Studio Codex Press presents

Looking at Art

• Do you wish you could create art and express your inner ideas? 
• Does the thought of going to a museum make you feel inadequate? 
• Let Looking at Art change that forever.

 

Dear Art-Challenged...

Honestly, you don’t have to ever be intimidated by art again.

You’re not alone in your insecurity, though—there are many others who feel they’re on the outside looking in at the art world.  We all laugh when we see a cartoon showing someone puzzling over an abstract sculpture, but some people, deep inside, wonder why they don’t “get it.”  Are you one of them?

You’ve probably shared the idea that art is for snobs.  But no matter what your age, you still remember how you really loved to draw and color when you were a kid.  Remember how your bright, rainbow crayon colors looked good enough to eat?  Wasn’t scribbling in your coloring book fun?  What went wrong?

“Oh,” you say, “but you know how to do art? You’re an art professor. How could you understand how lost I feel looking at paintings?”  Like every other kid, I liked to scribble and draw stuff on rolls of used paper my dad brought home from work.  What was so hard about that?

But by the time I took art classes in college I was often guessing about whether my painting or drawing teacher would like what I did for homework. 

And then I found the secret.  It was in art history!  There it was—the secret formula for understanding art.  The pictures of the great artists had ALL THE RIGHT ANSWERS.  I learned the step-by-step formula for reading the language of art and discovered the wonderful messages artists were sending me.  When I broke the art code I was able to decipher the meaning of art from the ancient past AND art from today.  It was so simple—I had known it all along.  I had used it as a kid with my crayons, and I can show you how to rediscover it too.

 

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Are You Ready to Use the Secret and Start Understanding Art?

Well, Looking at Art is here to guide you out of your poor-person, uncultured, un-artistic mentality.  The thickness of your wallet, your level of education or your family genes has NOTHING to do with our ability to do art.  But your curiosity and interest have EVERYTHING to do with finally being comfortable with museums, art, and your own innate creativity.  And above all, remember this—YOU ALREADY KNOW A LOT OF THIS.

Let Looking at Art open your eyes to the vast world of art.

 

Here’s What You’ll Learn

Where do we start?

The Big Picture of how art and artists fit into the world and why we care

Some Do’s and Don’ts

Tips on how to successfully use the tools and techniques in Looking at Art to help you unlock more of art’s secrets

How to make sense of all the works of art made by people from so many places and different times.

How to to go to a museum with a viewing plan so you can appreciate and understand the artwork there

How to discover your personal taste and use it to discover your discerning eye

Mini-Western Art History course.  “Word bites” that help you recognize art from the Prehistoric to 20^th century

 

What Real People Say About Looking at Art

“If only I’d have had this book when I was going to art school!  It would have made my life so much easier!

 

Mike B. was a successful graphic designer and college art teacher.  His beginning Computer Graphics student used the text as a foundation for their study of graphic design.

 

“Instead of doing a big lecture on the basics of art, I just had my beginning jewelry students read Looking at Art and we’d refer to it all semester.”

 

Marcia L. is an internationally known jeweler and metal smith who makes Looking at Art required reading for all her beginning students.

 

The “Bluffer’s Guide to Art”

Looking at Art has been called “the bluffer’s guide to art” because it allows you to say something intelligent and accurate about any work of art from any place and any time. It reacquaints you with all the art stuff you knew when you were a kid.  With this speedy and simplified approach, you’ll have a systematic method for seeing how artists create their masterpieces.  You’ll learn to recognize the “building blocks of art” and see how they’re arranged by the artist to send you messages.  Soon you’ll be able to understand the ideas artists from the past are sending you.

 

Who should buy Looking at Art?

Museum visitors

Baby-boomers with time on their hands

Students of the fine arts who need a sound foundation quickly

Anyone with art-related hobbies

Here’s another wonderful advantage to learning the language of art:  perhaps you’ll be inspired to create your own art.  Since you’ll know the artists’ secrets, you’ll have the confidence to try it for yourself. 

General classroom teachers who like a broad art knowledge

 

Want Proof?

Take a few more minutes to read the rest of this letter and you’ll discover one of the secrets artists use AND you’ll be able to immediately apply the secret to reveal your personal taste (Yes you DO have personal taste!)

Remember what I assured you—you know a lot about how to look at art already.  Let’s look at an important art element—color.  Everybody’s a sucker for color.  We love it.  No black and white TVs for us!  Color is so powerful it affects our speech:  “I was so mad I could see red!”  I don’t have to tell you that red is an exciting color that catches your eye.  We also feel that red is a “warm” color, that blue is a “cool” color.  These ideas are related to what we experience in nature.  Ever burned your feet on a hot beach and run for the cool blue water?  So how do artists use this knowledge?  Read on.

Artists understand these ideas about color just as you do, and they frequently use color to communicate ideas.  Can you understand why a battle scene would have many areas of red arranged around the picture? 

 

Now how can you use this information?

What if you wanted a cool, calm feeling in your bedroom?  What color would you choose?  Red? Blue?

Using what you know about color, now look in your closet.  You chose every item in your closet based on your personal taste, so here’s where you’ll find the answers to why you like some artworks and dislike others.  What colors do you prefer?  Bright? Cheery?  Pastel?  Subtle?  Chances are whatever they are will be in the paintings you really like.

So here we’ve learned something about the art element of color, discussed how an artist might use the color to give us ideas, and seen how color fits into our personal taste.  This is a sample of how Looking at Art  can help you rediscover your inner art sense, just as it has for thousands of students of all ages.

 

Successfully Used by Thousands

This system has been developed and fine-tuned by 25+ years of classroom-tested teaching.  It has been used in many different classes from Art History to Computer Graphics to Metalsmithing, and Introduction to Art. These concepts and techniques have been successfully adapted and used by all kinds of people including elementary school students and senior citizens.  It can certainly work for you!