Atelier Autodidactique

Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of this blog. I want to take this moment to thank all of you. I appreciate all of you who have taken a moment to share a funny thought, an encouraging word, a philosophical musing, or an expert insight.

Thanks too to all of you who have given your time and talent to the weekly Art By Committee contest. And thanks for linking or putting me on your blogroll. I wish I could link back to each of you, but my sidebar is already way out of control.

I am a firm believer in the value of self-teaching. Whether or not each of us has been to art school, we never get to a point where we know enough. Learning about art is a lifelong occupation.

Right now the history of art is at a remarkable crossroads, with a convergence of knowledge between digital effects innovation, vision research, a new realism in painting, and an outpouring of creativity in caricature, cartooning, and animation. As a result of all this cross-pollinaton, there’s a lot we can learn from each other, and I've been learning a lot from you by doing this blog.

I hope you’ll visit Gurney Journey from time to time over the future months. There are dozens of new topics lined up for future posts, with material on everything from reflected light to rainbows, silhouettes to spotlighting, interactivity to idealization—plus a few bizarre surprises along the way.

Image: Unused concept sketch for The Voyage of Argo, National Geographic, 1985.