My new drawing website

Posted by Ben Rathbone on January 31, 2018

I've moved my Sight-Size method page to a new home. The new home will be a growing collection of content about learning to draw and improve your drawing:

Studydrawing.com

Getting Started Painting Outdoors

Posted by Ben Rathbone on November 1, 2016

Have you ever wanted to try painting outdoors? I wrote about how to do this and get started: How To Get Started Plein-Air Painting

Website for Plein Air Painters

Posted by Ben Rathbone on November 1, 2016

When I was living in Chicago, I started painting outdoors. I did this for fun and to push my painting skills. Years ago I put together a basic website to track places I wanted to paint in a database and put them on a map. I originally built it with the Symfony framework, but then stopped working on it for lack of time. For the last 18 months I've been doing Drupal development and quickly realized I could fully build this and flesh it out in Drupal. And after moving to San Diego, I realized I'd be a fool if I did not take advantage of southern California's amazing scenery.  So here it is: Plein-Air Map. 

Reference Books

Posted by Ben Rathbone on July 11, 2016

Do you draw? Do you want to learn more about it? Do you, like me, have a compulsive desire to collect books about drawing? If so, check out the group of books I added to my drawing website.

Yet more work up

Posted by Ben Rathbone on February 3, 2016

The number of works I've posted is up to 75, and the total image count is 198. Wow!

Sight Size, 15 years later

Posted by Ben Rathbone on January 25, 2016

I've had my page describing the Sight-Size method up for 15 years now. In transferring it and setting it up for this new iteration of my website, I thought the question might come up if I still use it or think the method is valuable. The answer is a definite yes. 

Since learning the method and posting the page, I've created most of the paintings on my paintings page. My earlier work used the method with much more intensity. I still use the method presently whenever I do figure drawing or painting in the studio with a model. Even if I don't use the strings, mark the vantage point, or use the t-square, I'll still set myself up to stand in a manner that I can quickly flip my eyes back and forth between the figure and my drawing or painting. I've also done quite a bit of outdoor painting recently, and the skill and facility with flipping the eye from work to subject is invaluable. 

So, the time invested has paid dividends for me, and I belive it can for anyone who is willing to do the same. 

Sensual Chicago

Posted by Ben Rathbone on January 20, 2016

For the third year in row, I'm producing an art show called Sensual Chicago. See more details via the link. 

Much More Work is Posted

Posted by Ben Rathbone on January 20, 2016

On my previous website, I had up a total of 28 works of art, 14 of which were paintings. On this site so far, I have 52 works up in total, 24 of which are paintings. With all the detail images, the image total is 160.

The site is built with Drupal. I've taken the time to learn it properly. I've also gotten a lot of professional experience with it recently. Like with any tool, when you take the time to learn to use it correctly, using it is really fun. 

Welcome to my new site

Posted by Ben Rathbone on January 15, 2016

The start of 2016 marks a change in what I do. Instead of taking a tedious amount of time to release this site, which I've been working on for a quite a while, I've released it now. There are plenty of tweaks and changes I will keep making. I'll also be adding more artwork over the next few weeks.

My page describing the Sight-Size Method is still on the site.