The Model in Perspective

This picture of the painter and his model by Alfred Stevens (1823-1906) is well painted, but it has a problem. The model seems to be looking somewhere to the left of the painter's canvas. 

Why does it look that way, and what could be done to fix it?

The problem is a simple perspective goof (one I've made many times myself).

To place a figure squarely in front of the easel, Mr. Stevens would have needed to place the model's feet on the floor directly to the left of the red "x" that's midway between the wheels of the easel. But her feet are actually well beyond the spot opposite the far wheel. Since we're seeing her in profile, her view appears to be directed to the left of the picture.
-----
The painting is in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland.

Portrait of Franklin

Here's a painting I did of my son Franklin when he was just four and a half years old. It's in oil, 6 x 8 inches.  

I can't remember how I got him to hold still, but it's definitely painted from life.


Here's a closeup of the ear. I was using bristle brushes for most of the painting. The ear is stated in three passes/ three values. First there's a general skin tone scrubbed across the whole area, then a darker tone for the shadowed areas inside the ear, and finally a lighter tone for the planes catching the light.

One of the keys to painting a figure or a portrait is to think about such planes in groups. When I have a brush mixture for a given plane, I look for related planes and I try to define them before looking for new planes and creating new mixtures.

Sketching People in the Wild

The upcoming issue of International Artist magazine (December / January, Issue 88) has a feature that I wrote for them called "Sketching People in the Wild."

It starts out: Most artists draw posed models in the confines of a studio. It’s easier to draw a person who holds still in controlled light conditions. But sometimes it feels dull and predictable, like shooting fish in a barrel. Models can’t help looking lifeless and unnatural. What’s the remedy? I like to head outside and hunt for natural poses and authentic lighting—real humans in their wild habitat.

Regular readers of this blog will recognize many of the portraits and anecdotes, but there are a few I'm publishing in the magazine for the first time. 

------

International Artist magazine currently has a "people and figures" competition. Entries will be accepted through January 16.

Detroit revived, thanks to artists

(Video Link) When the big media outlets report on Detroit, Michigan, they dwell on the rotting hulk of a dead industrial-opolis. But that's not the whole story.

This video shows what happens when a neglected American city gets loved by artists and musicians—instead of by big corporations or politicians.
Thanks, Frank

Buzzfeed's Steampunk Favorites

Dinotopia was selected by Buzzfeed as #4 on their list of "55 Steampunk Reads For The Holiday," right behind Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.

Other authors include Neal Stephenson, K. W. Jeter, Phil and Kaja Foglio, Gail Carriger, Tim Powers, William Gibson & Bruce Sterling, Scott Westerfeld, Jay Lake, and Alan Moore.

If you remember the book but don't have the new edition, check it out, because it's got a whole making-of feature added to the back. You can order a hand-signed copy from my website store, and I'll have my trained steam-powered robots package your order for you. Or you can find a copy at your local independent bookseller or at Amazon, and maybe they'll have their pterosaur delivery crew bring you a copy.

Thanks, Evelyn Kriete, a contributor to The Steampunk Bible

How to prepare a bat skeleton

(Video link) In case you wondered how to prepare a bat skeleton for display, here's a time lapse video from the University of Michigan that takes you from the carcass to the glass case.
via BoingBoing

Drowning a Dinosaur

I know: the photographic evidence seems to implicate me. It looks like I’m drowning a dinosaur.

But really I just want to know what an ceratopsian would look like in shoulder-deep water. 

It was just one of many references I used to create this scene from Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara.

The book is available signed from me or from Amazon.com.

Yellow in Context

What do all these color swatches have in common? They're all bright yellow. 

OK, so what's the catch? They are all bright yellow as seen in the right lighting context. That pale one and gray one at the bottom left are bright yellow in a bluish light. The dark brownish colors are yellow in shadow.

All of those swatches come from screenshots of the "minions," the bright yellow characters in the animated film "Despicable Me."


(Link to video) Here's the new trailer for Despicable Me 2 where the screenshots came from. The lighting designers did a great job of shifting the gamut from one range to another in less than two minutes of screen time.

To achieve a feeling of colored light, a painter must often shift the mixture far from the local color. A good rule of thumb is that the color of a given mixture is a combination of the local color and the color of the light source.

Related post: Color Constancy
All this is covered in my book, Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter
Images ©Universal

Marc Davis's Chanticleer

If anyone could draw a sympathetic looking rooster, it was Marc Davis (1913-2000). The senior Disney animator was a master of designing appealing characters, from Brer Rabbit to Tinkerbell.

He teamed up other veterans Ken Anderson, Woolie Reitherman, Milt Kahl to develop a animated feature that told the story of Chanticleer, the rooster who was so proud that he thought his "cock-a-doodle-do" brought on the sunrise. The story wove together the comedy by Edmond Rostand (of Cyrano fame) together with the classic tale of Reynard the Fox.

He began by sketching real chickens to learn their forms and personalities, and then anthropomorphized them into human types.

Unfortunately the material failed to win over Walt Disney, and it might not have worked with American audiences. The studio cancelled the project and put its muscle behind "The Sword and the Stone" instead.

Fortunately, Davis's drawings survive as a fine example of character design. 

Read all about the saga of the Chanticleer project at the Animation Archives website.
Contemporary animator Andreas Deja also reflects on the Chanticleer project.

Books:

You can still get copies of the printed storybook version with Marc Davis illustrations called Chanticleer and the Fox: A Chaucerian Tale (From the Disney Archives)

And the story of the unproduced feature is chronicled in Disney That Never Was: The Stories and Art of Five Decades of Unproduced Animation
All images ©Disney Corp.

360 Dinosaur Cyclorama

Here's a full 360 degree cyclorama that puts you into a dinosaur swamp. To make it interactive, click on the image and give it a spin in either direction.


To view the image full-screen, click the arrow in the upper right hand corner. If you don't see the image, try this link.

How I did it: I used Photoshop to stitch together three of my paintings to make a 1x7 panorama (580p x 4054p) that joins back on itself. Then I uploaded the image to Dermandar.com. and copied the embed code (set for flash object) into the blog. Visit  Dermandar to browse through other digital cycloramas.

Read about historical painted cycloramas at Wikipedia/ Cyclorama