Here's an art tip: Ask your local frame shop for unwanted scraps of gray mat board. It makes a great surface for studies in pencil and white gouache.
Wednesday, September 9, 2020
Mat Board with Pencil and White Gouache
Here's an art tip: Ask your local frame shop for unwanted scraps of gray mat board. It makes a great surface for studies in pencil and white gouache.
Tuesday, September 8, 2020
Zorn's 'Breakfast in the Garden'
Anders Zorn (Swedish) painted the dealer Adolf Magnus in the model's garden.
Anders Zorn ”Frukost i det gröna” (Breakfast in the garden, 1886 /
Wholesale dealer Adolf Magnus) Watercolour 38 x 56 cm.
I like to imagine Zorn telling his friend, "Keep talking," and getting out his watercolor box to start painting as they picked at the remnants of the morning meal.
Mr. Magnus would stop to puff on his cigar or to make a gesture, and return his hand to rest on his leg.
His eyes and mouth are full of animation and movement.
The breakfast table is indicated with a few well placed strokes of watercolor, with some white gouache for the silver and glass vessels in the back.
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Thanks to Sascha Karschner and Bukowski's Auction
Monday, September 7, 2020
Should Young Artists Study Nature or Past Masters?
Should students study composition? Should they make copies of old masters' paintings?
According to the influential art critic John Ruskin (1819-1900) they should study only from real life. He believed that all learning happens from the student's own direct encounters with nature, and that it was the job of art students to draw from life as truthfully as possible, not to copy the work of other artists or to study composition as a way of improving on what they see.
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| William Trost Richards, Conanicut |
Ruskin wrote that "from young artists nothing ought to be tolerated but simple bona fide imitation of nature . They have no business to ape the execution of masters . . . Their duty is neither to choose, nor compose, nor imagine, nor experimentalize; but to be humble and earnest in following the steps of nature, and tracing the finger of God."
There's a lot of truth to what Ruskin says, and if I were to choose between studying art or real life, I would opt for real life. But previous masters provide a path into the wilderness, a frame of reference, an example of what is possible.
I disagree with Ruskin that young artists should not study from previous masters at all. I would suggest that they take inspiration from many eras and styles, and avoid focusing on the style that's current at the time. Students can draw inspiration from examples of visual art that inspires them, be it paintings, sculptures, movies, animation, posters, or comics. I recommend alternating between studying from nature, from past masters, from theory and philosophy, and sketching from memory and imagination.
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Sunday, September 6, 2020
Announcing TRIADS Next Saturday
Can this outdoor still life be painted with just three colors plus white? If so, which colors?
Can this still life be painted with just three colors plus white? If so, which colors? Find out on my next Gumroad tutorial TRIADS, which releases September 12. I'll present free videos as YouTube premieres (with live Q and A) on Sept 12 and 13 at noon, California time.
Can this still life be painted with just three colors plus white? If so, which colors? Find out on my next Gumroad tutorial TRIADS, which releases September 12. I'll present free videos as YouTube premieres (with live Q and A) on Sept 12 and 13 at noon, California time.
You don't have to join LightBox Expo to watch, but I recommend it because LBX a good virtual hub for a lot of activity next weekend.
Saturday, September 5, 2020
Inspiring Story of Young Nigerian Artist
(Link to YouTube) A young Nigerian boy named Waris Kareem has been creating a sensation with his large realist portrait drawings. It's refreshing to see how he has applied himself to his work and how he has been nourished by support from his family, community, and government.
Friday, September 4, 2020
Walter Shirlaw's Studies
Walter Shirlaw (1838-1909) was a Scottish-born American, a painter, banknote engraver and teacher.
His painting "Toning the Bell" (1874, Chicago Art Institute) shows the foreman striking the bell with a hammer, while the violinist plays a reference note.
The faces, hands, and postures of the two main characters show that they have different personalities and that they come from different worlds.
This page of studies shows the construction of the violin, how the left hand needs to finger the strings, and a couple options for the bow hand.
It looks like he contemplated having the foundry man rest his left hand on the bell, and then changed his mind and brought the hand back into the shadow in front of his stomach.
This appears to be another quick study to figure out the pose of the violinist. Studies like these are just a step in the process, but a very necessary step.
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Walter Shirlaw on Wikipedia
Thursday, September 3, 2020
Space Shuttle on a Hellish Planet
A space shuttle stranded on a hellish planet leaves its crew of five in a dangerous predicament. This image introduces William Greenleaf's 1982 science fiction novel The Tartarus Incident.
It was also my first paperback cover as a freelance illustrator. After finishing the background paintings for Ralph Bakshi's Fire and Ice, I turned down an offer from Disney Animation and decided to take the plunge as a freelance illustrator, painting paperback covers and sending the paintings by overnight mail to New York.
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Questions about Dinotopia from the Bruderhof
The editor of the Plough Quarterly asked me some interesting questions about Dinotopia. The Plough is published by the international Bruderhof community. There are 23 urban and rural settlements around the world, each renouncing private property and following the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount.
1. The society you portray in Dinotopia has, obviously, captivated a huge audience. What about it do you think has been so compelling? What about that world, that alternate social reality, is compelling to you?
What people tell me most often is that they like the sense of immersion that they feel when they read the book. Some of that feeling comes from it being an illustrated book, which sketches out so many dimensions of an alternate universe. The reader's imagination adds at least 50% to that act of conjuring, filling in the spaces between the pictures and the words. What I find compelling is trying to make the impossible seem inevitable—whether it's a city built on a waterfall, or a dinosaur philosopher.
2. One striking thing about the world you create is its relationship to technology. It is in no sense a “primitive” society: they have diving machines, hot air balloons, etc. But they seem also to be selective in what they adopt and are drawn to. What is the nature of the Dinotopian approach to appropriate technology?
As the son, grandson, and great-grandson of tinkerers, engineers, and inventors, I've always been fascinated by technology. In particular, I'm interested in how every obvious benefit of a new technological invention is counterbalanced by an invisible cost or compromise that may take a generation or two to recognize. There are so many examples. Even the invention of writing undercut the palaces of memory that preliterate societies once had. If there was a period of history when we might have really taken stock and considered the future more judiciously, it would have been at the advent of electricity, mass-production, automobiles, airplanes, and modern communications: in other words, about 150 years ago. It's still recent enough and familiar enough to relate to, but it puts our modern dilemmas in some context. We're at a similar crossroads now with the advent of robotics and A.I., and I think living intentionally with technology will become even more important. I created the prequel of Dinotopia: First Flight to explore those questions from a dystopian point of view. I love the idea of a utopian world that arrived at that place after having survived earlier times of struggle and suffering.
3. In a similar way, Dinotopia is an urban world, but has many of the characteristics that I associate with the rural: integration, beauty, balance. Tell me about how you’ve chosen to portray cities in these books.
I think those qualities of integration, beauty, and balance can exist in urban worlds as well as rural ones, especially if you start by doing away with cars. I tried to include in Dinotopia everything from crowded urban life to small towns to remote and wild environments. The design of the cities is inspired by the medieval urban design of old-world cities, with their organic street grids and vernacular architecture, rather than the top-down design of more highly professionalized societies. I was also inspired by exposition architecture, such as the 1893 Chicago Exposition, which was a temporary expression of the highest ideals of the American Renaissance.
4. J.R.R. Tolkien described the imaginative work that artists, and particularly fantasy artists, do as “subcreation:” his idea was that we create because we are creatures of a creative God who has made us in his image. Does this idea have resonance with you?
I hadn't read that idea about Tolkien. My understanding (and I may be wrong) was that he saw himself not so much as a creator or a subcreator but rather as a kind of lowly transcriber of some ancient text that already existed. Thinking this way allows the author to take himself or herself out of the position of creator. That relieves one of the burden of playing God. If you believe your fantasy world already exists, it makes the ideas come more readily to the imagination.
5. The sense that one gets about the world that you’ve made is that you love it: you don’t just love the characters, but the place itself. Can you talk about that love? What is it like to love something you’ve made?
Yes, I love the characters with all their flaws and I love the place with all its history. I once printed up some travel tickets to Dinotopia that I give to people. The only problem, I tell them, is that those are one-way tickets. My publishing mentor Ian Ballantine, who published Tolkien and a lot of imaginative fiction, was very adamant that the purpose of fantasy literature is not to escape, but rather to engage. It's fun to involve my imagination with a place that doesn't exist, because it makes me appreciate our own world even more.
6. There is conflict in Dinotopia-- but it is a utopia; it’s a place where harmony reigns. What is the nature of that harmony? What does the kind of interesting, non-passive, daring peace you’ve presented there mean to you?
When I was researching post-Darwinian 19th century travel journals, I was struck by the view of the natural world that early explorers came back with, especially from Africa. Gorillas, whales, and even elephants were routinely called monsters and beasts. The more we get to know them, the more we discover how compassionate and sophisticated they are. Dinosaurs were and are ready for such an imaginative transformation. Some of that comes from the science, as Jack Horner and other paleontologists discovered how parent dinosaurs took care of their young in nests. We humans are discovering that we can learn something from animals around us. Dinosaurs are my vehicle for that journey of discovering the harmony of nature. I have noticed that earlier nature writers like Alexander von Humboldt often speak of harmony, so maybe we're returning to that.
7. The Code of Dinotopia holds that “Weapons are enemies, even to their owners.” Can you talk about this explicit pacifism? Is that a code you share?
That was an old Turkish maxim that I found somewhere. I needed a saying that started with a "W," so that, reading down all the initial letters of the lines in the Code of Dinotopia, you could read the additional maxim of "SOW GOOD SEED." I like the Turkish proverb for the way it upends so many assumptions on various levels. I've always been inspired by the non-violent examples M.L. King, the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, and of course Jesus. But I focused on that maxim more as a reaction to the militarization of fantasy and science fiction in so many fantasy worlds that I had grown up with, including Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. The endless battles became frankly too predictable and boring. I found it to be a much fresher and more difficult challenge to envision a world that had figured out how to live peacefully.
8. Dinotopia is, among other things, a separatist society: Dinotopians know what’s going on outside but choose not to be in contact with the outside world. Have you considered the ethics of Dinotopian separatism?
I hadn't thought of Dinotopia as being deliberately separatist so much as having developed within an impassible region of storms and reefs. I didn't want to deal with trade and colonialism and invasion and other sorts of mass culture contact. I just wanted to have occasional individual shipwrecked arrivals. The inspiration is from reading James Hilton's Shangri-La and Heinrich Harrer's Seven Years in Tibet. I am still fascinated by societies that are cut off from the busy interconnected world, societies such as the inhabitants of North Sentinel Island, who to this day have had only fleeting contact with the outside world. What do they make of jet flyovers and ships and plastic bottles? What did the ancient Maya know that we have since forgotten?
9. Dinotopia is, above all things, perhaps, civilized. That contrasts with the incivility of some characters, and of other societies either portrayed or implied. What does “civilization” mean to you?
Well, to me, "civilization" means the Greek ideals associated with being a member of a city. When I was working as an illustrator for National Geographic, I was inspired by research trips to Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem, where I could witness the physical record of how people collectively contributed to something greater and more lasting than what the individual can accomplish.
10. The vision the books seem to conjure up is one of beauty and strangeness and adventure and harmony, both ecological and social, all at once. What would it mean to be inspired by these books to live in a different way in our world?
I'm always amazed by how people of so many different ideological perspectives have embraced Dinotopia, from fundamentalist Christians to evolutionary biologists, from socialists to old-school capitalists. That may be because I largely dodged questions of politics, religion, and economics in the book, and focused instead on pragmatic issues. I didn't have a political or religious message driving the story. Instead the characters (with all their flaws) and the adventure is the focus of the story. I don't have a moral to the story. People hopefully are inspired in various directions, and that's as it should be.
1. The society you portray in Dinotopia has, obviously, captivated a huge audience. What about it do you think has been so compelling? What about that world, that alternate social reality, is compelling to you?
What people tell me most often is that they like the sense of immersion that they feel when they read the book. Some of that feeling comes from it being an illustrated book, which sketches out so many dimensions of an alternate universe. The reader's imagination adds at least 50% to that act of conjuring, filling in the spaces between the pictures and the words. What I find compelling is trying to make the impossible seem inevitable—whether it's a city built on a waterfall, or a dinosaur philosopher.
2. One striking thing about the world you create is its relationship to technology. It is in no sense a “primitive” society: they have diving machines, hot air balloons, etc. But they seem also to be selective in what they adopt and are drawn to. What is the nature of the Dinotopian approach to appropriate technology?
As the son, grandson, and great-grandson of tinkerers, engineers, and inventors, I've always been fascinated by technology. In particular, I'm interested in how every obvious benefit of a new technological invention is counterbalanced by an invisible cost or compromise that may take a generation or two to recognize. There are so many examples. Even the invention of writing undercut the palaces of memory that preliterate societies once had. If there was a period of history when we might have really taken stock and considered the future more judiciously, it would have been at the advent of electricity, mass-production, automobiles, airplanes, and modern communications: in other words, about 150 years ago. It's still recent enough and familiar enough to relate to, but it puts our modern dilemmas in some context. We're at a similar crossroads now with the advent of robotics and A.I., and I think living intentionally with technology will become even more important. I created the prequel of Dinotopia: First Flight to explore those questions from a dystopian point of view. I love the idea of a utopian world that arrived at that place after having survived earlier times of struggle and suffering.
3. In a similar way, Dinotopia is an urban world, but has many of the characteristics that I associate with the rural: integration, beauty, balance. Tell me about how you’ve chosen to portray cities in these books.
I think those qualities of integration, beauty, and balance can exist in urban worlds as well as rural ones, especially if you start by doing away with cars. I tried to include in Dinotopia everything from crowded urban life to small towns to remote and wild environments. The design of the cities is inspired by the medieval urban design of old-world cities, with their organic street grids and vernacular architecture, rather than the top-down design of more highly professionalized societies. I was also inspired by exposition architecture, such as the 1893 Chicago Exposition, which was a temporary expression of the highest ideals of the American Renaissance.
4. J.R.R. Tolkien described the imaginative work that artists, and particularly fantasy artists, do as “subcreation:” his idea was that we create because we are creatures of a creative God who has made us in his image. Does this idea have resonance with you?
I hadn't read that idea about Tolkien. My understanding (and I may be wrong) was that he saw himself not so much as a creator or a subcreator but rather as a kind of lowly transcriber of some ancient text that already existed. Thinking this way allows the author to take himself or herself out of the position of creator. That relieves one of the burden of playing God. If you believe your fantasy world already exists, it makes the ideas come more readily to the imagination.
5. The sense that one gets about the world that you’ve made is that you love it: you don’t just love the characters, but the place itself. Can you talk about that love? What is it like to love something you’ve made?
Yes, I love the characters with all their flaws and I love the place with all its history. I once printed up some travel tickets to Dinotopia that I give to people. The only problem, I tell them, is that those are one-way tickets. My publishing mentor Ian Ballantine, who published Tolkien and a lot of imaginative fiction, was very adamant that the purpose of fantasy literature is not to escape, but rather to engage. It's fun to involve my imagination with a place that doesn't exist, because it makes me appreciate our own world even more.
6. There is conflict in Dinotopia-- but it is a utopia; it’s a place where harmony reigns. What is the nature of that harmony? What does the kind of interesting, non-passive, daring peace you’ve presented there mean to you?
When I was researching post-Darwinian 19th century travel journals, I was struck by the view of the natural world that early explorers came back with, especially from Africa. Gorillas, whales, and even elephants were routinely called monsters and beasts. The more we get to know them, the more we discover how compassionate and sophisticated they are. Dinosaurs were and are ready for such an imaginative transformation. Some of that comes from the science, as Jack Horner and other paleontologists discovered how parent dinosaurs took care of their young in nests. We humans are discovering that we can learn something from animals around us. Dinosaurs are my vehicle for that journey of discovering the harmony of nature. I have noticed that earlier nature writers like Alexander von Humboldt often speak of harmony, so maybe we're returning to that.
7. The Code of Dinotopia holds that “Weapons are enemies, even to their owners.” Can you talk about this explicit pacifism? Is that a code you share?
That was an old Turkish maxim that I found somewhere. I needed a saying that started with a "W," so that, reading down all the initial letters of the lines in the Code of Dinotopia, you could read the additional maxim of "SOW GOOD SEED." I like the Turkish proverb for the way it upends so many assumptions on various levels. I've always been inspired by the non-violent examples M.L. King, the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, and of course Jesus. But I focused on that maxim more as a reaction to the militarization of fantasy and science fiction in so many fantasy worlds that I had grown up with, including Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. The endless battles became frankly too predictable and boring. I found it to be a much fresher and more difficult challenge to envision a world that had figured out how to live peacefully.
8. Dinotopia is, among other things, a separatist society: Dinotopians know what’s going on outside but choose not to be in contact with the outside world. Have you considered the ethics of Dinotopian separatism?
I hadn't thought of Dinotopia as being deliberately separatist so much as having developed within an impassible region of storms and reefs. I didn't want to deal with trade and colonialism and invasion and other sorts of mass culture contact. I just wanted to have occasional individual shipwrecked arrivals. The inspiration is from reading James Hilton's Shangri-La and Heinrich Harrer's Seven Years in Tibet. I am still fascinated by societies that are cut off from the busy interconnected world, societies such as the inhabitants of North Sentinel Island, who to this day have had only fleeting contact with the outside world. What do they make of jet flyovers and ships and plastic bottles? What did the ancient Maya know that we have since forgotten?
9. Dinotopia is, above all things, perhaps, civilized. That contrasts with the incivility of some characters, and of other societies either portrayed or implied. What does “civilization” mean to you?
Well, to me, "civilization" means the Greek ideals associated with being a member of a city. When I was working as an illustrator for National Geographic, I was inspired by research trips to Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem, where I could witness the physical record of how people collectively contributed to something greater and more lasting than what the individual can accomplish.
10. The vision the books seem to conjure up is one of beauty and strangeness and adventure and harmony, both ecological and social, all at once. What would it mean to be inspired by these books to live in a different way in our world?
I'm always amazed by how people of so many different ideological perspectives have embraced Dinotopia, from fundamentalist Christians to evolutionary biologists, from socialists to old-school capitalists. That may be because I largely dodged questions of politics, religion, and economics in the book, and focused instead on pragmatic issues. I didn't have a political or religious message driving the story. Instead the characters (with all their flaws) and the adventure is the focus of the story. I don't have a moral to the story. People hopefully are inspired in various directions, and that's as it should be.
-----
More about the Bruderhof at their website
You can get Dinotopia on Amazon or signed from my website Tuesday, September 1, 2020
Last Painting by Van Gogh Paired with Postcard
Researchers paired an antique postcard with the very last painting made by Vincent Van Gogh before his untimely death. Careful study of the tree roots and rocks clinched it. This was the exact spot he painted from on that fateful day—Rue Daubigny in Auvers-sur-Oise, 20 miles north of Paris.
Read more on ArtNet News: How an Old Postcard Led Art Historians to the Spot Where a Distraught Van Gogh Made His Final Painting
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