Enrique Simonet

Enrique Simonet (Spanish 1866-1927) studied in Valencia, Málaga, Paris and Rome before traveling to the Holy Land. 

Flevit super illam (He wept over it). 305 x 555 cm 1892 (Prado Museum)

There he was inspired to paint this monumental canvas of Jesus pausing before his final entry into Jerusalem.

"He painted this in Jerusalem, in response to Luke 19:41, in which Jesus approaches the city of Jerusalem. As he looks at the city, he weeps over it – hence the Latin words from the Vulgate – in anticipation of the city’s sufferings to come. This view is from the Mount of Olives, and won medals in Madrid (1892), Chicago (1893), Barcelona (1896), and in Paris in 1900." (Source)

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Read more: Into the Light: Enrique Simonet, Death and the Countryside

How Smart is Dall-E 2?

Prompt: “Polymer clay dragons eating pizza in a boat”

Computer-generated image (Dall-e 2 by OpenAI) 

For a several years now, computers have been able to generate images based on a natural-language prompt. 

The resulting images have suffered from problems of logic and global coherence.

For example, here's what you get if you give the computer the prompt “A rabbit detective sitting on a park bench and reading a newspaper in a Victorian setting.” (Latent Diffusion LAION-400M via @loretoparisi)

Where are his legs? His hands? Are those books or newspapers? Is that a coffee table in front of his bench? 

The image doesn't make sense, and we might conclude that the problem comes from the computer not having any experience of living in a body or dealing with the real world. No matter how big the data sets, or how many layers of processing you bring to the task, you can't get past that limitation. 

Or can you? 

Open AI is one of the pioneers of generating realistic images and art from descriptions in natural language. They recently unveiled new software called Dall-e 2, which has pushed the boundaries of what's possible with this technology.

Here's what Dall-E 2 does with the same prompt: “A rabbit detective sitting on a park bench and reading a newspaper in a Victorian setting.” 

The overall logic is much better. Now he has legs and is really sitting on that bench, even casting a shadow. But the image is still not perfect. What's the black loop in his left hand? And why doesn't he seem to be holding the newspaper with his right hand? 

Here's one more example of how the technology is improving, using the prompt “teddy bears working on new AI research on the moon in the 1980s” 

The first version using older tech (laion400m) looks like a paste-up of unrelated elements.

Here's what Dall-e 2 came up with: a pretty believable image with consistent lighting. 

Open AI released this YouTube video to introduce the sofware.

This technology scares some working artists and illustrators. @VividVoid says: "DALL-E is breaking my heart. AI art is about to lay utter waste to traditional visual art forms. This will be so much more destructive than what the Internet did to music. It will be a technological conquest of one of the great human avenues of spiritual transformation."

AI skeptic Gary Marcus doubts whether the technology will ever replace artists because it is just crunching big data sets. It's not learning from embodied experience, nor does it understand symbolic or semantic concepts the way a human does. Marcus says: "This whole thread is weaponized cherry-picked PR; the antithesis of science."

Soon after Dall-E2 was released, OpenAI gave me beta access to try it out. On this YouTube video, I share my first experiments with it. (Link to YouTube)

Read more

The Verge

Dall-e 2 at OpenAI

Podcast: Gary Marcus: Toward a Hybrid of Deep Learning and Symbolic AI 

Casein Colors

Artists’ casein paint comes in all these tube colors.

A couple notes:

• Some people have a hard time getting darks in casein because it dries matte. If you've had that issue, you can use black or try the Shiva colors—violet and green.

• They're quite transparent and can give you deep dark mixtures while still keeping some color identity.

• If you paint on illustration board or panel, you can build up some impasto texture. It generally doesn't crack or chip unless you flex the support or really abrade the surface.

• Don't worry if you can't buy casein where you live. You can use Acryla gouache or just acrylic or gouache instead. What I like about casein is that the paint is midway between gouache and acrylic in the strength of the glue-like emulsion, not too sticky or plastic-y and not too soluble after it dries.

Here are some of your comments from Instagram:

Kristy Hall says: "Like casein better than gouache but it does have a distinctive smell!!??"

jamesgurneyart Yes, the smell can seem sort of medical. They told me it was a preservative to keep the milk-based proteins from spoiling. To me the smell evokes old-school memories of older illustrators doing demos in the 1980s, but I know it may hit others differently.

blackbirdcd "I’ve really enjoyed casein, and I’ve used it a lot for my Space Art livestream. Usually I use casein to emulate the John Berkey style (although I haven’t made my own acrylic/casein mix like he did). The Richeson/Shiva casein is fantastic. I had okay luck varnishing casein but only after applying a layer of clear gloss acrylic.

I've been using Liquitex gloss varnish, especially for dark-keyed paintings.

lorideboerdesigns "Thanks for turning me onto casein, James! You are missing a few of Richeson's newer colors, including Naples yellow, terre verte and I believe there is also now a turquoise one. I am finding that I do need to mix my own browns, as the raw umber seems like it has a bit too much green for my taste."

You're right. My chart also seems to be missing burnt sienna.

Ultramarine blue deep, burnt sienna, Payne's grey, and Permasol blue.

Drawing from the Costumed Model

Drawing costumed models a common practice in art schools 125 years ago. This model poses in a Civil War uniform. 

One of the courses taught by illustrator and teacher Howard Pyle (1853-1911) around the turn of the 20th century was "Drawing from the Costumed Model." 

He also taught courses called "The Elaboration of Groups," "Composition and Practical Illustration" "The Treatment of Historical and Other Subjects with Reference to Their Use in Illustrations."

Through the Swamp

 

Arthur, Oriana, and Bix travel through a Rainy Basin swamp on a strutter.

From Dinotopia: The World Beneath

Arnold Lakhovsky

Arnold Lakhovsky (1880-1937) The Shoemakers, 1915

Artist Arnold Lakhovsky (1880-1937) was born in Chernobyl. 

In a Samovar Shop by Arnold Borisovich Lakhovsky

He studied at the Art Academy in Munich and traveled to Palestine, St. Petersburg, Italy, France, and many other countries. 

Teaser for Prehistoric Planet

BBC / Apple TV teased a sneak peek of Prehistoric Planet, narrated by David Attenborough. It mixes what appears to be live-action footage of hatchling turtles with computer-generated dinosaurs.

The dinosaurs are introduced out of focus as they were captured by a lens with shallow focus. The animators showed the killer instinct of the young T. rex as ice timing and storytelling, too. The animation shows a convincing sense of weight and momentum, not always easy to achieve in CGI.

Thanks, Josh Sheppard 

Documenting Photorealism

Citarella Fish Company, 1992, oil on canvas, 36 x 72 inches, Louis Meisel Gallery

Gallery dealer and art historian Louis K. Meisel has accomplished something extraordinary by documenting nearly every work of an entire art movement.

Many art movements are plagued with copycats and forgeries. But by illustrating or listing each major painting by each artist, he has created a public visual record of the whole field.

His first book was published in 1980, called simply Photorealism, and it contained all the major artists of the field such as Chuck Close, Tom Blackwell, and Richard Estes.

Photorealism Since 1980 continues in the same format. It's an oversize book, nearly two inches thick, well illustrated in color, and jammed-full of work.

Photorealism At the Millennium contains many of the same artists, plus some new ones such as Rod Penner.

His most recent volume is called Photorealism in the Digital Age.

Scroll Banners

I loved those scroll banners from the adventure years of American illustration. 

I suppose the idea started out with Renaissance heraldry.

These sketches were in my proposal for a National Geographic story on Tim Severin's Ulysses Voyage of Ulysses, a classic subject if there ever was one.

Book: Ulysses Voyage by Tim Severin

Color Me Healthy® Sessions

Hey, folks, we'll be resuming our Color Me Healthy® sessions on Zoom. Be sure to bring your red and blue Eyelights™, your stretched-canvas yoga mats and those Transcendental Turquoise™ paint swatches for the post-workout meditations sessions.