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Kendric Tonn Profile picture
Kendric Tonn
@kendrictonn
Professional oil painter; semi-professional brush cleaner. I mostly talk about making art. Sometimes also video games.
fche Profile picture Potato Of Reason Profile picture 2 subscribed
Apr 7 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I have mixed feelings about this; for one, I don't think the Simpsons belongs in the same category of grotesques that the others seem, to me, to fit comfortably into together. Nonetheless... I think, maybe particularly in what we can call the West, we live a particularly insincere period of artistic production. The old idols are dead, and the living idols, they're even more dead than that.
Mar 15 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
When I was of an age, or maybe just a skill level, to be hanging out on forums frequented by the very young, I noticed a lot of people asking "hey, I'm a new artist, and I'd like some advice on how to get a style of my own."

Certainly, I thought about this question myself-- I eventually decided that there's an error in the premises behind the question: these kids were thinking of an artistic style as a thing you pick, or aim at, or put on like fashion, or adopt to differentiate yourself, or in general as a thing you aim at as a primary goal
Mar 8 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Hey, so, as re: targeting paintings as a form of protest, I want to say something. And it's speculative, maybe I'm wrong, but nonetheless: Don't get me wrong, I hate the Just Stop Oil protests, but they are clearly planned and operating within some kind of controlling framework. That is, they are making deliberate choices of: (beloved) targets that can be attacked dramatically w/o damage

Nov 20, 2023 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
As re: painting materials for someone starting off. I don't think I can answer the question as written, if only because painting requires things from three product lines (paint, brush, canvas), but let's see First pitfall I think people fall into is trying to paint without being at all comfortable drawing, so really, Baby's First Painting Supplies are EXTREMELY affordable: something that lets you draw with an emphasis on masses instead of lines. That is to say, some charcoal paper, willow charcoal, and an eraser.
Nov 8, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
This whole thread is... well, I'll say that it doesn't have a lot of bearing on my own experience of making paintings. I will wanly attempt to agree and say that Conservatives Producing Art do indeed often make clumsy in-group signalling with no merit whatsoever. Whether this is a problem exclusive to, or indeed, predominantly associated with, conservatism, I leave as an exercise to the reader. Image
Oct 30, 2023 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
Let's talk about painting, and two ways you can think about how to make a painting. (Stick around to the end for a miscellaneous thought on AI) I'm going to call these two approaches "rendering" and "impressionism"; paintings by Canaletto and by Sargent below

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Image What I'm calling "rendering" is, probably, the more intuitive way to make a picture. You want a person? You paint a person. You want a window? You paint a window. Look at these background figures in the Canaletto. They have as much anatomy as is practical! Image
Oct 25, 2023 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
Ok, I'm a pretty traditional representational oil painter, yeah? (Painting for example.) That's where my tastes are, that's what I do. But I don't hate all the moderns, and I sometimes think they're doing interesting things.

🧵 Image (this is just an idiosyncratic thread from a throwback painter. I haven't read most of the standard writing on these guys, because I just don't care. But anyway.)
Oct 21, 2023 • 15 tweets • 9 min read
You know what, I've been devoted to painting, using only traditional media, for a long time, but he's right. Wyeth is kind of boring, and could be more interesting in the present day. For instance, there could be a catboy

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Image And let's be honest, David made iconic paintings, but I'm really uncomfortable with the way so many of them are just propaganda for a dictator. But what if we took out the dictator and replaced him with something everyone loves?
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Mar 27, 2023 • 28 tweets • 12 min read
I'm primarily an oil painter, not a printmaker, but I've just finished printing a set of linocuts; I'd like to do what will probably be a longish thread about the learning experience, the process, and how this fits into the broader sweep of my long-term projects. Maybe two years ago, thanks in fact to Twitter Dort Corm, I started looking intensely at Japanese prints, particularly a short 20th century movement called shin-hanga; pictures, prints by Kawase Hasui and Yoshida Hiroshi
Mar 27, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Pleasing masonry on what is, nonetheless, just a rather simple box in downtown Columbus I'm never quite sure why these decorations on turnish of the last century, very simple and utilitarian, structures look better and work better than contemporary attempts on new brick facades.
Dec 5, 2022 • 10 tweets • 6 min read
Hands, yeah? Drawing hands is the topic du jour; I'm going to talk a bit about that, and then maybe show off some of my own favorite hands I've done. First, imma be real with y'all. Hands are difficult, absolutely. Hands are also a thing you (barring prior industrial accidents) always have a good model available for. Get a mirror, get a sketchbook, don't talk about how you can't draw hands--draw your hand.
Dec 3, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
I am suddenly appreciating my washing machine, wherein it was quite simple to remove and unclog the drain pump. This dishwasher--maybe because it's a narrow model?--is making things difficult Strongly suspect there is a serious clog that made it past the impeller, into the drain hose (can't blow through the hose). Naturally, the hose is factory-crimped onto the pump.
Dec 3, 2022 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
So, a rambling thread on AI art, from the perspective of an oil painter who knows nothing: I do expect it to be disruptive, and in fact, to hurt a lot of artists. I don't assign any particular moral weight to this; something something buggy whips something. As it stands, right now, right this second, without extrapolating, it seems clear that it's easy to generate a cover that's better in every aspect than l, idk, 75% of self-published novels on Amazon.
Dec 3, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Stopped at the art fair for the art college down the road from me. It's fun going to these things. I feel some moral obligation to spend at least a little money here today.
Nov 17, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
It's funny, I think I did a reasonably competent job redoing my house--that project started some time ago--but I still don't think of myself as a guy who owns, or knows how to use, anything more complicated than a screwdriver. But here I am loading a set of tools into my car. Current project is not overly technical: the handrail to my parent's basement stairs is just a 2x4, and I'm going to add something it's possible to actually grip
Oct 28, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Riffing off this a little, one of the better drawing classes I had at Conventional Art College was taught by a rather tough Costa Rican woman, who during class critiques banned anyone from saying "I like it." Really helped focus things. It occurs to me that some or many of you many not know what an art class critique day looks like. The specifics will vary, of course, but the conventional form is something like:
Aug 25, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
I'm not going to claim I'm an enormous fan of Pollock, and I do appreciate the implicit flex Rockwell is doing here, but it's interesting to me how much less interesting the internal painting is than an actual Pollock I know essentially nothing about Jackson Pollock, but here are two chosen basically at random. Let me try to formulate what I think is happening here that isn't happening in the Rockwell above.
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May 3, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I'm not saying I fully agree with this thread, and the takes it has on the place of general literacy in society, but I do worry regularly about our construction of a society that requires more than many people in it have to give. I suspect that you and I, here on the twits, do not really understand normal people. For an example from my own life, "people renting my Airbnb" probably heavily truncates the left side of the curve, and yet...
May 3, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Oh, huh, I've been in one of these, almost certainly, but I didn't realize it. Met some friends in Beijing. Our destination was elsewhere, but we had a few days in the city. Spent one of those afternoons, into the evening, drinking beer and eating gyoza. Image
May 2, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
So the last week or so has been unusual, in that I've had cause to do a bit of... legal writing isn't the proper term, I guess, but letters to lawyers and associated documents. (It's just something stupid that I didn't want to get involved in, but have to do.) Anyway, I don't want to do this. I just want to be painting.

However.

It is kind of fascinating, and indeed, a bit enjoyable. Speaking as a former English major.
May 2, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
As regards drawing, I don't have anything novel to say about it, but it's interesting how fuzzy-edged the category is, and how many things are subsumed in it. Drawing can, of course, be highly finished, or intended to be a standalone piece. And this is a way I often draw.