Watercolor Week Begins Tomorrow

"Watercolor Week" begins tomorrow, with new YouTube videos every day of the week.

Here's a preview of what's coming:

And tomorrow is the release of the 72 minute DVD and download called "Watercolor in the Wild." See you then.

"Troll Caught Tuna" Contest

I noticed this label for "Troll Caught Tuna" from the "Wild Planet" company, and it got me to thinking in a fantasy vein.

First off, I didn't know trolls worked as fishermen. What would a fishing boat look like if it were run by trolls? Do trolls even use boats to catch tuna, or do they do it some other way?

And what would things be like back on shore on this Wild Planet? How would the other fisherfolk react to the trolls? Would Mrs. Troll be waiting back home with the kids for her husband to return with his catch? What would supper in the troll home be like?

Let's do this as a GurneyJourney art contest.

Categories and Judging

There will be two categories: Illustration and Animation. Entries should answer at least one of the questions above. Animation should be limited to a 7-second "Vine" type gif. Illustration can be in any format, such as book cover art or movie concept art, or a standalone piece. Your entry can be a quick concept sketch or rough animation—it doesn't have to be highly finished or rendered. Sometimes a good idea can win over a good painting.

I will be the judge, though based on the stunning results from the Lionfish Shampoo Contest, it won't be an easy job.

Prizes

I'll pick one Grand Prize winner and three Honorable Mentions in each of the two categories. All eight of the winning entries will be featured on the blog. First prize in each category is a set of my three DVDs or downloads, including my new one (released Monday) called "Watercolor in the Wild," plus a highly coveted "Department of Art" custom embroidered patch, making you an honorary member of the Hudson River Rats plein-air gang.

Each of the three Honorable Mentions in each category will receive a Department of Art Patch. 

Deadline

It's free to enter. The deadline is Saturday, September 27. Winners will be announced September 29. 

How to Enter

Email a file (no larger than 800px in any dimension) of your drawing, painting, digital art to gurneyjourney (at) gmail, subject line "TROLL CAUGHT." Or send me a link to a file-hosting site where your image can easily be accessed and downloaded. For animation please use only the links to a public site where the gif can be seen.

Have fun, and I can't wait to see what this contest reels in.

Mead Schaeffer

Mead Schaeffer (1898-1980) was a Golden Age illustrator whose work evoked a lush world of drama, intrigue, and romance. His early oil canvases are reminiscent of N.C. Wyeth, Dean Cornwell, and his teacher, Harvey Dunn, which makes him a grand student of Howard Pyle.


In his paintings for the 1928 edition of The Count of Monte Cristo, he distinguished himself with his carefully composed shapes of tonal values, his handling of light, and his treatment of color.

In his long career, his style evolved with the times, becoming more photographic and more concerned with contemporary themes. He was good friends with Norman Rockwell, who lived in the same town of Arlington, Vermont. 

He was active during World War II as a war correspondent, and several of his 46 Saturday Evening Post covers showed men in uniform.

Schaeffer will be one of the artists featured in an upcoming exhibition of "Harvey Dunn and His Students," at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, November 7, 2014 through May 30, 2015. Works by Dunn's students include Dean Cornwell, Harold von Schmidt, Saul Tepper, John Clymer, Lyman Anderson, and James E. Allen. More info from the Rockwell Museum here.

More good news for Schaeffer-o-philes is that the current issue of Illustration magazine has a feature on Schaeffer with 57 color reproductions, along with a biography.

Preview the Mead Schaeffer article in Illustration magazine

Schaeffer is featured in one of the chapters in the book Masters of American Illustration: 41 Illustrators and How They Worked by Fred Taraba

Wikipedia on Mead Schaeffer

Previous GJ posts that mention Mead Schaeffer

Nude Girls Outdoors and Overcast Light

Today marks a milestone. 

This is the 3000th post on GurneyJourney. I started the blog in July of 2007 and have been posting at least once a day since then. Thanks to all of you who make this blog a part of your routine, whether you're a new visitor or a regular. Stick around and tell your friends about it--there's plenty more to come. Now, onto the post.....

Models painted by Trina Merry in front of the Guggenheim Museum and the Manhattan Bridge. AP Photo

The models in these photos are practically nude, except for body paint. Public nudity is legal in New York if it's part of a performance art piece. To camouflage her models, body painter Trina Merry had to keep backing up to see if the details aligned with the background. You can watch a video of the work in progress here.

You'll notice that no matter how she's painted, the model is always darker than the sky, and that the photos are always taken in overcast light or in open shadow. 

The picture above seems to be taken in open shadow with a sunny scene behind her. She is darker than the sky, despite the fact that, in this case, the illumination on her seems to heightened a bit by a flash or a reflector near the camera—note how the values lighten on the front of her thighs.


The light here seems to be a thin cloud layer covering most of the sky, and the model is lit by that overcast light. She's not casting a shadow, proof that she's not in direct sunlight. However the overcast isn't total: the window is reflecting a piece of blue sky. Regardless, the legs will be darker than the grass no matter what kind of paint you use on them.


Sorry, no nude here. A good rule of thumb is that in overcast conditions, a white local color facing upward will closely match the sky. Not many local colors are lighter than snow, and even bright white snow generally matches the tone of the cloudy sky.

Snow is significantly lighter or darker than an overcast sky only when the cloud layer is thin enough to permit some gradation of brightness in the direction of the sun.


Which leads to the following question: In direct sunlight illumination is there any paint white enough to offset the darkness of the shadow side? And is there a paint black enough to offset the effect of the direct sunny illumination? In other words, could you paint a ball—or a nude girl—in such a way that you could replace the gray-painted ball above, and make the ball—or the girl—disappear?

I don't think so, but I'll have to give it a try. I don't think Jeanette will let me try it on a nude girl, so I may have to settle for the ball.
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If form, light, shadow, and paint interest you, you can read more about it in my book Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter, available on Amazon— or signed from my webstore.

Article with video at WashingtonPost.com

Craig Tracy's body paint art of a Fiat 500 Abarth Cabrio

Thanks, Evelyn Brody

Chopped Straw

Some painters of the nineteenth century had a way of building up tones with crosshatched strokes, which they referred to as "chopped straw."

John Henry Hill, "Plums," Watercolor

The technique gives a fuzzy effect reminiscent of engravings of the period. The term was coined by British art critic John Ruskin, an artist himself, whose advocacy of the patient study of nature inspired artists in both England and the USA. Ruskin wrote:

"If a colour is to be darkened by superimposed portions of another, it is, in many cases, better to lay the uppermost colour in rather vigorous small touches, like finely chopped straw, over the under one, than to lay it on as a tint, for two reasons : the first, that the play of the two colours together is pleasant to the eye ; the second, that much expression of form may be got by wise administration of the upper dark touches."
—The Elements of Drawing, page 157

Henry Roderick Newman, "Wild Flowers," 1890, Watercolor, 15x10 inches.

Henry Roderick Newman (American, 1843-1917) admired Ruskin's writings and visited him in England. Newman liked to paint close-up views of flowers and plants in their natural setting. In this one, the textures gradate up to a delicate stippled tone at the top. The effect is quite different from what you would get with overlaid wet washes.

Painters used small overlaid strokes not only for grass-like textures, but for other textures as well. One of the strategies is to vary the color from one set of strokes to another. In this detail from a watercolor by William Trost Richards, the small strokes vary a bit from warm to cool, giving the surfaces some chromatic vibrancy.

Ruskin said, "The use of acquiring this habit of execution is that you may be able, when you begin to colour, to let one hue be seen in minute portions, gleaming between the touches of another." He advised his students to work slowly and delicately, using the point of the pencil or brush “as if you were drawing the down on a butterfly’s wing.”

Here's some real chopped straw as a point of reference. 

The look wasn't restricted to watercolor painters. Andrew Wyeth used a similar approach in some of his egg temperas. Aaron Draper Shattuck laid down a scrubby earth-toned underpainting in this detail of an oil painting, and then placed green strokes over it.
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I learned about this term from the book The New Path: Ruskin and the American Pre-Raphaelites

Related post: "Small Touches"

Bringing you on six painting adventures

Tobias from Austria asked for more information about my new video "Watercolor in the Wild." I'll be releasing it this coming Monday, the 11th of August.

The video is 72 minutes long, all shot in HD video on location.


I did this study of a taxidermy Galápagos tortoise while sitting in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. I'll show how the combination of watercolor and water-soluble colored pencils is a fast way to capture such a textural subject.

There are six subjects in all:  a greenhouse, a miniature horse, the tortoise, an old carriage house, a Civil War re-enactor, and my wife Jeanette painting in a churchyard—plus an introductory segment on materials and methods. The emphasis is on portability and on working outdoors "in the wild" in sketchbooks.

The segments range between 5 and 18 minutes. Each segment follows a painting all the way through, from the first pencil lines, to the big washes, to the final touches.

I enjoyed the challenge of painting the pictures while documenting them on video at the same time. I did not use an outside film crew, because I felt I could capture the experience and the decision-making better if I did it myself. I got coverage from a lot of different angles, and made sure to show you the subject I was looking at. 

I feel that audio is really important in art videos, too. I accompanied each segment with a clear voiceover that I recorded later, reconstructing the specific thinking I brought to each stage. That voiceover is heard over the background sound of the actual environment, which is very immersive, so you'll feel like you're right there. I kept the music very minimal, just at the beginning and end of each segment, and not running throughout the entire video. 

Miniature horse filly "Rosebud" posed for me during a 12 minute nap, captured in real time.

My goal was to make a video that's practical and specific enough to clearly show you all the steps, but that is tightly edited enough to make it and hopefully entertaining and inspiring, so that it's watchable again and again. 

If you remember my previous post "Video in the Works," I solicited your input about what you like and dislike about art videos. I read those 81 comments very carefully and tried to learn from them.

To mark the release, all next week will be "Watercolor Week," with a free sample video clip each day of the week. Don't miss the launch on Monday.

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Update:

To purchase the 72-minute video "Watercolor in the Wild":
HD download: (Credit Card) 
HD download: (Paypal)
BONUS FEATURES (a half hour of additional bite-size inspiration)
DVD: (NTSC, Region 1-North America) 

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Reviews of Watercolor in the Wild

Cartoon by F. H. Townsend

Frederick Henry Townsend (1868-1920) drew this cartoon for the British humor magazine Punch. 

OUR EVENING ART CLASSES HAVE COMMENCED

Mr. X. (our dear Professor, who always puts things so tellingly): "In conclusion, I can only repeat what I said last Term—'It's all light and shade, Ladies, whether you're painting a battle-piece, a bunch of grapes, or a child in prayer!'"

Sargent Thrashes a Farmer

John Singer Sargent's (1856-1925) biographer Evan Charteris tells the story of one of the oddest episodes of the artist's career, which occurred while he was staying in England shortly before Christmas, 1891.

Towards the end of the day he was riding homeward. He found himself in a field of winter wheat, a part of which he had to cross in order to reach a bridle path.

He was no agriculturist; he probably would have found it difficult to distinguish between a field of potatoes and a field of turnips. In all ignorance and innocence, therefore, he continued his way. His movements had been observed; through the twilight the owner of the winter wheat advanced upon him and without preliminaries launched out into a torrent of low abuse. Sargent was completely surprised. 

He dismounted, and as the man drew near, [Sargent] began to apologize for his mistake, offering to make good any damage he had done. Far from being pacified by his courtesy, the farmer became more incensed. He worked himself into a frenzy of rage and loaded Sargent with every variety of threat and malediction. 

He was well known in the neighbourhood as a surly and foul-mouthed fellow, and Sargent, deeply agitated, mastered his temper and moved away, mounted his horse and rode home. That evening he described what had happened; Mrs. Abbey states that he was obviously in the grip of an agitating distress. At intervals he would return to the subject and discuss what he ought to do. 

For two days he was uneasy and silent and could do no work. Late on the second day he went out. Towards evening of that day Mrs. Abbey was returning from a walk. Her road led past the gate of the house where the farmer lived. As she approached, a figure walked rapidly down the path; drawing nearer she saw in the dusk that it was Sargent. When he joined her he exclaimed: "I've done it — I've done it." 

He was calmer than he had been at any time since the adventure. He went on to tell her that after looking at the thing from every side and turning it over and over in his mind he had settled what he ought to do; he had gone to the farmer's door, knocked, and when the farmer appeared, had said:

"Come outside and defend yourself, I am going to thrash you."

The farmer called on his household to witness the assault, and then, answering the challenge, engaged in a struggle in the course of which Sargent appears to have carried out his threat. Such was the amazing story told as he and Mrs. Abbey walked home.

The farmer at once sought the help of the law. It was doubtful at first whether he would proceed by summons before a magistrate or by a civil action for damages. Sargent put the matter in the hands of Sir George Lewis. On January 21 Sir George wrote that the farmer had issued a writ for damages.

He advised payment into court. £50 was considered adequate. The farmer accepted the sum, and proceedings went no further; and there, so far as Sargent was concerned, this curious episode ended. 

Later an unexpected turn was given to it by an invitation from the farmer to Sargent asking him to dine. Sargent declined, but as a reconciliation was in the air [Sargent's friends] de Glehn and Finn took his place, and found the farmer if not ready to forgive, at any rate determined effectually to achieve forgetfulness by conviviality. Legend has it that Sargent spent the interval between the insult and the assault in taking lessons in boxing. This scarcely needs denial; he spent the interval, it is true, in deep perplexity.

His sense of justice, always lively, but balanced, had been outraged, but his indignation had cooled and had been replaced by a reasoned view of what under the circumstances it was right to do. He acted in a manner which was unspeakably distasteful to him, driven forward by the conviction that no other course was honourably open to him. It was in no spirit of revenge that he acted, it was probably with no sense of personal grievance, but on a conclusion of judgment arrived at on a point of honour. 

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John Sargent by the Hon. Evan Charteris
Free download of ebook

Advice for Mark

Andrew Loomis

Mark asks,

"I'm off to university next month and am trying to learn as many techniques as possible, I'm currently going through the Andrew Loomis books at the moment and was wondering what is your process for drawing heads/bodies/objects/environments, etc?"

Hi, Mark,
Wow, those are kind of a big questions. Well, you can't miss with Loomis. His book Creative Illustration is one of the best sources for information about painting technique, color theory, and composition. Figure Drawing for All It's Worth and Drawing the Head and Hands is also full of valuable information, so it's no wonder they've been classics since the 1940s.

A more recent book that's great for composition, especially if you're interested in film, comics, storyboarding, or animation, is Marcos Mateu-Mestre's Framed Ink: Drawing and Composition for Visual Storytellers. For learning about process and environments, I would just go around your world with a sketchbook.

Stan Prokopenko

If you want to learn to draw heads and bodies, and you like learning from videos, check out Stan Prokopenko's YouTube channel. Stan has produced a lot of free videos that break down head and figure drawing into clear and helpful steps.

If you like those, Stan has just released a 5 DVD set of his recent figure drawing series that I can recommend. It's great for beginners or pros who want to brush up on their knowledge. If you prefer streaming content you can purchase premium access to his website [correction: his courses] where there's a lot of content added to the YouTube stuff. Don't just binge-watch these; actually do the exercises, and you'll make amazing progress.

I don't know if you plan to study art at the university that you're going to, but if so, I would recommend you read the recent editorial "Is De-Skilling Killing Your Arts Education?" on Huffington Post (Thanks, Bryn).

When you get to the college, "kick the tires" before you sign up for any art classes. Go right to the head of the art department as a new freshman and tell them about the kind of art you really like (Loomis, Rockwell, Bugs Bunny or whatever it is). If they sneer, don't sign up for art there. Use your college time to study English, science, history, and other subjects, which will enrich you as an artist and a person. Study art through channels that will feed you with the knowledge and skills that you want. (That's what I did, for what it's worth).

Oh, and don't worry about learning as many techniques as possible. You don't need to play all the instruments. Get comfortable with a drawing medium, perhaps charcoal or pencil, and a painting medium, such as acrylic or oil. then try to let technique and style happen naturally as you put your focus on nature.

Adolph Menzel

When the great draftsman Adolph Menzel was asked the same questions you asked me, he answered with a single sentence: “Alles Zeichnen ist nützlich, und alles zeichnen auch" which means "All drawing is useful, and drawing everything as well."

How to Refill a Water Brush or a Fountain Pen

Here's a still frame from my upcoming video called "Watercolor in the Wild," which releases as a DVD and a download on August 11. The whole first section of the video covers materials and methods.

One segment shows how to fill water brushes and fountain pens with the ink colors you want.

Water Brushes 
I've tried several brands, but none seem as reliable as Niji Water Brushes. I recommend the ones with round tips, but you can also get them with a 12mm Flat Tip. I normally carry between three and five water brushes. One is filled with water, which fills easily under a normal faucet by unscrewing the handle and squeezing the barrel.

The others are filled with blue, black, brown, and gray. I mix the gray myself, put it in an empty bottle, and mark the bottle. To identify which water brush is which, I paint the back end tips with acrylic (see lower left of photo above).

Ink
The ink in a brush pen should be water-soluble so that it doesn't clog the brush fibers. I use Higgins Eternal Ink(black), and an old bottle of Sheaffer Skrip Ink. The color in my 30-year-old bottle is mellow blue-black, which I believe is no longer available. The Waterman Fountain Pen Blue Bottled Ink is a bolder blue. For a brown color, I use either the Higgins Sepia Fountain Pen Ink or the Waterman Brown Ink, the latter of which has a redder cast. If you mix two colors of ink, you should mix the same brands.

Refill Tool
Several different tools will work for refilling water brushes. My favorite is a Syringe with a Blunt Tip Fill Needle. You can also use a Syringe with a Tapered Plastic Tip (center of photo above). A Glass Eyedropper doesn't always work as well because the tip isn't small enough for getting inside the chamber of an empty fountain pen cartridge or water brush.

Fountain Pens
I use a relatively inexpensive Waterman Phileas Fine Point Fountain Pen (top) for written notes. In the USA, you can buy refill cartridges in black and blue, but it's not easy to find brown or gray or other colors. As with the water brushes, you can refill them with your favorite color. The pen comes with a piston converter insert, but if you don't have one of those, you can refill empty cartridges with the syringe.

When I need to use waterproof ink for my line work, I like Micron Pens. They come in many colors, and give a constant indelible line, similar to the classic Rapidograph pens. For a brush-style tip, I've used the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, a waterproof brush-tip pen with replacement cartridges. A caution about the Pentel: the ink can bleed through some thinner paper.