[FallDamage]

The mullins dvd? I pop out of the community for months at a time so sometimes I miss announcements and major revelations, so did I miss anything with relation to this. I've been waiting for it to pop up on gnomon's coming soon for several years now, always thinking it was just around the corner.

Whats the story on this?

[notic]

i dunno, i'm also very interested in it.. but haven't heard anything about it.

spooge is too busy scouting the jungles

[retro]

lol falldamage, what you wrote describes pretty well what i have been thinking for a year or so now. im always waiting for the next coming soon update on gnomon. i guess he just enjoys seeing us all waiting hopefully that doesnt encourage them to charge twice as much.

[Max]

I actually like the idea that his style and progress will remain a secret forever. Makes it even more mystic. Eventough we all know how he achieves this special style,..at the same time we don't. The real cool stuff can't be teached with these DVDs anyway. It's more of an inspiration imho....

[Ben Mauro]

i was told he has scheduled time to finish them in the fall.

but that was a while ago, so you never know.

[Capt. Fred]

Yeah I think the deal with these DVDs is that you think the most important question is How do they do that? And when you see it it is perfectly obvious, a line here, a bit of blue there, a dot there. Their decisions are based on a wealth of experience which is their source of power - which you will never have access to. I agree with you Max. At best the dvds just inspire you to persevere with your own familiar process of gradual improvement, as there is no other way of acquiring great skill.

As somebody in china once said,
"If you aim for simplicity, master complexity"
"If you aim to dispense with method, learn method"
"If you aim at facility, work hard"

/muse

[Synnical]

have to agree with Max and Capt.Fred here - as much as I'd like to see the man paint, the dvd won't reveal anything more than what we already know from looking at the wealth of work spooge has on his site. The dvd would be an inspiration to watch, yes, but no, it won't make you a better painter.

[FallDamage]

Well, philosophical perspectives aside, I still think it'd really interesting to watch it happen in real time and 2 hours of commentary to go along with it, eh? I'll still get it when it comes out, even if only because I've done so many studies of his speed paints, I'd like to get his own take on things to supplement that knowledge.

[Ben Mauro]

last i heard there will be multiple DVD's(2-4), and the main focus will be on
foundation skills. like Scott's matte surface shading videos, except applied to
painting.

it wont be like some of the earlier ones where you just watch the artist bang out
a painting with little commentary.

i agree with Capt. Fred though, you wont get anywhere without hard work and
practice, but i still think they will be some of the best released yet.

[Mikko K]

I think spooge said it would be more about instruction than demonstration (or something along those lines).

It would be cool to hear about the thought processes, the design ideas etc.

But I can imagine he doesn't want to spawn more clones by giving people tutorials to copy from

[Ranath]

[Nag]

I wrote an e-mail to Gnomon about the dvd�s and the answer I got was,

"It seems to have been canceled or put on the shelf until much later. Sorry for the inconvenience. Thank you."

Oh well.

[notic]

Hm, too bad :/

would've been fun

[M@.]

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[octavian]

yeah what a disappointment. Though I like Max's optimism about leaving it a mystery.
Still, hearing his thoughts on rendering light would have been cool. perhaps we can get him to do an audio tape for us. lol.

U know, the beatles followed that Guru the Maharishi from India around for quite a while, only to find out in the end he was a "fake"... whatever that means.

[Sukhoi]

Seriously though. He left sijun a long time ago. Too much bullshit I suspect. I can't help but feel that he has already contrubuted A LOT to the digital painting community, and done so out of will, and not money. The DVD's would go 'round the world, create a billion more spooge copies and make the original a buck or two. I can see how putting a dvd of "impersonal" instruction" on the street, could seem weird to a guy who did it for free for a lot of years. Until it all became too much

We all need to move on anyways. Seriously.

-Sukhoi

[notic]

this is what i like about sijun, the open minded discussions about painting..

well, spooge left us a great deal of info while he was here.. lets be thankful for that..

i bet he can't resist the speed thread though, i know i can't!

[Mikko K]

notic, that sounds like Tom Cruise talking about L. Ron Hubbard, hehe

[FallDamage]

Heh... anyway, I guess I was so eager for the dvds because he was a forum member before my time. I think in any case, some painting fundamentals dvds along the instructional lines of scott robertsons perspective titles from any accomplished artists would be of benefit to me.

I just was eager for SD's rumored gnomon line because I knew he'd probably touch on subject matter that was right up my alley while he was doing it. Just makes it more interesting while I'm learning is all.

[notic]

haha mikko, gotta love the scientologists..

[Jabo]

Would be nice to have a list of all his helping posts for people who were still crapping themselves those days.
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CA SB|Flickr

[Lunatique]

I agree that the important stuff can't be taught by painting demonstrations, unless the person is talking A LOT and explaining why he' using that color there, and why he chose to put a highlight in such a place..etc. When someone explains their choices, it becomes a lot more illuminating. When I gave workshops, I always concentrate on the why's, not the how's, as I feel that's far more helpful to others.

It would've been awesome to just watch and listen to Spooge for a few hours though. I've learned far more from him than I have from any other sources. Sometimes just reading one of his posts will open up your eyes to a whole new level of thinking. It was beyond the art instructions too--it was his character, values, and perspective about many things other than simply drawing and painting. We are all Spooge's children here, regardless if we painted in his style or not. It's tragic that he's no longer around--the greatest loss Sijun has ever suffered IMO.

[Capt. Fred]

Shall we do a minute's silence?

Annually?

"Only joking. But not really�"

[med]

..lol lunatique, you're making it seem like the man is dead! But it sure would be a thrill to have him post here again. i was lurking the mighty ruins of sijun (broken links...everywhere..) and i was reading most of craig's stuff. Even those help a lot... does anyone know why he left sijun in the first place? was he too busy with work er what?

[Lunatique]

[Mikko K]

Plus any time spent with the family outside the world of computers & internet is well spent.

It doesn't take anything dramatic to realize that we're in the end, wasting a lot of time writing here. (feel free to disagree)

[FallDamage]

I wouldn't say we're wasting time here... maybe a bit, but I consider it solidly motivating, if not instructional to be exposed to the artists who congregate here. I probably wouldn't have picked up a pencil all those years ago if not for this place and places like it.

But I was unaware of the extent of the drama surrounding SD which lunatique posted, so the situation makes sense as it has been laid out here. It's too bad it came to that, but here we are.


Umm, back to the original topic for a moment. Gnomon seems to have a new dvd on light and color that, from the synopsis, appears as though it might touch upon some of the foundational issues I had hoped the SD dvd would provide. I also noticed that Massive Black has a foundations painting dvd out. Does anyone have any knowledge of these two products, in terms of whether or not they're analogous to the robertson dvds in their foundations instruction?

Has anyone else picked up a book or dvd that they've found particularly instructional in the basics?

[Nag]

I picked up Alla Prima by Richard Schmid the other day and found it one of the better ones, can�t say I learned much new from it but it put things nicely into perspective. It has a very nice chapter about color in it as well.

[Jabo]

Falldamage, I have the Jason Chan downloadable Sketch Demo by Massive Black.

It's speedpainting with Painter, from initial line sketch to finished speedpaint. 6 hours compressed into one. He explains some things about Painter and his thought about what he paints. Oh, did I mention it's just $10?
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CA SB|Flickr

[FallDamage]

Yea I was looking at that, but I'm starting to look for an even more foundational approach than I think that offers. A few years ago I was salivating over the matte painting and concepting dvds that gnomon had and saw them as the answer to all my problems. I borrowed a few titles from a friend a while back, and while fun to watch, they didn't power level me up like I had hoped.

-Besides the scott robertson ones that I kind of glazed over while viewing... (yes I'm an idiot). From what I hear, they're probably the most valuable, and I still fail to properly employ what I learned watching them. -

I think that maybe what I need right now is some good solid books like nag suggested anyway.