I once went to a workshop on Sumi-e painting at the local Japanese cultural centre, and it changed how I look at paintings. So I’d recommend taking a Sumi-e class, or these days, I suppose watching Sumi-e tutorials on Youtube might do.
In general, getting an idea of how different cultures look at visual arts can be eye-opening. In addition to learning by doing, going to different museums and galleries can be a way to learn about art from many different time periods and cultures in different mediums.
Another thing that changed my perspective is a book called An Eye For Fractals by Michael McGuire. It taught me to break down things into different types of shapes when looking at them, and to appreciate a different kind of beauty than is usually taught to children. It is an exploration of Benoit Mandelbrot’s famous quote
“Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.”—Benoit Mandelbrot, The Fractal Geometry of Nature, 1983.
I once went to a workshop on Sumi-e painting at the local Japanese cultural centre, and it changed how I look at paintings. So I’d recommend taking a Sumi-e class, or these days, I suppose watching Sumi-e tutorials on Youtube might do.
In general, getting an idea of how different cultures look at visual arts can be eye-opening. In addition to learning by doing, going to different museums and galleries can be a way to learn about art from many different time periods and cultures in different mediums.
Another thing that changed my perspective is a book called An Eye For Fractals by Michael McGuire. It taught me to break down things into different types of shapes when looking at them, and to appreciate a different kind of beauty than is usually taught to children. It is an exploration of Benoit Mandelbrot’s famous quote