Steven, I believe that if one understands painting in a contextual way, switching from genre to genre is not problematic. Proper analysis of the subject matter is what puts you into the game. I would vehiminately disagree with your assumption that "No studio or workshop teaches everything about all of it." Not true for me! I know it sounds arrogant, if you take it literally, but what I teach is wholistic and profound. In Zenspeak, "If you know one thing you know everything." Eastern philosophy is formulated on applying the context of Yin and Yang to all modalities (medicine, astrology and martial arts for example) and my teaching is based on Yin and Yang.
Most people that teach, teach their specific technical approach, so as a result, you get a lot of students whose work is indistinguisable from the teachers, at best, or at least seems stylistically similar, usually with poorer drawing. It's the artistic version of the difference between serving a man a meal or teaching him to farm.
If one learns how to interpret the portrait and the figure on a two dimentional surface, where drawing is the most critical, moving to the still life or landscape should not problematic or require a different approach.
Here is an excerpt from a recent email sent to me by my former student Daisuke (Dice) Tsutsumi who, incidentally was just hired by Pixar.
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And of course, I never forget that my painting/illustration skill really comes from your class. Wheather you see it or not, i do still use your theory in my work all the time. Especially now, I do a lot of lighting studies/lighting art directing for movies. You really taught me so much about lighting and picture making fundamentals.
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Here are some of his plein air landscapes:
http://www.simplestroke.com/wp/?page_id=17 Look at the sylistic characteristics of his work and tell me if you can see any hint of me in there.
When I alluded to the comedic aspect of watching DVD's or videos of other artists' approach I was humerously alluding to the vast number of products that seem less than cognisant to me. I didn't mean to imply that every such offering lacks merit. The good ones, in my opinion are few and far between.
Regarding the deletion issue, one of the board members proudly and publically stated on another forum, that all my posts had been reviewed and everything which that particular board member found offensive was deleted. You can draw your own conclusions.
Personally I believe that a healty debate over differing approaches serves a very functional purpose, to make people think. It is in the mind where great art is created. Challenging the beliefs of others, as I see it, is a positive, not a negative thing. As Joel Osteen said, "You will never change what you tolerate." If education is the objective here then debate should be encouraged. If I challenge your ideas it doesn't mean I'm attacking you as a person. That is where, if I were running this forum, I would draw the line. Unfortunately some people are quite chippy and can't see the difference. Sometimes being "off topic" is where the learning transpires.
Rote learning, in my opinion, is NOT a healthy way to learn. For myself, the WHY? aspect is just as necessary as the how. I have to own it. Learning and growth are also not necessarily supposed to be comfortable. Growing pains are part of equation, and I don't believe there can ever be too high a price to pay for true knowledge. We celebrate the pioneers who in the past dared to question the status quo in order to take things a step up, but we roll our eyes when someone, like me, challenges the status quo, as it effects us.
One last thing I would like to address while I still have the floor here, is that even though I do have strong opinions, I do respect the opinions of others, yet I still reserve the right to disagree with them. This is the right that our soldiers, who we are remembering this holiday weekend, sacrificed their lives for.
We are all but tiny little grains of sand, relative to the infinite vastness of the cosmos. To loose sight of that fact and believe our grain is better than any other, is what, in my humble opinion, defines arrogance, not asserting one's humble opinion.
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