How a Brayer Gradient Shows Through

The priming color is blue at the top and orange at the bottom, applied in a smooth gradient with a block printing brayer the day before. 

The priming is visible through top layers, because gouache is often a bit transparent.

I'll be showing more about gradients and how to use them in your paintings when I release "Gradients" on September 10. 

In case you missed it, here's the YouTube video: Sketching a Speed Boat in Gouache—Despite Wind, Rain, and Quicksand

Sketching a Speed Boat, Despite the Wind, Rain, and Quicksand

 (Link to YouTube) Painting voyage with Jeanette, Smooth, and son Frank in his 1966 Glastron speedboat. The goal was to sketch the moored boat from the shore of a wild island, but first we have to overcome rain, wind, quicksand, and an engine that won’t start. 

"...I must put my foot in a bit of truth."

"I can't work completely out of my imagination. I must put my foot in a bit of truth; and then I can fly free." 

—Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009)

Václav Brožík, ( Czech 1851-1901)

Václav Brožík (b. 1851-1901) was a Czech painter who studied at the academy in Prague and Dresden, lived in Paris and became a teacher.

Smrt sv. Irie by Václav Brožík, 1873

This painting illustrates a tragic poem: "According to legend, Saint Iria (Irena) from Tomar, Portugal, was a pious girl who promised her life to God. She left home only when she wanted to attend Mass in the church of St. Petra. It was there that a young man named Britald spotted her and fell in love with her and offered her marriage. However, Iria refused, saying that she had made a vow of purity and was determined to become a nun. At that time, a certain monk, Remigius, whose suggestions the girl also did not want to hear, spread the rumor about her pregnancy. Outraged, Britald immediately decided to act - he hired a soldier who stabbed Irina returning from the church with a sword and threw it into the river."

Brožík chose this peak moment as Britald prepared to hurl her her lifeless body

Václav Brožík, Ottakar's Farewell

This large painting shows a moment in the life of Bohemian King Ottokar II: s (ca. 1230-1278). 

Václav Brožík was featured in a major exhibition in Prague in 2003, which rescued him from obscurity.

Václav Brožík on Wikipedia 

Book: Vaclav Brozik, 1851-1901 

Audrey Munson, Artists' Muse

Audrey Munson was a favorite model of the sculptors of New York's Beaux-Arts era. 

At the beginning of her career she went door to door among Manhattan artists' studios, where she secured work posing as goddesses, angels, and mythological figures. 

She was soon in great demand, not only for her ideal form, but for her professionalism.

 

Her figure inspired so many sculptures that she became known as "Miss Manhattan" or the "Venus of Washington Square."

She wrote an article for the popular press acknowledging that she was the anonymous subject of so many nude statues that adorned the city. 

“That which is the immodesty of other women has been my virtue — my willingness that the world should gaze upon my figure unadorned.”

But her story has many twists and turns and ends tragically. If you want to dive into the whole tale, follow one of the links below to book, blog post, or podcast. 

Read more:

Book: The Curse of Beauty: The Scandalous & Tragic Life of Audrey Munson, America's First Supermodel

Muddy Colors blog post: Audrey Munson: America's Venus

Wikipedia: Audrey Munson

Bowery Boys podcast: Tragic Muse

William Walcot's Architectural Art

William Walcot, RA Perspective of County Hall under construction. c.1920.

William Walcot (1874-1943) was an architect, etcher, and watercolorist with a taste for monumental, classical forms.

He was born in Russia but grew up in Western Europe and South Africa. He received his training in Saint Petersburg and Paris, where he gravitated to Art Nouveau in his architectural work. 

His architectural fantasies have an epic feeling, like something from a Cecil B. Demille movie.

His compositions are founded on an accurate perspective structure, with loosely applied touches of paint that define small details in one area and melt away to indistinctness in another.

The masses of light and dark tone are unified into large shapes, creating a sense of monumentality, mood, and scale.

The book The Great Perspectivists describes Walcot's watercolor technique in this way: the watercolor "is richly and impressionistically applied over the underlying geometry of the drawing: a free technique which brought out the building's monumentality and the contrast of solid and void, and which may have owed something to the architectural etchings of Frank Brangwyn."

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William Walcot on Wikipedia

Painting with Roger Bansemer

Roger Bansemer, who has a painting and travel TV channel, paid me a visit.

He put me on his TV show and now the show is on YouTube. (Link to YouTube)

How Phil May Built a Drawing

Victorian caricaturist Phil May (1864-1903) described his method of building a drawing:

"First of all I get the general idea, of which I sketch a rough outline, and from this general idea I never depart. Then I make several studies from the model in the poses which the drawing requires, and redraw my figures from these studies." 

"The next step is to draw the picture completely, carefully putting in every line necessary to fulness of detail: and the last to select the particular lines that are essential to the effect I want to produce, and take the others out."

Sometimes, according to David Cuppleditch, "he transferred his figures from sketchbook to working page with tracing paper. He nearly always worked with a very sharp pencil or crayon edge so as to achieve simple, strong lines."

George Hacklett said, "The one important lesson learned from his Bulletin work was the value of a longer and heavier line, made imperative by the large scale of his cartoons."

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Previous post on Phil May  

Wikipedia on Phil May (caricaturist)

Quotes are from the book: Phil May: The Artist and His Wit

What happens when our eyes move?

Eyes may resemble still cameras or movie cameras, but it's probably more accurate to regard them as very active extensions of the brain. 

Rembrandt

Unlike cameras, the eyes must contend with constantly changing input as images are jumping on the retinas. 

We move our eyes about three times per second. Each time we do, the image projected on the retinal surface shifts and resets. 

Velázquez

Although the process is mostly unconscious, we are always surveying the peripheral areas of the retina for where to jump next. 

Right before your focus shifts from one point to another, a message travels from the motor cortex to the eye muscles predicting the movement and anticipating the observed result. A process called corollary discharge suppresses the signal during the jump so that we're not overwhelmed with the smeared image.

Despite all this frenetic movement we maintain the impression that the world is stable.

Three Artists Paint Cole's Studio

 

 

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Christopher L. Evans joins me and Jeanette to sketch Thomas Cole's old studio. 

We talk about perspective and keeping brushes clean.

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Christopher Leith Evans website

Jeanette Gurney video "Sketching with Line and Wash"

Thomas Cole Historic Site