Commercial Photographer, Douglas Lyle Thompson Leaves The Ads Behind

Courtesy: DouglasLyleThompson.comAfter photographer Douglas Lyle Thompson graduated from college on the West Coast, he made the cross country trek to NYC, where he's since made a living shooting commercial work for brands like Puma, Philip Lim, Monocle and the Ace Hotel. These projects share a similar color palette and sense of place, environments typically ultra-bright, washed out. And while we most certainly back those making a living via commercial work, we tend to find ourselves more excited by a photographer's "side" projects. As in, the work produced without a client breathing down their neck.

And typical us, we've officially fallen for the quietude of Thompson's expansive landscapes. The images simply feel more accomplished, or maybe the most timeless out of all his work. Either way: To the aspiring photographer the work seems a bit more attainable than, say, landing a shoot with Puma. 

Here, we've assembled a miniature gallery of Thompson's work, which you can view more of on his personal blog, chronicling his adventures from coast-to-coast and to these far-off places.

Feeling moved to grab your SLR? Great. Jump into one of 3rd Ward's several photography classes and start capturing a space of your own.

All Images Courtesy: DouglasLyleThompson.com

The Unabashed NADA Art Fair NYC Trend: Color Blocking

 

With each season comes a new set of trends, and in that respect, the art world is no different from any other market. Jerry Saltz--New York Mag's resident art critic--pointed out several in his recent, excellent piece on "How to Make It in the Art World." Amongst the listed trends: Trash, "Cindy Sherman-esque," neon words, candy-colored sculpture, video-game art, busted open canvases and art about the art market. Sure, there was a great deal of that on view at NADA NYC, but we'd like to add one more to the list, and that is: Color blocking.

In general, the showing at NADA was unexpectedly colorful, but these bright, blocky compositions were clear standouts. In particular, Sadie Benning's untitled Gouache works on collaged newspaper drew us into Vogt Gallery's booth. Benning had several pieces on view alongside the super-flat figurative paintings by Mernet Larsen, who took traditional color blocking for a spin with Sit Ups Leg Lift, a depiction of two people stretching on exercise mats (as featured up above.)

The showing from Galerie Christian Lethert continued the painterly take on the trend with Joe Fyfe's wood and acrylic Pursat. Fyfe's other work is similarly rough in technique but more involved and often incorporates a variety of media like fabric and large planks of wood. In fact, out of all his pieces, Pursat seems like the least representative of his work, but despite its extremely DIY appearance it attracted a flock of potential collectors. 

The Rome gallery 1/9 unosunove was the most direct in their boldly color block-only booth, with three pieces by Dan Shaw-Town and a smattering of Jamie Shovlin's take on the famous Fontana Modern Masters (above), a series of pocket guides on writers, philosophers and thinkers. First published in the 70's, the guides became better known for their cover art than for their content. Art director John Constable was one of the first to use a sans-serif typeface on his abstract and op art compositions. The last book was published in 1995, but from 2003-2005 Shovlin reinterpreted the 48 covers "as a series of flawed paintings" with missing titles and running colors. While he was working on these he discovered 10 titles that, for whatever reason, were never published; amongst them Fuller by Allan Temko and Sherrington by Jonathan Miller.

In related news, consider checking out our Color Theory course, in which we prep you and your work for imminent NADA dominance (or the actualization of your individual, artist-oriented goals, which we feel is probably more vital.)

Studio Innovations: Photographer Ryan Hopkinson's Self-Made Weather Systems

UK photographer Ryan Hopkinson is typically something of an "ad man." Nike, Samsung, Warner Bros. to name a few. An impressive roster for sure, though not exactly the kind of work we find ourselves in the business of hyping.

Though we find it refreshing when an artist--making a sizable living on ubiquitous clients--takes a breather and gets back to creating something that's sole purpose is to be purely visual. Which is why we feel Hopkinson's new body of work, aptly-named Tornado is a miniature studio-born miracle.

According to Hopkinson:

The delicate nature of our creations was a big juxtaposition in many ways between natures own, but being able to create one and see it up close, regardless of its size and power was mesmerising.

Is it necessarily "genius"? No, but it doesn't have to be. Hopkinson took a static setting, turned it dynamic and captured it beautifully.

Guess what? We feel you can do the same thing. Peruse 3rd Ward's photography classes here and give Hopkinson a run for his money.

But first, a closer look at Hopkinson's Tornado:

All Images: Courtesy RyanHopkinson.co.uk

Now Announcing // Brand-New Classes

Get ‘em while they’re hot! We just posted a whole bunch of never-before-been-offered classes. Some of them are advanced versions of existing classes, others are new subjects you’ve been asking for. Here are some of our favorites, but make sure to browse the entire curriculum, too.

Build Your Own Surfboard
Surfboards are nuanced pieces of equipment, carefully fine-tuned for different locations and surfing style. Customize your own in this 5-week class.

Electronic Pop-up Cards
Perfect for Valentine’s Day! Combine paper engineering methods with LEDs, and make a card they’ll remember.

Cameraless Cinema // 16mm Experimental Film
Treat film as a canvas with paint, collage, scrapes and other methods, and see what happens.

Audio Amplifiers
Incorporate sound into any of your projects, whether they’re furniture, fabric, paper...the possibilities are endless.

Sewing 2 // Pampered Pets
Let your pets reap the benefits of your advanced sewing skills and make a pet coat!

Rhino 2
Take your prototyping skills to the next level by learning how to create complex models ready to integrate into CAD drawings, laser cutting, 3-D printing, and other manufacturing processes.

2d-3d Drawing
Create realistic 2D drawings using visualization, shading, projection and perspective techniques.

Drawing 2
Build on the observational techniques learned in Intro to Drawing by exploring form, gesture, light, texture, and spatial relationships.

Painting 2
Further develop your comprehension of color theory and learn more about underpainting and glazing.

Everybody Loves Bread
Demystify this age-old process and create your own loaves in no time.

Bookkeeping for the Uninitiated
Learn essential skills that will help you do your taxes stress-free and keep you on budget, too.

Intermediate Web Design: CSS3
Learn to design pages, format text, and create effects with the latest and most powerful Cascading Style Sheet tool: CSS3.

Intermediate Web Design: Intro to PHP
Explore the scope and potential of PHP, then plan and write out your own scripts.

WATCH THIS NOW // Douglas Rushkoff On The Importance Of Learning To Program

Still in search of a New Year's resolution? How about learning to program in one of our many different web design classes?

Why should you, you ask? Well, these days computer programming is a valuable and increasingly critical skill, not just for those who want to make a career out of it, but for anyone living in today's increasingly technology-oriented world. Author and media theorist Douglas Rushkoff laid out this argument in full in his 2010 book Program or be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age. He offers a shorter but no less enlightening version in this video of a talk that he gave at SXSW Interactive:

Inspired? Check out our wide selection of web design classes and sign up for the one that best fits your needs. It's 2012—be a programmer, not one of the programmed!

-- John Ruscher

BEHIND THE SCENES // Yoav Liberman Gives American Woodworker An Up Close Look At His 3rd Ward Class

Intro To Woodworking earned the top spot in your Top 15 Classes of 2011, and if you're not one of the lucky people who got to enroll last year, you're probably curious about what goes on in the year's most popular class.

Well clearly you're not the only one: American Woodworker (which is to woodworking as Rolling Stone is to pop culture or Sports Illustrated is to pro sports) recently asked 3rd Ward teacher and world-renowned woodworker Yoav Liberman to provide a behind-the-scenes account of the class for the magazine's blog.

Lieberman did just that in a series of six blog posts, describing in detail how his students crafted their own "Shaker-esque step stools," from the initial concept and individual designs to the cuts, grooves and dados and final assembly.

If you have experience in woodworking, you'll likely pick up some tips and insights from the posts. If you're a newbie thinking about giving it a try, the descriptions will give you an in-depth idea of what the class is like. So put on your figurative safety goggles and step into the virtual woodworking shop with Liberman:

Part 1: Shaker step stool: a project for the new comers into woodworking

Part 2: Measure, cut, glue

Part 3: Grooves and Dados

Part 4: Design

Part 5: Dry-assembly and glue up

Part 6: Completed pieces + screws and plugs

-- John Ruscher

COUNTDOWN // Your Top 15 Classes of 2011 (And a guide to 2012's)

 

As we said goodbye to 2011 back in December we presented you with your Top 15 Favorite Blog Posts of the year. Now we're taking another look back (and forward, since there are lots of good New Year's resolution ideas below)--this time at your favorite 3rd Ward classes.

Presented here are the 15 classes that you loved the most in 2011-- the ones which taught you how to craft your own end table, wield a plasma torch, build circuits, code your own website in valid HTML/CSS and countless other amazing skills. We can't wait to bring you these classes again this year, along with many more that could very well become your favorites of 2012.

Hit the jump to check out 2011's top classes, and start 2012 off right by signing up for one today.

[#15]

Basic Bicycle Mechanics

What you learned: How to patch an inner tube, how to adjust limit screws on your derailleur, clean and lube a chain and fine tune almost every part of your bicycle.

Click for more information >>>

[#14]

Intro to Circuits & Electronics

What you learned: Ohm's Law, how to use a multimeter, how resistance effects voltage, the classic 555 timer and more.

Upcoming sessions begin on: January 22, February 8

Click for more information >>>

[#13]

Welding Techniques for Sculpture & Furniture

What you learned: The history of metal sculpture, how to use the metal shops many tools, how to order metal, how to bend and cut rod and sheet and more.

Upcoming sessions begin on: January 11, February 12

Click for more information >>>

[#12]

Intro to Digital Photography

What you learned: Keys to composition, the basics of photography and how they apply in the digital world, f-stop and shutter speed, the basics of Photoshop and Lightroom and more.

Upcoming sessions begin on: January 17

Click for more information >>>

[#11]

Night Welding: Intro to the Metal Shop

What you learned: How to use all of the tools in the metal shop (MIG welding, plasma torch, drill press, band saw and more) and feel like more of a bad ass.

Upcoming sessions begin on: January 9, January 24, February 2, February 20

Click for more information >>>

[#10]

Intro to Web Design // HTML/CSS

What you learned: How to write valid HTML/CSS, test pages in different browsers, edit images in Photoshop for the web and more.

Upcoming sessions begin on: January 7, January 9 and February 13

Click for more information >>>

[#9]

Intro to Drawing

What you learned: How to close the synapse between the hand and eye, understand the crucial subjects of the human body and interact with the world through drawing.

Upcoming sessions begin on: January 16

Click for more information >>>

[#8]

DIY Printmaking

What you learned: EZcuting, Linocutting, Monotyping using plexi, photocopy transfer processes and more.

Click for more information >>>

[#7]

Lost Wax Casting

What you learned: How to cast found objects, wax carving and the fine art of lost wax casting, including sprucing your model, investing it in a flask, burning out the wax and casting it in metal.

Upcoming sessions begin on: February 6, February 16

Click for more information >>>

[#6]

Sewing: Level I

What you learned: How a sewing machine works, how to lay out and cut from a pattern and how to make a unisex bag, zippered pouch or apron.

Upcoming sessions begin on: January 7, January 9, January 16, February 1

Click for more information >>>

[#5]

Photoshop Intensive

What you learned: How to perform digital miracles on your photographs, the ins and outs of Photoshop, the difference between raster and vector graphics and more.

Upcoming sessions begin on: January 23, February 5

Click for more information >>>

[#4]

Introduction to Upholstery

What you learned: How to upholster for furniture and sculpture, upholstery methods for both re-upholstering and constructing pieces from scratch, selecting, stretching and tacking fabric and many other valuable tricks of the trade.

Upcoming sessions begin on: January 7, January 10, February 2, February 5

Click for more information >>>

[#3]

Screen Printing Intensive

What you learned: How to produce an unlimited number of prints on practically any surface, all of the steps in the screen printing process, from design conception to finished product.

Upcoming sessions begin on: January 10, January 13, January 28

Click for more information >>>

[#2]

Intro to Jewelry: Silversmithing

What you learned: How to make cut, file, sand and prepare sheet metal, how to solder with an oxy-acetylene torch, the ints and outs of smithing with hammers and anvils, how to make a simple pendant, ring, belt buckle, cuff bracelet or pair of earrings.

Upcoming sessions begin on: January 9, January 22, February 8, February 12, February 20

Click for more information >>>

[#1]

Intro to Woodworking

What you learned: How to use nearly all of the woodworking power and hand tools in the shop and how to construct an end table and a mallet or small book platform.

Click for more information >>>

-- John Ruscher

WORKSHOP HEADS-UP // "How to Make Mistakes on Purpose" with Laurie Rosenwald Is the Opposite of a Mistake

Courtesy: IKEA

It's a commonly known fact that penicillin, electricity and gravity were all discovered, more or less, by accident. (And in that regard, so were Silly Putty and potato chips.) Designer Laurie Rosenwald can not be credited with inventing any of those things, but she did develop a class called "How to Make Mistakes on Purpose" in order to help you harness your weird foibles and transform them into brilliant inventions. 

Rosenwald's taught this course to everyone from the corporate giants of Google and Starbucks to the creative powerhouses of RISD and SVA. And next week, she brings her mistake-massaging expertise to 3rd Ward.

In case you were wondering why you're staring at a photo of bed sheets up there, it's because IKEA released a line of textiles developed during one of her workshops. Rosenwald promises you don't have to be a designer (or hold some coveted talent) to attend the class. In fact, all she asks is that you remain open to not being good at stuff. 

The class is November 11, 7:30-10:30 p.m. and costs $35. It's being co-hosted by the New York chapter of the Industrial Designers Society of America, so head over to their site to sign up. And strive to be a little less perfect.

--Layla Schlack

TEACHER FEATURE // Buck Jackson's Rational Polyhedra

Buck Jackson is real, real busy. In addition to teaching at 3rd Ward, the designer teaches at CUNY, is opening his own design studio, and he’s a dad. Exhausts us thinking about one of those things.

About that design studio: it’s called Design Office Studio, and Buck says, “The primary focus of the studio is on furniture and skatepark architecture. The ultimate goal on the furniture end is: design, prototype, create finished piece and fabrication documentation, and sell designs to furniture companies. On the skatepark end, I’m working with skater, surfer, and documentary filmmaker Felipe Arias on a skatepark in his home country of Panama.”

Buck describes his design work as “rather rational,” saying, “I’ve been working with polyhedra and simple tension/compression systems in furniture. Right now I’m interested in wooden furniture that moves outside typical assemblages that are free of glue, screws or nails, and can be broken down and re-assembled.”

The Louisiana native had a humble entrance into the furniture design world, taking a job sanding and sweeping the floors of a cabinet shop when he was 18. But three years later, he began a series of assistantships for local artists and crafters, and went on to study at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina and Georgia’s Savannah College of Art and Design, before moving to New York in 2005. Here, he worked for the mechanical engineering firm Hoberman Associates, and for a model and prototyping firm “which held denizens such as Frank Gehry, SOM, Calatrava, Sir Norman Foster and Richard Serra,” before beginning the process of opening his studio.

When asked about his run here so far: “The thing I like most about teaching at 3rd Ward is the diversity of the students; I can have a Harvard grad and a bus mechanic in the same class.” 

Meanwhile, make sure to keep up with Jackson's Design Office Studio in two very different incarnations; head on over here or here.

-- Anastasia Friscia 

FREE EVENT // Photographer Thierry Van Biesen Talks Vision on Wednesday

Join photographer Thierry Van Biesen tomorrow for a special session of Branding Your Vision. This event—free and open to the public (spread the word!)—offers the amazing opportunity to learn about his 20-year career and catch a highlight of instructor Elizabeth Waugh’s otherwise sold-out course. (Stay tuned for details about the Advanced Vision course starting in August.)

Beirut native Van Biesen, who shoots fashion and advertising in Paris and New York, received an intensive education in finding his own vision during the summer of 1989 when he was a teaching assistant at Art Kane Photo Workshops. There he learned from masters including Ralph Gibson, Art Kane, Sarah Moon, Len Jenshel, Duane Michals, Arthur Elgort, Uli Rose and Jay Maisel. Tomorrow he’ll share those tips, including a few words on lucid dreaming (!), which has been an influence on his absurd, vivid and gorgeous work.

“New York City is full of photographers, so it's important to have unique positioning—an awareness and understanding of what separates you from the rest,” says Waugh, who also teaches Intro to Digital Photography and Studio Lighting: Product Photography. She describes her involvement with 3rd Ward as “…incredibly fulfilling. It’s like nothing else in the city; Brooklyn at its best!”

Wed, Jun 29, 7—10pm
345 Eldert St, Suite 214, Brooklyn
Free and open to the public
RSVP required; email alex@elizabethwaugh.com 

Photo by Thierry Van Biesen-- Cara Cannella