Tiny Landscape Nuts and Bolts

This is an answer to the questions from Petr and Vicki from the previous post (by the way, I appreciate all the kind comments, and the haiku, Dan!)


Anyway, the tiny landscapes were done with a mixture of watercolor and water-soluble colored pencils. I usually start with a quick lay-in using a brown Caran-d'Ache pencil. The watercolor is a Schmincke half-pan set.

Then I painted the sky with a flat watercolor travel brush. The brush is the gold metallic thing just to the right of the rows of paints. It divides into two pieces, with the handle acting as a cover and protector for the brush tip when stored. I also used a Niji water brush for softening some areas.

Then I painted the other big shapes of the landscape with watercolor, and added detail and foliage texture with the colored pencil. The notes are written with the blue Waterman Phileas fountain pen (filled with brown ink) that's just visible above the Moleskine watercolor book.

The rag is a scrap of cotton flannel, and the cup is a Nalgene plastic jar.

Sorry, the Mac iBox (upper right) is a prototype only, and is not for sale.
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Previously on GJ: How to refill a fountain pen.

Tiny Landscapes

Traveling often gives you time in 15 minute intervals. This morning, for example, I found myself on the train platform in Bourges from 7:25 until 7:39 AM.

But that’s enough time for a painting the size of a postage stamp. I got out my Moleskine watercolor book and the other little tools that I keep in the side pouch of the computer case.

There’s the painting on the far right of the second row (click to enlarge). A few minutes later the TGV train passed farms near Vierzon, where the lights of the houses still glowed. The landscapes—and the weather—changed moment to moment.

This is a really fun way to work if you want to tackle new subjects, or to try a new medium, or to explore new compositional ideas.

Bourges Watercolor

We set up our folding stools in the middle of the old section of Bourges, France, yesterday, looking toward the half-timbered houses that were built soon after the great fire of 1487.

I spent the first hour working out the pencil drawing on the 6x8 inch Moleskine watercolor book. I then laid very light washes in gray and brown, leaving the white of the paper only in the far, upper plane of the central building.

Then, starting with the very dark doorway, I painted the structure area-by-area. The whole painting was done with a folding travel brush, a 1/4 inch flat. The flat, chisel shape can be used edge-on for a fine line, or full-width for wider shapes, such as the reddish brown sill piece at the top of the first floor.

In the final painting I lightened the further buildings on the right side, both to vignette the subject and to give a sense of fog.

French Bulldog

This little fellow was a passenger on the train from Nantes to Bourges yesterday.

 
His owner had a little blue padded bed for him and encouraged him to sleep, but he preferred to glance out the window. When I made bird-whistle noises, he looked over at me so I could do his portrait.

Half-Timber Message

Can you find the name of an American university hidden in the half-timbering of this unretouched photo, taken in Bourges, France?

Color and Light Flip Through

Thanks to BoingBoing for picking up my scoop about the new iBox!

And thanks to Spectrum for the nice video flip-through and review of Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter.



Spectrum writes:

"Based on Jim's enviably popular blog, this book slices though the confusing and often contradictory dogma about color with laser-like precision and backs it all up with some astonishing examples of Gurney's own paintings as well as with a welcome (if brief) survey of underappreciated masters who perfected how light reveals form and content. Color and Light is another gotta-have-it book for anyone who wants to paint, anyone who wants to improve their painting skills, or anyone who simply want a better understanding of the creative process."

Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter (Signed from Dinotopia Store)
Color and Light from Amazon
Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art

The New Mac iBox

Look what someone accidentally left in a laundromat in Italy—a working prototype of Apple’s much-rumored new iBox, ahead of the official launch.

It’s a lot smaller than the MacBook Pro, and even a bit narrower than the iPad. The design of the outside is very simple, with no connection ports at all. It keeps to the same simple brushed aluminum look with rounded corners. It’s a bold step into the wireless, portable, creative suite market.

When you open up the hinged upper lid, the iBox interior is filled with 29 different graphic art tools, each of which responds to a variety of hand movements. The interfaces are fairly intuitive, with a variety of mark-making potential.

Problems: The hue range is limited. The receptive surfaces will be sold separately by third party vendors. And the the gray undo tool isn’t compatible with all the rendering devices.

Piccoli Ritratti

Here are some little portraits of some of the amazing people we had supper with in Lucca:

1. The incomparable comic artist Massimiliano Frezzato, creator of I Custodi del Maser, 2. Terry Brooks, author of Sword of Shannara, 3. Emanuele Vietina, vice-director of Lucca Comics and Games, and 4. Steve Perrin, game designer for Dungeons and Dragons and RuneQuest.


Also: 1. Skippy, 2. Mandy, 3. Athos, and 4. Andrea. These sketches were all made with water-soluble colored pencils, and all were drawn around the supper table (except the one of Skippy, which was a workshop demo).

Lucca Comics and Games

Exhibition at the Lucca Festival in Italy

One of the early civilizations of Dinotopia was centered in Poseidos, where machines replaced living creatures.
The ships in the harbor resembled giant fish. Flying vehicles called skimmers were fashioned after trilobites. Not a scrap of dirt or foliage remained in the island capital.

The book Dinotopia: First Flight (1999) follows the adventures of one young cadet who escaped that dystopian empire and tried to foil its plans to invade the rest of Dinotopia.

This painting will be reproduced in the upcoming book Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter. It was also included in the exhibition, concluded November 1 at the Ducal Palace in Lucca, Italy.

Finishing Lucca Demo

I painted for another two hours on the charity auction demo, here at the festival of comics and games in Lucca, Italy.

The changes are mostly corrections in the drawing: fixing the windows, and tinkering with the placement of the dinosaur’s legs.


My reference was this colored pencil sketch, and I hope to do more of these tomorrow after the rain clears.


It was a great pleasure to meet and paint next to an artist I’ve admired for many, many years, Phil Hale. He painted a whole series of images based on rubbing out of black oil paint.

Lucca Comics and Games