Artist Nancy Guzik is the wife of Richard Schmid, whose book Alla Prima II I am almost finished reading (50 pages left, I can’t read it any slower, it’s so great!). And she is also on the cover of this book. Her paintings adhere to the standards set by her husband. That’s actually how they met each other 🙂 However, when you seek out her works, Richard’s legacy tends to eclipse everything. Richard passed away three years ago, and she is mostly recognized for preserving his memory and promoting his books. Her artwork frequently graces the pages of the book, as she does in Richard’s paintings, and it’s quite evident, thus I must mention her among my favorite artists. She has created several paintings, all from life, all stunning. In the comments, I will post a brief video by Nancy herself discussing a painting featuring four children and a book.
I remind you that similar posts can be found under the tag #artrauflikes, and at beinginamerica.com in the “Art Rauf Likes” section, where all 98 posts (unlike Facebook, which forgets (ignores) almost half of them) are available.
I once shared how convenient it is to cook soup with a pressure cooker — ten minutes to chop potatoes, carrots, and onions, throw in the meat, add water, press the button and it’s ready in an hour.
I pulled out the slow cooker from the garage — cooking with it is even simpler (and the food turns out very, very delicious). Just throw meat and potatoes into an empty pot. Ideally, of course, wash them first. And that’s it. Press the button and after a few hours, you get very tasty, very tender meat with real baked potatoes. Just today, I slightly overdid it (seven hours, of which four were on high, which is admittedly too much). Still very tasty, but it could have been a tad better, something for next time. Ribs, in particular, turn out great only this way. They are fatty and need to be cooked long.
Got access to OpenAI Search. Something is disappointing—why are the sources in Russian? Yes, I asked in Russian, but what does that have to do with the choice of sources? If you ask in English, everything is fine.
By the way, Google responds to such a query immediately with “I can’t help with responses on elections and political figures right now.”
Perplexity has a much cooler UI for now. Attaching screenshots
Denis Krupchatnikov is a fantastic artist! He runs his own drawing and painting school in Moscow, “MasterDraw Studio.” If I were nearby, I would love to learn Denis’s techniques, drawing, and painting. Most of his works are just sketches made in one go, but his technique speaks so loudly about how to paint with oils that it’s hard not to hear it. Here you have perfect color mastery, an understanding of primary and secondary elements, and the creation of form through simplification. In short, it’s pure joy. Best of luck to Denis.
Remember that similar posts are grouped under the tag #artrauflikes, and on beinginamerica.com in the “Art Rauf Likes” section, you can find all 97 (unlike Facebook, which forgets about almost half of them).
Last weekend we drove to Annapolis, which is about a 1.5-hour drive from our house. There you’ll find the Naval Academy – the U.S. Naval Academy (USNA). They train officers for the Marine Corps and officers for the U.S. Navy there.
Anyone with an ID is allowed on the grounds. They don’t photograph your documents or log them anywhere, but the area is certainly equipped with high-resolution cameras, so there’s no need for such measures. The territory includes educational buildings, dormitories, sports facilities, administrative buildings, historical monuments, and memorials. You can enter almost anywhere, and on Sundays in the summer, it’s almost deserted. You can wander around the floors of the educational buildings, see theses with formulas on the walls, almost all classrooms are open. No doubt the vigilant security is monitoring curious visitors through cameras, but still, the openness is quite striking. In total, we met at most a dozen other tourists, and this on a 137-hectare site. I don’t know whether few people know about it or everyone has already visited.
On one of the floors, for example, I found a pool for testing underwater robots. This pool, equipped with 40 surface and underwater motion capture cameras (Qualisys Oqus 7+), can pinpoint the position of the tested object 300 times a second. And there are many such laboratories there, I didn’t photograph everything (don’t know why). For instance, I discovered a planetarium in one of the rooms. A regular classroom door, and inside there’s a dome ceiling and a retractable robotic “head”.
In the courtyard, there was something happening that I jokingly called “yoga for sailors.” It was also worth recording, but somehow felt awkward to do so. On the field, a group of cadets in branded white sport suits sat in a precise grid, each with a bag and water beside them — all uniform, logos of the academy visible. The leader was shouting through a megaphone “two, three, four,” and after each count, the cadets responded “two sir! three sir! four sir!” and on each count, they synchronously did something, like jumping, or some kind of stretching. On the side stood three people with limited mobility, someone on crutches, someone in a cast, participating as best as they could.
And it’s still the summer, the campus is half-empty. Apparently, some kind of preparation for the main academic year.
The academy is waterfront, and understandably, there are many yachts around, including training ones. Sea wolves in training, so practice is essential.
Everything on the campus is impeccable. Despite the academy being state-run, every detail screams “this is a prestigious place where no expense is spared.” It’s interesting that getting into the USNA is not so straightforward.
Admission to the USNA is a complex and multi-layered process, involving several stages. Candidates must secure a nomination from a member of the U.S. Congress, the vice president, or the president. This stage involves writing essays, interviews, and extensive preparation. In addition to the standard application, it is necessary to provide SAT or ACT scores, academic grades, and recommendations. Additionally, candidates must pass a physical test (Candidate Fitness Assessment), which includes running, push-ups, pull-ups, and other exercises, plus a medical examination. In general, it’s a tough process that also involves members of the United States Congress. Fascinating.
An interesting Canadian-American artist — Jennifer McChristian. I like how she finds and uses contrast and colors. During my last vacation, I took my DSLR with me (I’m gradually posting photos from the Czech Republic and Germany). In Europe, there are a lot more contrasting colors in everything, more than I see in the USA. I don’t know why this happened. One of the skills of an artist (a skill that I’m also trying to develop in myself) is to notice such contrasting scenes in life, and if they are not there but are needed, to be able to slightly embellish reality by overlaying a kind of filter where the colors become brighter and the contrast stronger. In some ways, this resembles HDR, only done in the mind (by the way, have you noticed that in the last five years at least, there’s been no talk about HDR photography at all?)
I remind you that similar posts are grouped under the tag #artrauflikes, and on beinginamerica.com in the ‘Art Rauf Likes’ section, all 96 posts are available (unlike Facebook, which forgets (ignores) almost half of them)
I’m thinking of creating a next-generation palette. Somehow, these aren’t available for sale.
Here’s the issue. If you leave oil paints out in the air, by the next day they start to dry out, and after a few days, you have to throw them away. If it’s a thin layer, it dries up significantly; if squeezed out from a tube, a crust forms and you still end up throwing it away after a few days because mixing the crust with the normal paint inside is subpar.
To preserve them, there are special tubes where you can scrape off the paint and put it in the freezer. It’s tedious, I don’t do that. But there are special palettes with airtight lids. I believe only Masterson makes them, and I have one such palette. But even then, the paint dries out because there is a lot of space under the lid, and that’s enough. So essentially, if you take a break for a week — you might as well clean the entire palette and squeeze out new paint.
Well, the paint isn’t cheap either. One large tube of a single color costs about $25, and I have about 25 tubes of different colors. True, they’ve lasted me a year already, and they’re still going because I don’t apply them thickly with a palette knife. Obviously, the white paint runs out faster.
Additionally, the palette from Masterson is sold as just an empty plastic box, which is difficult to clean from dried paint. Any scraper would scratch the plastic. I insert a piece of glass in it, and under the glass, a sheet of gray paper. One piece of the right size glass sells for $36, but you could buy a picture frame and use the glass from it — which ends up three times cheaper. A scraper for glass works great – it cleanly removes even the most dried-up paint. It’s sold in hardware stores — practically eternal. And you need gray paper under the glass, which is sold everywhere.
But back to drying. Here’s what I think – what if we could integrate a pump in the lid that sucks out the air? You press a button — and the air is evacuated, the lid presses even tighter, and it seems like then the paints could stay fresh practically forever.
An artist almost buys a palette once in a lifetime. What’s gonna break there, anyway? At least now there would be something to… no, but seriously, paying an extra $20-30 for such a “feature” wouldn’t be a problem at all. They could even sell the glass, scraper, and gray paper as a kit, so you wouldn’t have to buy all this separately, and in different stores.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 