Wheel invented!

If you are the sort of person who pokes around on art and artists' websites you may have come across an ad for "The Carder Method" (trademarked). Carder's website sells a six-hour dvd and two tools for learning to paint and draw according to this method. The proportional dividers shown above can be bought from his website for $29.95.

Yes, that's two pieces of wood with some holes drilled into them and a brass screw and nut holding them together. $29.95. I will admit to having bought one of these a couple of years ago, largely because I am too lazy and/or inept at building and making things to have tried to make such a device myself. But that doesn't mean I don't feel foolish for having spent thirty dollars for two pieces of wood and a brass screw.

Carder also sells a color spot checker for $14.95 Presumably that's less expensive because it has no moving parts.

Mark Carder is a very capable and accomplished portrait artist. You can see some of his work on the same website. I respect his art considerably more than I do his marketing claims.

The method itself being described on his website is a quite solid, dependable, almost foolproof method for learning to draw by carefully measuring proportions and learning to paint by carefully observing and comparing mixed colors to the natural colors you're trying to duplicate. As Carder says in a video on his site, this is "how to become a color Xerox."

But while Carder has trademarked the name "The Carder Method," I don't see a patent mentioned anywhere. The irony is that his descriptions of his "method" leave one with the impression that he's come up with all this himself. In fact, these methods have been around much longer than Mr. Carder.

Proportional dividers are such an old concept that one can find them showing up in old master etchings and engravings. And the color-spot method of painting was being taught by Charles W. Hawthorne after the turn of the previous century. "Hawthorne on Painting" published in the 1930s is still being reprinted, by the way, and can be purchased from Dover for $5.95, considerably less than Mr.Carder might charge were he to issue it under his name.

In the book, Hawthorne makes no claim to having originated this approach to painting himself but neither does he mention Carder who, in fact, would not be born for another few decades.