University of the Arts, Philadelphia

If you live near Baltimore, Maryland, please come see my presentation "Imaginative Realism: Painting What Doesn't Exist" at Maryland Institute College of the Arts, 1300 W. Mt. Royal Ave, Main Building, Rm. 110, TONIGHT from 7:00-8:00.
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Yesterday I visited University of the Arts in Philadelphia for the second time. The first time was in the winter of 2010, right on the eve of the historic snowstorm. I was delighted to return with all new lectures, and to meet a whole new group of students.



The head of the illustration program is illustrator and graphic designer, Mark Tocchet, who created the award-winning digital painting “Lover’s Pass,” above.


Here I am with Mark (and a reference skeleton) from the last visit.

Over the years, the school’s illustration program has been led by legendary instructors, such as Ben Eisenstadt (1906-1996) and Henry C. Pitz (1895-1976). The celebrated graduates have included Richard Amsel, Jerry Pinkney, and the Berenstains, creators of the Berenstain Bears.

The illustration program has been ranked among the top three in the nation by US News and World Report.


In between my lectures on color and composition, I did a twenty-minute portrait of Mark with water-soluble colored pencils, while he and the students watched the projected image on the screen.

Thanks, UArts, and keep up the great work.
 University of the Arts, Philadelphia
Mark Tocchet's website 

Dinotopia books on their way

Good news for those of you who ordered a copy of the 20th Anniversary Edition of Dinotopia. They all shipped out yesterday. The books are all signed with little drawings of dinosaurs in each one (Yes, Emily, you got your "Rainbowasaurus.")

Here's the view from the clerk at our local post office yesterday afternoon.

And for those who ordered the new Howard Pyle book, some of them have shipped already, and the rest will ship out this coming Monday. Those books are so popular that our supply ran out, so we're going directly to the source (The Delaware Art Museum) this week to get some more.

If you live in the Mid-Atlantic states, please come to one of my upcoming lectures:

• November 10, MICA, Baltimore
• November 12, Pyle Lecture (Delaware Art Museum)

LINKS
New  20th Anniversary Edition of Dinotopia
New Howard Pyle: American Master Rediscovered
See the YouTube video about how we mail off books

Gammell on Training Painters

R. Ives Gammell (1893-1981) carried the torch for academic painting in mid-20th century America. He published Twilight of Painting in 1946, an argument for the value of traditional painting skills that he found lacking in the art world* around him.


Gammell makes an interesting point about art teaching:

“A painter’s training does not consist primarily in instruction as to the handling of his materials. Such knowledge is extremely important, of course, but it is not the main thing. The essential purpose of a painter’s training should be to equip him with the means of solving any problem suggested to him by his creative impulse.”

He argues that all painters must begin their inspiration with the visible world, and that “a sound tradition of painting is, perhaps more than anything else, an attitude toward the visible world, and its teaching seeks to make that world more understandable and more accessible to its disciples.”

He describes bad teaching as that which makes the student follow canned formulas for painting, or as he says, “ready-made interpretations of natural appearances and recipes for rendering them.”


Above: Gammell: “The Law,” 1936.

How would Gammell address those higher goals? How, exactly, does the teacher equip the young painter to respond to the creative impulse? What good would such guidance be if the student didn’t already know how to stretch a canvas, and apply paint? Especially in a world where basic practical knowledge had been mostly lost, isn’t it the duty of an art education to have mastery of the mechanics of paint and brushes, perspective, anatomy, and accurate drawing?

As I understand Gammell’s argument, he would agree that it’s the teacher’s duty to help the student through all of the mechanics, which take years of dedicated effort, ideally in a small atelier.

But it’s the rare teacher that is able to equip the student with the higher tools for bringing their dreams into focus, and for manifesting them in a way that is right for that student’s unique sensibilities.

Once the practical foundation is laid, teachers can offer students proven strategies for shaping their dreams into material form. The process of developing sketches, preliminary studies from the model, and so forth, is a time-honored procedure that has served artists with all sorts of visions and styles.

*Note: Gammell’s view of the art world scarcely includes the field of illustration. Although he mentions Howard Pyle in passing, he ignores his contemporaries such as Andrew Loomis, whose  Creative Illustration was published in the same year as Twilight of Painting, and he doesn’t acknowledge the artists of the Famous Artist’s School, who were active in the mid-40s. Those artists had substantial skills at representational painting and they passed them on through innovative channels. It can be argued that the training of illustrators carried on much of the tradition that Gammell found absent in the gallery art world.

LINKS
Wikipedia on Gammell
Steven Gjertson’s essay on Gammell, his teaching, and his times.
Twilight of Painting

A Visit to CCAD

Last week I visited Columbus College of Art and Design (CCAD) to give a lecture on composition and color.


CCAD is one of the leading art schools for training illustrators, animators, painters, and sculptors. Clockwise from above left: a gallery of student work, character maquettes, Illustration chairman Stewart McKissick with a latex foam bear head, and one of the Pirate Bears made in 3-D teacher Mark Hazelrig’s class.


Mark Hazelrig teaches popular course in sculpting and casting. When we were there, students were molding soaps and designing the packages to fit them. In a back room, they were working on a giant model of a flea.


The campus buildings are scattered across a quiet section of downtown Columbus Ohio, right next to the art museum. A giant “ART” sign spans one road in the campus.


After my lecture, I did a demo portrait of Mr. McKissick. (Thanks for the photo, Chris!) Since it was Halloween, he agreed to let me turn him into a zombie.


On the official website, the school invites you to imagine everything "from superheroes to monsters and jokes to political statements." And that's what I love about the school: the mix of wild fun, high standards, and dedicated professionalism.

CCAD Illustration website
Previously:
Coffee with CCAD illustration teacher C.F. Payne
My 2009 visit to CCAD

The Idea Monster

Last week I visited a design firm called FRCH Design Worldwide, located in Cincinnati, Ohio.


This company of nearly 200 people takes up several floors of a gorgeous old brick building in downtown Cincinnati.


Above, Phillip Freer, who was a student in my recent painting workshop, is one of the top creative directors at FRCH. He brings to the table a wide range of experience in the themed entertainment sector, having worked as a Senior Concept Designer for Walt Disney Imagineering.

The designers work in the realms of architecture, interior design, and graphic design to create total environments in the retail, restaurant, hotel, and theme park arenas. By coordinating all their creative expertise, they’ve designed retail stores for the Disney theme parks, or restaurants for American Girl.

I arrived about an hour early for my lecture presentation. There was a nice café across the street, so I thought I’d do a sketch of the old red building that houses the company.


Instead of just doing a straight architectural portrait, I wanted to come up with a clever idea for a fantastical sketch. But my mind went blank, as if some monster robbed all the good ideas out of my head.

Then I thought: What if there actually was an Idea Monster that stole good ideas? It would sit blocking the road, and kidnap all the fresh, original ideas that came rolling along. It would let through only the stale, tired old clichés.

Luckily there’s a way to get rid of the idea monster. If you leave a row of Skittles candies on the sidewalk, that lures away the monster away, so he’ll go bother someone else.

Well, it just so happens that in the lobby of FRCH, they have a candy machine with free Skittles. So maybe that’s the secret to all the innovative ideas at FRCH!


By the way, here’s how the sketch looked at an early stage, with just loose watercolor washes, before the linework.

Main website for FRCH
Read more about my visit to FRCH on their blog “Creative Fuel.”

Howard Pyle Exhibition, Book, and Lecture

A week from now, the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington will premiere the exhibition “Howard Pyle: American Master Rediscovered.”


In honor of the centennial of Mr. Pyle’s death in 1911, the museum will present the most ambitious exhibition of legendary illustrator’s work in many decades.


A lavish book has just been published, the first major book on Pyle in a long time. I wrote the opening chapter “Pyle as a Picturemaker” which explores in detail Mr. Pyle's working methods, including his approach to preliminary sketches, principles of composition, and use of models. Other essays examine his teaching, his students, his influence on Norman Rockwell, his interest in Swedenborgianism, and his development of the pirate archetype.

We just received our copies at our website store.

On the opening day, November 12, at 11:00 am (free with museum admission), I’ll present a lecture called “Composition: Pyle’s Way with Pictures.” In this visual presentation for both all audiences, I’ll focus on Pyle’s unique approach to the design of pictures, and how it relates to compositional thinking then and now. The lecture will be followed by a book signing.

I hope to meet you there if you can make it. There should be quite a few professional artists and illustrators in attendance, as well as art students, collectors, and fans of Golden Age illustration. The nearby Brandywine River Museum will have a related show on Pyle’s Teaching and N.C.Wyeth’s Treasure Island illustrations (through November 17).

The Pyle exhibit at the Delaware museum closes March 4. Next summer it continues at the Norman Rockwell Museum.

Also, on Thursday evening, November 10, I'll present a lecture in Baltimore at Maryland Institute of the Arts from 7:00-8:00 in the evening, Room 110, Main Building. More information on that lecture here.

James Gurney lecture on November 12 in Wilmington
Exhibition information
Order the book

Horn Player

Jeffrey Lang, one of the great horn players of our time, did a dazzling rendition of the Mozart Horn Concerto last week at the Bard Performing Art Center in New York.


I knew I only had about 15 minutes to sketch his performance (it's a short piece), so I dove in with water-soluble colored pencils and brush pens, which I held discreetly in my left hand. I had all the stuff ready to go when the piece started so that I didn't have to dig around and break anyone's concentration.

Previous concert sketches on GJ:
Mirko Listening
Club Passim Gig
Concert Sketching
Shapewelding Sketching 
The Cello and the Pencil

Dinotopia Special 20th Anniversary Edition released

Our online store has just received the shipment of the newly republished Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time: Special 20th Anniversary Edition, published by Calla Editions.

This is the same unabridged book that I wrote and illustrated, with over a hundred color plates. It has long been out of print.

The story is set in the 1860s, following the adventures of scientist Arthur Denison and his young son, Will, as they embark on a voyage of exploration.

In the middle of the ocean, a terrible storm wrecks their ship and they find themselves washed up on a mysterious island called Dinotopia, where humans and dinosaurs have coexisted for thousands of years.



In this new hardcover edition, the artwork has been reproduced from new plates digitally scanned from the original transparencies, and every word and image has been faithfully included.

But in addition, there are 32 new pages, including a foreword by literary historian Michael Patrick Hearn and an afterword that I wrote specially for this edition. In the afterword, I discuss the inspiration, research, and production of the original book.

 
I dug through the archives to select 45 behind-the-scenes sketches and photos, most never before published, showing location research, maquettes, sketches, in-progress shots, studies, and photo reference.


For example, here's one of the unused illustrations showing a dinosaur swim platform. It was intended for the original book, but I cut it at the last minute when paleontologist Michael Brett-Surman of the Smithsonian pointed out that the dinosaur would break its ribs (and neck) in that position.

Even with that extra content, the price is still the same as it was 20 years ago. If you order through our store at the James Gurney website you can get the book signed, and pay with Paypal.

EDIT: We can now provide copies for our international customers, though the shipping cost is rather expensive.

Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time: Special 20th Anniversary Edition (Signed by the author)
The publisher is Dover Publishing in Mineola, NY

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Norman Rockwell goes around the world

In the 1950s, ad agency J. Walter Thompson asked Norman Rockwell to fly around the world on Pan Am airlines.


His mission: to produce a series of illustrations to help advertise the airline.



(Video link)
From Rockwell’s point of view at least it was not a successful campaign. Although he diligently sketched and took photos of tourists and exotic locales, his ideas were at cross purposes with the client's, and only a few ads ended up being published.

“When I returned home and submitted my sketchbook it was rejected. Oh, I did a few ads. Nothing to justify the time and money which had been spent, though. Because the agency and Pan American did not want pictures of the strange lands and people. "Those would only frighten tourists," they said; "we want pictures of smart-looking tourists sunning on smart beaches in front of smart hotels." But that's not the kind of picture I can do. So I did nothing.”

(Video link) Fortunately, a couple of the promotional videos survive, complete with Rockwell’s droll observations.


While sketching the Hawaiian girls in their grass skirts, he says: “It’s kind of difficult to sketch when they move with this peculiar rotary motion.”


William House, son of one of the ad execs who accompanied Rockwell, has produced a detailed recollection of the trip (Click on "Reverse Spins," below).

Photo from Reverse Spins
Video ©AeroArt International. All rights reserved.
The Norman Rockwell Museum

Self-similar textures in 3D computer graphics

A property of many natural textures is that they retain their geometric character at various levels of magnification.


Thus, a piece of the object is similar to the whole object. For example, in this photograph, a little piece of Romanesco broccoli has the same “spiral-knobby” character as the whole broccoli.


Self-similarity is a property of fractal geometry, which has taken great leaps in the computer graphics arena. We recognize the forms of this “mystery cave” as being natural, even if we’ve never seen them before.


(Video Link) In this video, the principle is played out in mechanical looking forms. The camera can fly in and out of the forms, finding ever more intricate shapes, worlds within worlds.


In another video (link to video) using some of the same “Mandelbulb” software, the forms are more organic, but still self-similar.

These tools suggest interesting possibilities for generating bizarre and convincing landscapes that would be fun to explore in games and films.

LINKS for more goodies:
Here’s where the image of the “Mystery Cave” came from. The link takes you to a good technical explanation of the software and its potential.
Self-similarity on Wikipedia
Source for broccoli image
Below, the classic text on fractal geometry by one of its founders, Benoit Mandelbrot.

Previously on GurneyJourney:
Fractals, Reverie, and Biofeedback
Fibonacci Patterns
Self-Similarity in Fractals
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Thanks, Dorian