion. Acquire the skills, of course, but then take them to new places.

You can see a playlist of 256 how-to-draw videos by Cril­ley here. Or a series of small­er draw­ing playlists here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Big List of Free Art Lessons on YouTube

How to Draw the Human Face & Head: A Free 3‑Hour Tuto­r­i­al

Watch Ground­break­ing Com­ic Artist Mœbius Draw His Char­ac­ters in Real Time

Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry Shows You How to Draw Bat­man in Her UW-Madi­son Course, “Mak­ing Comics”

W.B. Yeats’ Poem “When You Are Old” Adapt­ed into a Japan­ese Man­ga Com­ic

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A Big List of Free Art Lessons on YouTube

in Art, How to Learn for Free | May 23rd, 2017

It may seem like a dubi­ous hon­or to belong to a select group that includes some of my favorite cre­ative peo­ple: art school dropouts. But while a failed endeav­or can be painful, many a dropout learns that the expe­ri­ence is valu­able not only because fail­ures can fuel future suc­cess, but also because the skills, tech­niques, and ways of think­ing one picks up in the first, “boot camp,” year of art school are wide­ly applic­a­ble to every cre­ative endeav­or.

My favorite art school class was sim­ply called “Foun­da­tions.” As the name implies, it dealt exclu­sive­ly with basic mate­ri­als and techniques—for join­ing, paint­ing, sculpt­ing, build­ing, etc. One learns to think of large, com­pli­cat­ed, poten­tial­ly over­whelm­ing projects of as reducible in some sense to mate­ri­als and tech­niques. What am I work­ing with? What is the nature of this mate­r­i­al and what are the best ways to shape it? What does it want to become?

These are prac­ti­cal, fun­da­men­tal ques­tions artists ask them­selves, no mat­ter how big or high con­cept their ideas. These days, the mate­ri­als are like­ly to be more vir­tu­al than phys­i­cal, or some cre­ative mix­ture of the two. Still, sim­i­lar con­sid­er­a­tions apply, as well as the basic skills of using col­or, per­spec­tive, shad­ow, and line effec­tive­ly. In the free video tuto­ri­als here, you can learn many of those skills with­out attend­ing, or drop­ping out, of art school. They may not pro­vide a com­plete arts edu­ca­tion, but they offer high qual­i­ty lessons for artists need­ing to sup­ple­ment or refresh their skill sets.

At the top, Ahmed Aldoori explains the col­or wheel and col­or palettes in Pho­to­shop. In oth­er videos on his YouTube chan­nel, he gives tips on draw­ing hands (a par­tic­u­lar chal­lenge for every artist), artist anato­my, dig­i­tal paint­ing, and more. Anoth­er chan­nel, Draw with Chris, offers free and pre­mi­um con­tent for both dig­i­tal and tra­di­tion­al artists, such as the long video on shad­ing tech­nique above. He also has a pop­u­lar two part series on life draw­ing (part 1 — part 2).

For artists and ani­ma­tors inter­est­ed in “semi real­is­tic, man­ga, and ani­me style char­ac­ters, envi­ron­ments, and con­cept art,” the Lapu­ka chan­nel fea­tures many free short videos on the basics, such as their short intro to “1,2, and 3 point per­spec­tive” above. Oth­er videos teach “Mul­ti­ply­ing and scal­ing in 1 point per­spec­tive,” “Cut­ting in 1 point per­spec­tive,” “Draw­ing with a mouse,” and ren­der­ing cer­tain pop­u­lar ani­me char­ac­ters.

All of these tuto­ri­als come from a list com­piled by Deviantart user DamaiMikaz, who has help­ful­ly divid­ed sev­er­al dozen YouTube instruc­tion­al series into cat­e­gories like “Art Fun­da­men­tals,” “Tuto­r­i­al & How to,” “Dig­i­tal art soft­ware,” “Tra­di­tion­al Art,” and oth­ers. Whether you’re an aspir­ing artist, dab­bling ama­teur, work­ing pro­fes­sion­al, or an art school dropout pick­ing the craft back up, you’ll find what you need here. Know of any oth­er free video resources not list­ed in this archive? Let us and our read­ers know in the com­ments and we’ll add the pri­mo picks to the list.

Below find the list cre­at­ed by DamaiMikaz:

Art fundamentals

Peo­ple that teach you the fun­da­men­tals of art. Anato­my, col­or, per­spec­tive, etc
Ahmed Aldoori
CG Cook­ie Con­cept

Tutorial & How to

How to’s and tuto­ri­als on var­i­ous sub­jects
Ahmed Aldoori
Art of Wei
Art Prof

Brush­boost
CG Cook­ie Con­cept
DRAW with Chris
Draw with Jaz­za
Draw­ing Tuto­ri­als Online
FZDSCHOOL
Hap­py D. Artist
Imag­ine FX
Iste­brak
Javi can draw!
Jesus Conde
Kien­an Laf­fer­ty
Lev­elUp
My Draw­ing Tuto­ri­als
Proko
Sinix Design
Sycra
The Art of Aaron Blaise
The Drawfee Chan­nel
Tyler Edlin
Will Ter­rell
Xia Tap­tara

Digital art software

Chan­nels geared towards cre­at­ing effects in dig­i­tal art soft­ware
dig­i­talfx­cube
PHLEARN
Pho­to­shop Train­ing Chan­nel

Traditional art

Chan­nels doing tra­di­tion­al art
agnesce­cile
Baylee Jae
Hap­py D. Artist
James Gur­ney
Lachri Fine Art
Michael James Smith
Robin Clonts
Sara Tepes
Stan­ley Art­germ Lau
Super Ani
Zimou Tan

Manga / Anime

Chan­nels geared towards draw­ing manga/anime style 
markcril­ley
Nuei Neko
Sycra
Whyt Man­ga

Timelapse paintings

Just stare in awe
agnesce­cile
Alice X. Zhang
Apterus Graph­ics
Asuka111 Art
Atey Ghailan
axel tor­ve­nius
Broth­erBas­ton
Brush­boost
Chris Cold
Con­cept Art Ses­sions
Daniel Wachter
Draw With Rydi
FZDSCHOOL
Ilya Kuvshi­nov
Ilya Tyl­jakov
James Gur­ney
Jesus Conde
Jor­dan Grim­mer
Kien­an Laf­fer­ty
Kim-Seang Hong
Kiwa
Lev­elUp
Lina Sidoro­va
Nuei Neko
Peix­el
sae­ji­noh
Sara Tepes
Scott Robert­son
Spoon­fish­Lee
Stan­ley Art­germ Lau
Super Ani
Xia Tap­tara
zephyo
Zimou Tan

Critique’s & Overpaints

Peo­ple paint­ing over oth­er peo­ple’s paint­ing. Great to get insight
Ahmed Aldoori
Art Prof
BORODANTE
CG Cook­ie Con­cept
FZDSCHOOL
Iste­brak

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The MoMA Teach­es You How to Paint Like Pol­lock, Rothko, de Koon­ing & Oth­er Abstract Painters: Free Course Begins on May 22

Bri­an Eno on Why Do We Make Art & What’s It Good For?: Down­load His 2015 John Peel Lec­ture

Free Course: An Intro­duc­tion to the Art of the Ital­ian Renais­sance

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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How To Understand a Picasso Painting: A Video Primer

in Art, History, How to Learn for Free | December 12th, 2016

night-fishing-picasso

Some­times it’s hard for the untrained eye to fig­ure out what exact­ly is going on in a Picas­so.

For­tu­nate­ly, the artist leaned toward infor­ma­tive, work­man­like titles.

Had he titled “Night Fish­ing at Antibes,” below, some­thing a bit more opaque—“Untitled No. 2,” say—the une­d­u­cat­ed eye might well per­ceive the nar­ra­tive as some­thing clos­er to “Drunk­en Night in a Con­vey­er Belt Sushi Joint.”

Even know­ing the cor­rect title, my gut still argues that the boomerang-head­ed lady with boobs like lips is singing karaoke…

But after watch­ing the above video by Evan Puschak, aka The Nerd­writer, I’m will­ing to con­cede that she’s stand­ing on a jet­ty, a like­ly amal­ga­ma­tion of two of Picas­so’s lovers.

(The less volup­tuous crea­ture stand­ing next to her is his wife, and my gut is eager to know why it looks like she’s top­less, a point on which Pushak is frus­trat­ing­ly mum.)

His process for under­stand­ing a Picas­so takes the gut response into account, but then flesh­es things out with four addi­tion­al steps. You can apply them to many oth­er artists’ work too.

  1. First reac­tion
  2. Con­tent
  3. Form
  4. His­tor­i­cal con­text
  5. Per­son­al con­text

It’s cer­tain­ly help­ful to know that the paint­ing was made in 1939.

You prob­a­bly don’t need the Inter­net to guess what world events were like­ly a source of pre­oc­cu­pa­tion for the artist, whose “Guer­ni­ca” was com­plet­ed just two years ear­li­er.

Con­tent-wise, Puschak truf­fles up some inter­est­ing geo­graph­i­cal ref­er­ences that elude most online analy­sis of the work. For instance, those pur­ple blocks in the upper left cor­ner now house the Musée Picas­so.

There may well be a sixth step. Ear­li­er, when a fan of the Nerdwriter’s week­ly video essay series asked Puschak how to under­stand art, he respond­ed:

All good art is try­ing to tell you some­thing about your life. Your life… specif­i­cal­ly. So under­stand­ing art is a process of under­stand­ing your­self, and vice ver­sa. In both cas­es, you only learn by engag­ing. Watch­ing isn’t enough, nei­ther is read­ing or lis­ten­ing or think­ing for that mat­ter. From my per­spec­tive, engage­ment means writ­ing. An idea that’s been snaking around in my videos for a long time is that we learn by say­ing, not think­ing. You know some­thing when you can artic­u­late it, and for that you need words and sen­tences and para­graphs. So intro­spect, write down what your mind is doing. And when you watch a movie or look at a paint­ing, write down how you feel about it. You’ll be amazed how one informs the oth­er, and before long you’ll see some beau­ti­ful sparks. 

Below are some of the resources Puschak cred­its with inform­ing this Nerd­writer episode:

Rudolf Arn­heim, “Picas­so’s Night Fish­ing at Antibes” The Jour­nal of Aes­thet­ics and Art Crit­i­cism — Vol. 22, No. 2 (Win­ter, 1963), pp. 165–167

Dou­glas N. Mor­gan, “Picas­so’s Peo­ple: A Les­son in Mak­ing Sense” The Jour­nal of Aes­thet­ics and Art Crit­i­cism Vol. 22, No. 2 (Win­ter, 1963), pp. 167–171

Nina Coraz­zo, “Picas­so’s ‘Night Fish­ing at Antibes’: A New Source” The Burling­ton Mag­a­zine Vol. 132, No. 1043 (Feb., 1990), pp. 99–101

Mark Rosen­thal, “Picas­so’s Night Fish­ing at Antibes: A Med­i­ta­tion on Death” The Art Bul­letin Vol. 65, No. 4 (Dec., 1983), pp. 649–658

Albert Boime, “Picas­so’s “Night Fish­ing at Antibes”: One More Try” The Jour­nal of Aes­thet­ics and Art Crit­i­cism Vol. 29, No. 2 (Win­ter, 1970), pp. 223–226

Tim­o­thy Anglin Bur­gard, “Picas­so’s Night Fish­ing at Antibes: Auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Apoc­a­lypse, and the Span­ish Civ­il War” The Art Bul­letin Vol. 68, No. 4 (Dec., 1986), pp. 657–672

Lawrence D. Steefel, Jr., “Body Imagery in Picas­so’s “Night Fish­ing at Antibes” Art Jour­nal Vol. 25, No. 4 (Sum­mer, 1966), pp. 356–363+376

You can view the Nerdwriter’s oth­er videos on his web­site or sub­scribe to his YouTube chan­nel where a new video is pub­lished every Wednes­day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Picas­so Cre­ate Entire Paint­ings in Mag­nif­i­cent Time-Lapse Film (1956)

The Mys­tery of Picas­so: Land­mark Film of a Leg­endary Artist at Work, by Hen­ri-Georges Clouzot

How to Look at Art: A Short Visu­al Guide by Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How to Draw the Human Face & Head: A Free 3‑Hour Tutorial

in Art, How to Learn for Free | September 23rd, 2016

Aspir­ing artists, take note. New Mas­ters Acad­e­my has put online a video demon­strat­ing how to draw the human face and head. And it’s no short demo. It runs a full three hours. 

Describ­ing the scope and con­tent of the video, the Acad­e­my writes:

In this in-depth draw­ing series, instruc­tor Steve Hus­ton shows you a step-by-step con­struc­tion of the human head. He cov­ers the basic forms and more detailed inter­me­di­ate con­structs of the head as well as the eyes, nose, mouth and ears.

In this les­son, you will learn how to use basic shapes (box­es, cylin­ders, spheres) to form the basic struc­ture of the head. This les­son is a fun­da­men­tal step in learn­ing how to cre­ate a sol­id foun­da­tion to place the fea­tures of the face on. He will also show you how to con­struct the basic head in dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives…

This video will give you a big taste of what’s inside New Mas­ters Acad­e­my’s library of sub­scrip­tion videos. You can learn more about their ser­vice here.

On their YouTube chan­nel, you’ll also find videos of (nude) fig­ure mod­els you can use in draw­ings and paint­ings. And a series of non-nude mod­els you can use for the same pur­pose.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy: Take a Free Course from Stan­ford Prof/Google Researcher Marc Lev­oy

Mil­ton Glaser Draws Shake­speare & Explains Why Draw­ing is the Key to Under­stand­ing Life

Watch Ground­break­ing Com­ic Artist Mœbius Draw His Char­ac­ters in Real Time

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Take a Free Course on Digital Photography from Stanford Prof Marc Levoy

in How to Learn for Free, Online Courses, Photography | September 9th, 2016

Pho­tog­ra­phy and video have advanced to such a degree that any one of us, for a mod­est invest­ment of cap­i­tal, can own the req­ui­site equip­ment to make pro­duc­tions at the same lev­el of qual­i­ty as the pros. And most of us already hold in our hands com­put­ers capa­ble of pro­duc­ing and edit­ing hun­dreds of rich still and mov­ing images. What we may lack, what most of us lack, are the skills and expe­ri­ence of the pro­fes­sion­als. No amount of fan­cy pho­to gear can make up the dif­fer­ence, but you can at least acquire the education—a very thor­ough, tech­ni­cal edu­ca­tion in dig­i­tal photography—online, and for free.

Taught by Stan­ford pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of Com­put­er Sci­ence Marc Lev­oy, the course above, sim­ply called “Lec­tures on Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy,” cov­ers seem­ing­ly every­thing you might need to know and then some: from the parts of a dig­i­tal cam­era (“every screw”), to the for­mu­la for depth of field, the prin­ci­ples of high dynam­ic range, and the his­to­ry and art of pho­to­graph­ic com­po­si­tion.

Beware, this course may not suit the casu­al Instagrammer—it requires aspi­ra­tion and “a cell phone won’t suf­fice.” Addi­tion­al­ly, though Lev­oy says he assumes no pri­or knowl­edge, he does expect a few non-cam­era-relat­ed aca­d­e­m­ic skill sets:

The only knowl­edge I assume is enough facil­i­ty and com­fort with math­e­mat­ics that you’re not afraid to see the depth-of-field for­mu­la in all its glo­ry, and an inte­gral sign here or there won’t send you run­ning for the hills. Some top­ics will require con­cepts from ele­men­tary prob­a­bil­i­ty and sta­tis­tics (like mean and vari­ance), but I define these con­cepts in lec­ture. I also make use of matrix alge­bra, but only at the lev­el of matrix mul­ti­pli­ca­tion. Final­ly, an expo­sure to dig­i­tal sig­nal pro­cess­ing or Fouri­er analy­sis will give you a bet­ter intu­ition for some top­ics, but it is not required.

Sound a lit­tle daunt­ing? You will not need an expen­sive SLR cam­era (sin­gle lens reflex), though it would help you get the most out of com­plex dis­cus­sions of set­tings. The top­ics of some inter­ac­tive fea­tures may sound mystifying—“gamut-mapping,” “cylindrical-panoramas”—but Levoy’s lec­tures, all in well-shot video, move at a brisk pace, and he con­tex­tu­al­izes new sci­en­tif­ic terms and con­cepts with a facil­i­ty that will put you at ease. Lev­oy for­mer­ly taught the course at Stan­ford between 2009 and 2014. The ver­sion he teach­es online here comes from a Google class giv­en this year—eigh­teen lec­tures span­ning 11 weeks.

Find all of the course materials—including inter­ac­tive applets and assignments—at Levoy’s course site. As he notes, since the course has “gone viral,” many videos embed­ded on the site won’t play prop­er­ly. Lev­oy directs poten­tial stu­dents to his Youtube chan­nel. You can see the full playlist of lec­tures at the top of this post as well.  For more resources in pho­tog­ra­phy education—practical and the­o­ret­i­cal, begin­ner to advanced—see PetaPixel’s list of “the best free online pho­tog­ra­phy cours­es and tuto­ri­als.”

“Lec­tures on Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy” will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

via PetaPix­el

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thompson’s Advice for Aspir­ing Pho­tog­ra­phers: Skip the Fan­cy Equip­ment & Just Shoot

The Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Reveals the Phi­los­o­phy, Tech­niques & Artistry of Edward West­on (1948)

See the First Known Pho­to­graph Ever Tak­en (1826)

Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Launch­es Free Course on Look­ing at Pho­tographs as Art

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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How to Get Started with Yoga: Free Yoga Lessons on YouTube

in Health, How to Learn for Free, Religion | September 9th, 2016

If you’ve dipped even a toe into the yoga world late­ly, you’ve per­haps noticed con­tro­ver­sies rag­ing from East to West about the Hin­du prac­tice of med­i­ta­tive pos­tures (āsanas). Is yoga reli­gious? If so, does prac­tic­ing it in schools vio­late reli­gious free­doms; does the Indi­an government’s endorse­ment of yoga slight Indi­an Mus­lims? Is yoga an ancient spir­i­tu­al prac­tice or mod­ern inven­tion? Is West­ern yoga “cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion,” as both cam­pus groups and Hin­du groups allege? Is there such a thing as “Real Yoga” and is “McYo­ga” killing it?

These ques­tions and more get debat­ed on a dai­ly basis online, on cam­pus, and in state­hous­es and coun­cils. No one is like­ly to find res­o­lu­tion any time soon. How­ev­er, you may have also heard about the health ben­e­fits of yoga, trum­pet­ed every­where, includ­ing Har­vard Med­ical School and the Mayo Clin­ic, and you can safe­ly ignore the pol­i­tics, and learn the phys­i­cal prac­tice in any num­ber of ways.

Like mil­lions of oth­er peo­ple, you may find that it helps you “fight stress and find seren­i­ty” as Mayo writes; or become a “mind­ful eater,” boost “weight loss and main­te­nance,” enhance fit­ness, and improve car­dio­vas­cu­lar health, accord­ing to Har­vard.

Var­i­ous teach­ers and schools will make oth­er claims about yoga’s prac­ti­cal and spir­i­tu­al effects. These you are free to take on faith, expe­ri­ence your­self, or check against sci­en­tif­ic sources. And when you’re ready to get out of your head and con­nect your mind and body, try a yoga class. Skip the gym and Lul­ule­mon. You don’t even have to leave your home or get out your wal­let. We have sev­er­al free online yoga class­es rep­re­sent­ed here, from rep­utable, expe­ri­enced teach­ers offer­ing pos­es for begin­ners and for expe­ri­enced yogis, and for all sorts of ail­ments and types of phys­i­cal train­ing.

The first, Yoga with Adriene, opens things up gen­tly with “Yoga for Com­plete Begin­ners,” at the top, a 20 minute “home yoga work­out” that requires no spe­cial props or pri­or expe­ri­ence. From here, you can browse Adriene’s Youtube chan­nel and find playlists like the 38-video “Foun­da­tions of Yoga” and 10-video “Yoga for Run­ners” sequence, fur­ther down. You can also read a pro­file of Adriene in The New York Times.

Should Adriene’s approach strike you as too casu­al with the yog­ic tra­di­tion, you might find the instruc­tion of Sri K. Pat­tab­hi Jois more to your lik­ing. His one-hour “Pri­ma­ry Series Ash­tan­ga” video, above, opens with this dis­claimer: “The fol­low­ing video is NOT an Exer­cise Video. It is intend­ed for edu­ca­tion­al, artis­tic, and spir­i­tu­al pur­pos­es only.” The text also warns that Mas­ter Sri K. Pat­tab­hi Jois’ yoga prac­tice is taught “to six high­ly expe­ri­enced stu­dents,” as will become clear when you watch his video.

Oth­er courses—from yoga video series by Kino Yoga and Yoga Jour­nal—ges­ture to both ends of the pure­ly fit­ness-based and pure­ly spir­i­tu­al-based spec­trum, and both have begin­ner series, above and below. It’s up to you to decide where you stand in the yoga wars, if any­where. You’ll find, if you look, no short­age of reportage, think pieces, aca­d­e­m­ic arti­cles, and rants to fill you in. But if you want to learn the phys­i­cal prac­tice of yoga, you needn’t look far to get start­ed. In addi­tion to the resources here, take a look at some curat­ed lists of online yoga class­es from New York Mag­a­zine, Huff­in­g­ton Post, and Elle UK.  Thanks go to our Twit­ter fol­low­ers, who gave us some help­ful hints. If you have your own tips/favorites, please drop them in the com­ments sec­tion below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Moby Lets You Down­load 4 Hours of Ambi­ent Music to Help You Sleep, Med­i­tate, Do Yoga & Not Pan­ic

Stream 18 Hours of Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions

Dai­ly Med­i­ta­tion Boosts & Revi­tal­izes the Brain and Reduces Stress, Har­vard Study Finds

Son­ny Rollins Describes How 50 Years of Prac­tic­ing Yoga Made Him a Bet­ter Musi­cian

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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