Release of "How I Paint Dinosaurs"

Today I'm proud to announce the release of my first art instruction video. Here's a trailer to tell you about it. (Direct link to YouTube trailer)

How This Video Came to Be

Over the last few years, three different art video companies have asked to film my working methods, but I turned them all down because I wanted to learn how to do it myself. That way, I felt I could deliver a better result to you.

That's why it took a while to produce this and bring it to market. I had to learn a lot first. I wanted to shoot detailed video coverage of the entire process, not just one or two days of it, and I knew that an outside team couldn't do that if they just dropped into the studio for a short period of time. 

What's in the Video

The video follows the making of these two paintings from start to finish over a two month period from assignment to delivery. It covers the research, thumbnails, maquettes, line drawing, color planning, priming, and the final oil painting. 

I know not everyone is into dinosaurs, but if you paint any kind of imaginative realism, I think you'll find the method helpful. I have more videos in the pipeline about plein-air painting in watercolor and casein, which I'll tell you more about later.  

"How I Paint Dinosaurs" runs about 53 minutes, short enough to watch multiple times, but long enough to cover everything. I tried to apply everything I learned from your 81 comments to my post asking you what you like (and don't like) in an art video.
  

Reviews

“Any artist who has been treated to James Gurney’s previous books will be delighted with his newest offering, How I Paint Dinosaurs, an over-the-shoulder look at how this remarkable dinosaur artist achieves not only realism but a true sense of drama in portraying these animals for National Geographic Magazine and others. Gurney not only knows dinosaurs but is a master painter of light and shadow, and he shares his techniques in an easily understandable and informal way. I learned much from watching this.”
---Mark Hallett, paleoartist

“What do Leonardo Da Vinci, Charles R. Knight, and Jim Gurney have in common? True art, texture, and no photo manipulation software. Who needs a time machine to see life in the Mesozoic? Just let Jim paint it for you. Here is how True Magic is done. Now it is your turn to learn to make magic.”
—Michael K. Brett-Surman, PhD., co-editor of The Complete Dinosaur (Life of the Past)

How to Order

The DVD is currently available at Kunaki.com, where you can order directly and have it shipped to you. (International customers, please remember, it's region-encoded NTSC for U.S.A and Canada.)

You can also preorder the DVD from Amazon.com. I just set up the page there, and they'll have copies soon.

At Gumroad where you can download a video file right now. (Edit: I would like to sincerely thank all of you who have added a little extra to your Gumroad payment. I really appreciate it!)

Paypal customers can also get the digital download at Sellfy (link to product description page) by clicking on this button: buy

Deluge ends painting day

Water media and a rainstorm don't mix, as I learned on a recent painting excursion.

(Direct link to video)


Here's the painting, which is a mixture of casein and watercolor. The fun of this subject for me was the contrast between the comprehensibility and order of the right half of the scene and the strange abstract patterns on the left.

Even without the issues of the rainy weather, it was a mind-bending challenge to reconcile the view seen through the glass with the second world reflected in the glass, especially because the glass was old and wavy. Had I been working from a photo, these worlds would be brought to the same focal plane, but not so when painting from direct observation.

I hope you'll stay tuned tomorrow for the DVD/download release, and please subscribe to my YouTube channel to get the new releases first.

YouTube week starts tomorrow

I am excited to announce that "YouTube Week" begins tomorrow here at GurneyJourney. 

A new video will be released each day, starting Monday morning with a short film about how an unexpected downpour foiled a painting day.

On Tuesday I will officially release my first DVD/download. I have worked hard on it, and I tried to incorporate the 81 comments of great feedback you gave me about what you wanted in an art instruction video.  

Throughout the week I'll offer free DIY instructional videos, including how to make dimensional letters that you can animate for your own Hollywood-style motion graphic title.


On Saturday, August 24th at 7pm Eastern time, I'll be the first visual artist to try out the new event-streaming service called Concert Window Open. Wherever you are in the world, you can hang out with me as I demo various techniques and answer your live questions. Let me know in the comments what you'd like me to cover during the webcast.

Please tell your friends on Twitter and Facebook to follow the blog this week. And this might be a good time to subscribe to my YouTube channel. You can set up your YouTube subscription to notify you about my new uploads even before the regular blog readers get to see them.

Plein Air Tip: Go Vertical

Here's a helpful tip when you're painting outdoors. Try to arrange the angle of the painting surface to be:

• 1. Vertical (or perpendicular to your line of sight) 
• 2. Adjacent to the view you want to paint, and 
• 3. About the same size as your field of view. 

Oil painting in progress on an Open Box M pochade easel.

And try to arrange the palette to be:

• 1. Close to the painting,
• 2. Vertical also, or parallel to the painting surface,
• 3. In the same light as the painting.

If you can do all these things, it takes a lot of the guesswork out of drawing or painting what's in front of you. When you have to look 90 degrees to the side or down to your lap, or if you have to allow time for your eyes to adjust for brightness differences, it makes it harder to make accurate observations.

Getting this setup right may take a little while, because it involves coordinating a lot of separate factors: whether you're sitting or standing, the size of your panel, your distance from the subject, and your easel adjustments. And sometimes this set-up isn't possible, such as in a subway or a restaurant, but if you can prop a sketchbook up on your knee, it helps a lot.

This is the same basic idea as the sight-size method used in art academies, but I follow the method a little less strictly, and I try to match my painting size to my view at the given working distance, not to the actual size of the subject.


Here's my new DIY sketchbook pochade easel in action. The pochade mounts to a lightweight camera tripod. The sketchbook is clipped to a plywood board, below which is the palette holder, attached to the board by friction hinges  The palette is the metal lid from a pencil box spray-painted white and held on with Velcro. Some of these refinements come from your suggestions--so thanks!

The angled camera bar has various holes for mounting video cameras. At the moment it's holding a GoPro on a kitchen timer. The camera bar swings up and down, and is held in position with the friction lid support at left. It is currently out of the way in the down position.
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Read more:
Marc Dalessio video showing his sight-size landscape setup
Darren Rousar's website explains sight-size method
David Kassan demos his "Parallel Palette"
I explain the DIY sketchbook pochade in the recent cicada video
Sources for gear:
Open Box M pochade easels
Friction Lid Support
Southco adjustable friction hinge
GoPro Hero
IKEA Ordning Kitchen Timer

Harvey Dunn on "Art for Art's Sake"

American illustrator Harvey Dunn had this to say about the philosophy that true art should be divorced from any moral, practical, commercial, or didactic purpose. 

“We still hear some talk of ‘art for art’s sake.” The expression is about as sensible as ‘beefsteak for beefsteak’s sake.’ The artist who falls back upon any such refuge in explanation of poor work might just as well be shown the door.”

The term 'art for art's sake' is often attributed to Théophile Gautier. In its Latin form "Ars Gratia Artis," the saying appears as the motto in the banner around Metro Goldwyn Mayer's roaring lion. 

Samuel Goldwyn is often alleged to have said to screenwriters trying to convey moral ideas, "If you have a message, call Western Union." Many movies don't have much of a moral purpose, but the big ones certainly have a commercial one. 

While I'm on the subject of the MGM lion, here's a photo of how they filmed it. 

The notion of 'art for art's sake' doesn't make much sense to me. Art has many levels of purpose, whether to to sell soap, to decorate a home, or to articulate shared dreams. There's really no category of purpose that's intrinsically more elevated than another. Great artistic achievements have sprouted up, fertilized by the most unlikely of purposes—such as writing music to help someone with their sleepless nights.

Most art has the sake of the viewer or listener in mind. So in that sense it's not done for its own sake at all. Even if a work of art were to be painted in chalk on the sidewalk of a dead end street to be erased by rain—it would presumably be made for the sake of the mental well-being of the creator. 

I know what Dunn means—lazy students have used the line "art for art's sake" to justify poor work. I agree that great paintings are usually more than the sum of their brushstrokes. However, art is different from beefsteak. It can feed us on so many levels, from the eye candy of gorgeous shapes, to the indulgence of violent or bawdy entertainment, to the expression of the loftiest ideals.  

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Wikipedia on Art for Art's Sake

Watch a montage of MGM logos over the years.

See a video of Harvey Dunn on YouTube

Urban legend of an MGM lion killing its trainer

Prop Collection

In the golden days of historical illustration, artists had large personal collections of props, such as guns, watches, and tableware.


The collections of Harold von Schmidt (above), Ed Vebell, Dean Cornwell, and Howard Pyle were (or in Vebell's case, are) legendary. There were also rental agencies who served illustrators for both props and costumes.


Today, most of the business for prop rentals comes from movie producers. This video (direct link) takes us behind the scenes to one of the largest movie prop rental companies in Los Angeles, called The Hand Prop Room. 

They not only have original artifacts, but they also fabricate high quality replicas and stunt props made of rubber than can be used in action scenes.

Today some of the leading art schools are assembling working collections of props, costumes, and natural history specimens that art students can borrow. This is one of the ways that traditional brick-and-mortar art schools can keep their edge against upstart online art schools.
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The Hand Prop Room

Haidinger's Brush

Haidinger's Brush is a a visual effect that happens within the eye, an entoptic phenomenon, like floaters.

The effect appears on computer screens and blank areas of sky, and it's caused by the way our eyes respond to polarized light. The apparition looks like two fuzzy bowties, a blue one and a yellow one, overlapping each other at 90 degrees. The rendering above simulates the effect, but it actually appears smaller, about the size of your thumb extended to your computer screen.

Here's another simulation, a lot more subtle than the last. Do you see the fuzzy yellow and blue bow tie floating in the middle of the white space? If you don't see it, tip the computer screen away from you.

Now again, that's just a simulation. Let's see if I can get you to see the "real" illusion. Below this line will be a big area of white space. Scroll down till the white space fills the screen.

Now look toward the center of the white space on the screen, relax your mind, and tilt your head from side to side. Do you see the fuzzy yellow and blue bow tie? If it appears, you may think at first that it is an afterimage from the earlier simulations, but it's the real thing. The colors may switch from blue to yellow and back again as your head tilts.

If you don't see it, try looking at the white screen through polarized sunglasses or a polarizing filter (CPL) from a camera. And if you don't see it at all, don't worry—not everybody sees such effects.

The Haidinger's brush effect is also visible in a blank blue sky, usually 90 degrees to the side of the sun, or at the zenith at sunset. Once you train yourself to see it, you will start seeing it everywhere, and you'll be observing something that's invisible to almost everyone else in the world.
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Previously on GJ:
Floaters
Wikipedia on Haidinger's Brush
Explanation on Polarization.com
The effect is also described in Minnaert's book: The Nature of Light and Colour in the Open Air

Betty Boop vs. The Old Man of the Mountain

(Video link) In this 1933 cartoon, Betty Boop and a host of animals challenge the ultimate sexual predator: The Old Man of the Mountain.

At 3:15, note the unhappy victim with the three bearded babies heading down the mountain as Betty goes up. The sexual suggestiveness of the film drew enough protests to force the Fleischer Studios to tone down the Betty Boop character. By the time the Hays Code came into full force, she morphed into a modest career girl. The music was by Cab Calloway's Orchestra. Calloway's dance routine influenced the choreography of the Old Man, using the new rotoscope process that the Fleischer studios pioneered.
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Wikipedia article about the film
Archive.org about the film
Minnie the Moocher, another Calloway/Fleischer collaboration

Chandaran Scientific Instruments

Part of the fun of fantasy worldbuilding is dreaming up plausible artifacts. 

In Dinotopia's eastern capital of Chandara, the imperial academy includes an assortment of scientific instruments, which Arthur Denison records in detail in his journal.

An orrery, which models the movement of the earth and moon around the sun. The base is a turtle, inspired by the World Turtle mytheme.

an astrolabe, which measures star positions to aid in navigation;  

a cylindrical music player like the Edison phonograph with an ammonite horn...

and a clockwork world map which demonstrates the movement of floating continents. 

Here's what Denison's journal looks like, where these drawings were recorded. This is built from cast latex, brass, and copper over a real antique book. I made it as a display prop for a Dinotopia art exhibition at the Smithsonian.

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Order a signed copy of Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara (2007)

or on Amazon: Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara

Battle Milk 3

A group of concept artists in California has released a new book in the "Battle Milk" series. The book collects the personal fantasy and science fiction artwork and story concepts by artists who work by day in the field of concept art.

The artists include Jackson Sze, Christian Alzmann, Matt Gaser, Thang Le, David Le Merrer, Kilian Plunkett, Pat Presley, Justin Ridge, and Le Tang. In their official jobs, they have been working on Star Wars 1313, Thor 2, Fountain City, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, season 5.
I was already a fan of the Battle Milk series when they asked me to write the foreword. Here's my essay:

"In 1581, when Galileo sat listening to a sermon in a cathedral in Pisa, he was only half listening. The other half of his brain floated up to the chandelier hanging from the ceiling. As the priest droned on, he watched the chandelier swinging in a light breeze. He timed the motion against his pulse and noticed that the that it took the same amount of time to swing back and forth, regardless of how far it oscillated. Before the sermon was over, his imagination worked out the principle of the pendulum, which later revolutionized clockwork. 

"Galileo was my excuse when I sketched designs for kites in my notebook margins in eighth grade algebra. Out the high windows I could see a band of blue sky and drifting clouds. Looking in that direction had got me scolded, so I kept my head down and drew kites instead: box kites, Marconi kites, string climbers, camera slings, and shutter releases. Whenever I got ahead on my equations, I sketched more construction diagrams. 

"After school, when the homework was completed, I checked the sky. If it was calm, I beelined to the workshop to saw up sticks and to stretch string and paper. If the wind was up, I bicycled to the schoolyard with my newest kite, which still smelled of glue and hope. Sometimes the day ended well with a kite that climbed to a speck against the sky. Other times it ended in disaster. Many of my kites died tangled in trees and wires. Or worse,\ one time my dad’s camera fell 300 feet to the schoolyard pavement when the cigarette fuse burned through its tether instead of the shutter release.

"I suffered from Galileo Syndrome later when I finished college and started working as a commissioned illustrator. After a day spent painting archaeological scenes for National Geographic, I set aside a few previous evening hours painting my own worlds. At my little drafting table in the basement, with snow piling up outside the window, and the steam pipes hissing just above my head, I let my paintbrush wander to cities on waterfalls and parades with dinosaurs. That was what got me into all that trouble with Dinotopia. 

"Each of the artists in Battle Milk III has been diagnosed with a incurable case of Galileo Syndrome. They do a stellar job at their concept art during the day, mind you, throwing their hearts into it, and contributing concept art to some of the most famous movies and games. But in those spare moments waiting for meetings, or when they’re commuting back home from work, their minds are already dancing across cirrus clouds. When they get home and the kids are in bed and the dishes are washed, these artists are hard at work setting sail across their own galaxies.

"Before they asked me to write this foreword, I was already a fan of Battle Milk, having picked up a copy of the last edition and cherished it on my inspiration bookshelf. They have let me peek at the stuff in this volume, and I don’t know how it is possible, but this edition surpasses the last, and takes the viewer into whole new landscapes. I send my warm wishes and hearty congratulations to all of the daydreamers and margin doodlers represented herein—and to you, the reader, for buying this ticket to the wild half of their brains. You’re in for a rollicking ride."

Check out the original sketches that the team drew in the copies of Battle Milk 1 and 3 that they sent me! Awesome!

 

Available from Amazon: Battle Milk 3 (Battle Milk 1&2 are sold out)
Here's the Battle Milk website