How old do the masters I admire have to be to qualify? half asking so that answer can be the introducing text for the topic and half asking so that I dont feel bad about my likely ignorance about real real real real real masters :p.

Some titles or artist names would be nice for those of us not knowledgeable of the same stuff as the poster :p

eh, they should be dead, I suppose.  I'm not so sure what's going on in contemporary art, if anything is going on at all.  Realistically it would be anything associated with the likes of Picasso backwards, but I'm not too picky.  The main criteria is just so people don't post some genre digital painting of a dumb fantasy/sci-fi-whatever.  So, actual fine art is the only rule.

Sorry for not naming the artists.  I posted DG Rossetti, Mallais, Lepage, a Monet, a Caravaggio, a John Herbert, an El Greco, and (the link seems broken now) a Courbet.  Mallais is my current favorite, my favorite (posted) of his is Christ in the House of his Parents, which is fitting to my taste of Welles as a director, Ibsen as a dramatist, Hart Crane as a poet, and Joyce/Hawthorne as novelists.  All adds up to a strong longing for humanism.

A thread to "old masters" -- works you admire, etc. (I'll edit this first post later when I'm not busy and know what to put here)

Well I don't have much to say, but you could study the old (and moderately old) masters.  Maybe look at some Italian Renaissance art, read a few books on the subject, study their composition/nuances etc.

I particularly think Courbet and Dante Gabriel Rossetti were fantastic at expressing a great deal with a maiden's turn of the lips, about that maiden.

You might read some literature for inspiration.  Maybe some great prose like Melville, and study how he captures much in a scene with one or two wild metaphors.  Maybe poetry, see how Philip Sidney can do so much in fourteen lines, or Imagist-era Ezra Pound in two lines.  See how you might use that to your advantage in art.  Liberalart thyself.

Constructed Ezra's nose again.  And my thumb for good measure, which I think I figured out some of the planes/components of.