Web Links and Close Up Viewing Tool!

[Scarefishcrow]

I have been browsing around the WWW trying to find info on Leo's enigmatic Picasso question. Nothing definitive on that, but have stumbled across some interesting links and resources in the process. I thought I would start a separate thread and post some of them rather than clutter other threads with what might be extraneous information. I'm sure some of these others may be familiar with or can be found somewhere on WC, but I thought it would be nice to have a place to quickly share links to Art resources (history, techniques, artists, supplies, etc) that might not fit into some other thread.

Since I have visited the Art institute of Chicago several times I began looking around there and discovered some neat things (at least to me). They have a wealth of resources and even tools that let you create an account and set up personal "online collections" of art in their collections that you can recall. They also have various library resources and links to lots of other places which is where I found one of the neatest tools I'll mention at the end of this.

The following are links to various places at the Art Institute of Chicago or links followed from there (the last one is :cool: :thumbsup: ):

Art Institute of Chicago
Home Page
http://www.artic.edu/aic/
Informational Links to various Art Related Resources:
http://www.artic.edu/aic/libraries/rs/byar.html#current%20exhibitions
Create Personal Collections:
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/personalcollections/about
Ryerson and Burnham Libraries Cataloag
http://ryerson.artic.edu/
Institutional Archives:
http://www.artic.edu/aic/libraries/musarchives/
Ryerson and Burnham Archives:
http://www.artic.edu/aic/libraries/rbarchives/
MacLean Visual Resource Center
http://www.artic.edu/aic/libraries/slidelib/

Other Resources:
Art History Resources on the Web
http://witcombe.sbc.edu/ARTHLinks.html
Yahoo Directory > Arts
http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/
ArtCyclopedia:The Guide to Great Art on the Internet
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/
Interactive Map of Art Museums Worldwide
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/museums.html
ArtWatch International: Art Conservation Advocates
http://www.artwatchinternational.org/
Actual Sizer
http://www.actualsizer.com/

The above link is an interactive web tool that allow you to supply a URL to an artwork image (THE IMAGE ITSELF, NOT THE PAGE IT IS ON), supply the actual dimensions of the work, supply your monitor size, hit a button and have the work displayed (scrollable, of course) as it would appear were you viewing it up close at actual size. I thought this might be interesting since I often see folks ask for closeups of WIPs to see details of the technique.

Read the notes carefully and they have some examples to try out. The trick is finding the URL to the IMAGE and not the URL of the image's page. If you have an artwork image displayed on a website, I suggest right clicking with your mouse directly on the displayed image and select Properties at the bottom. This will usually give a dialogue box containing the actual URL of the image. The simplest is to use your cursor and select the text of the link and copy to clipboard, return to ActualSizer and past URL in appropriate box.

As I cruise around the web I will try to post interesting links in this thread and would love to have others share ones they come across.

Thanks and I hope you find these interesting.

:music: :heart: :music:
Bill

[Pat Isaac]

Interesting and informative thread, Bill. I liked looking at the Art Institute of Chicago exhibits, especially Hopper. Several of my high school students attended school there.
I tried the image sizer and it didn't work for me, all that came up was a question mark where the image should have been. Maybe they don't work for Macs. Lots of things don't, but I love my Mac.:heart:

Pat

[Scarefishcrow]

Pat-- Interesting you mention Hopper. There is a smaller art Museum down the street from AIC that I cannot remember the name of at this moment. However, it tends toward more modern, but not completely. As I recall, we visited and it seemed they had a very good collection of Hopper. It was one my first exposures to any significant number of his works. Interestingly, it seems that he works with "flat" color somewhat like Gauguin did; however, Gauguin was never one of my personal A-list artists, but I do like Hopper's work. It looks so plain, yet I recently read an article about how much preparation he put into planning these "simple" compositions.

Did you mean you couldn't get to the site or tried to actual size something and got a box with an x. If you made it to the site and tried the size tool and get a big box with a red x then it most likely means that the URL you entered was not DIRECTLY to the image itself. The URL cannot be just to the html page holding it, but to the actual jpg image itself.

Bill

[Scarefishcrow]

Pat - Here is a link to a feature article about Hopper and his works

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/feature.html

Bill

[Pat Isaac]

Thanks for the Hopper link, Bill. I was sorry to have missed a show of his at the MFA last summer.
What I get when I try to put a picture in wnat comes up is a box with a question mark. I took an image from my site that is on a page by itself. Is that the way you do it?

Pat

[Peiwend]

Bill, a quick thank you for these links. I look forward to browsing through them.

________________________________Wendell

[Scarefishcrow]

Thanks for the Hopper link, Bill. I was sorry to have missed a show of his at the MFA last summer.
What I get when I try to put a picture in wnat comes up is a box with a question mark. I took an image from my site that is on a page by itself. Is that the way you do it?

Pat

Pat,

I went to your site and selected an image and did the following screen captures to demonstrate how to use this tool:

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/22-Feb-2008/108067-1.jpg

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/22-Feb-2008/108067-2.jpg

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/22-Feb-2008/108067-3.jpg


http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/22-Feb-2008/108067-4.jpg

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/22-Feb-2008/108067-5.jpg


And that's how you do it. Hope this helps and it was ok to use image from your site.
:evil: Sorry, couldn't help but select the boat picture to give you inspiration for the one you are working on!:angel:
Bill

[Pat Isaac]

Thanks for the demo, Bill. However, I do not have any right click on my mouse because I have a Mac and nothing happens when I click on the image. I don't think it works for a Mac.

Pat

[Scarefishcrow]

Pat--Since I am not familiar with Macs I am not sure how one would do what is comparable. You really don't need to "click" on anything. What you need is to get to the properties dialogue for the image you want to view and you can type in the URL. Perhaps some Mac users might be able to tell you how to get the appropriate information dialogue on a Mac. As far as the applet tool itself, it doen't care whether it's a PC or Mac, it simply needs the proper URL information to directly access the image and not just the html page the image is on.

Is there a Mac user in the house that could help us out here??????:confused: :confused:

:music: :heart: :music:
Bill

[Pat Isaac]

Not as confused as I am....:confused: :eek: I thought I knew a lot about Macs and I know the tool works for both, I'll just have to mess around and see if I can find it. Thanks,
Pat

[Scarefishcrow]

Pat--
I'm starting to wonder how I'm going to survive without WC for a week. (Although I'm sure no one here is concerned about surviving a week without me). You all won't forget me while I'm gone, will you? You're becoming my new extended (and I mean extended) family!!
:crying: :eek: :music: :heart: :music: :thumbsup:
Bill

[Pat Isaac]

You will survive......I've been there ....go and have a marvelous time and we'll all look forward to your sketches....yes sketches....:evil: :D and stories when you get back.

BTW, I checked my website and can find no way to get the image properties. I did the site in iWeb. Don't know if that makes a difference.

Pat

[Scarefishcrow]

Pat--
Would you like me to go to your site get the URL's and send the by PM to you so you can try it? Would take very little time.

Then you could copy them and past them from the PM.

Bill

[starblue]

Pat, if you go to ActualSizer's home page and click on "How ActualSizer Works" in the navigation bar, the resulting webpage has a section called "Tips for Using ActualSizer" that contains instructions for Macs. I tried it on my recent WDE submission and it works. Like Bill said, be sure you get the web address (= URL) for the actual image (i.e. the .jpg itself) and not the URL of the webpage that contains the image.

[Scarefishcrow]

And if you don't want to go to that trouble, check you PM, Pat. I went ahead and sent you the text links for the images on your site. :angel:
:music: :heart: :music:
Bill

[Scarefishcrow]

After visiting Russia last summer, including a whirlwind tour of the Hermitage, I thought I would see what they had online. Here is a link to the homepage:
http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/index.html

It is a little hard to find, but one of the most interesting of the smorgasborg of informative places on the site, including Virtual Academies, Tours, etc. is the Digital Collection to be found here:

http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/fcgi-bin/db2www/browse.mac/category?selLang=English


You can browse by categories as shown here

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/23-Feb-2008/108067-11.jpg

Once you find an image to examine you can place a small box anywhere on the image and zoom in to see the detail work:

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/23-Feb-2008/108067-1.jpg

(I moved the box over the peaches and hit zoom)

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/23-Feb-2008/108067-2.jpg

You may also select larger images for display at the right of the image:

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/23-Feb-2008/108067-3.jpg


A more fascinating pair of tools to be found here:
http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/fcgi-bin/db2www/qbicSearch.mac/qbic?selLang=English

Are QBIC Color and Layout Searches. I can only explain by showing some quick screen captures of the tools. They allow you to select a basket of colors or draw layouts of color shapes and have the digitial collection searched to retrieve items that contain or closely match what colors of layouts you have created:

You will be greeted by a screen with this menu:
http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/23-Feb-2008/108067-19.jpg
A sample color search I did went like this:
http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/23-Feb-2008/108067-30.jpg
and some of the results returned:
http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/23-Feb-2008/108067-31.jpg

A sample layout search looked like this:

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/23-Feb-2008/108067-20.jpg
And some of the returned results

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/23-Feb-2008/108067-21.jpg


Enjoy a trip to the Hermitage and explore one of the world's largest collections of art. If you stood 30 seconds in front of each item they have and did not count time to move it would take 30 years to see all the items in their inventory!

:music: :heart: :music:
Bill