Painting the Giant Bird Pelagornis

The April issue of Scientific American magazine includes a feature on Pelagornis, the largest known flying bird with a 21 foot wingspan. You can see the artwork being created in this free six-minute video. (Link to YouTube)


In the sketches, I focus on the bird taking flight, since flight dynamics is the emphasis of the authors of the scientific study. These birds were specialized for soaring flight, not flapping. Taking off would be a big moment. Design director Michael Mrak likes the basic design of #1, with the warm color scheme of the one in the lower right.

I make the "2D to 3D" maquette out of paper, armature wire, and two-part epoxy sculpting compound called Magic Sculpt. It's stronger than Sculpey, and doesn't need to go in the oven. The YouTube video shows the construction method.



The final art is oil on illustration board, about 12 x 18 inches. It appears in the April, 2016 issue of Scientific American magazine.
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Read more about 2D to 3D maquettes on a previous post.
Materials: Magic Sculpt epoxy clay, Tacky glue, armature wire, Acryla Gouache

Today is the Deadline for Focus on Nature [DEADLINE EXTENDED]

If you're a natural science illustrator, here's an important reminder. Today is the deadline to enter your work in Focus on Nature, an exhibition of scientifically-based nature art hosted by the New York State Museum.


[Edit: Note: I received the following from the exhibition director, Patricia Kernan: "Because the FON XIV on-line form was not working today, the entry deadline will be extended until midnight on Thursday, March 17th. I’m told that the issues with the form will be resolved Thursday, but if anyone wishes to enter and has a problem with the form, please email me directly (Patricia.Kernan@nysed.gov) so that I can make sure your entry is recorded. 
We appreciate your patience and apologize for the situation.
If you have already entered, you should have received an acknowledgement."

It's free to enter. Entries must be science-based. You're limited to two entries in any given category. Illustrators from around the world enter their work in all media.

The exhibit of accepted entries will be held in Jamestown, New York this year, at the Roger Tory Peterson Institute in December 3, 2016 - April 9, 2017.

Seeing without Interpreting

Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) 'Wing of a Blue Roller'

 (watercolor and gouache)

When Chuck Hagner was in college in Freiburg, Germany, he took a course on the Renaissance that taught him how to see. The professor had selected a group of paintings in nearby museums and assigned a different one to each student. The task he gave them was simple: to describe the painting.

But there was a catch. They were not allowed to interpret what they saw. Hagner recalls:

 "When we wrote our descriptions, we weren't allowed to name movements, styles, or schools or to try to place the paintings in cultural or historical contexts. We couldn't repeat significant events from the artists' lives or relate stories about the people and places shown in the works. We were forbidden to explain the meaning of symbols, or even to suggest that objects represented in the paintings were symbols." 

The students would be marked down if they included any such extrinsic details. They couldn't even name names unless the artist wrote them in the painting.



Hagner was assigned to The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb by Hans Holbein the Younger. His description of it catalogued the grisly details of the corpse of the bearded, nearly naked man with sallow skin. He had to forgo all allusions to Easter and the Crucifixion. He had to dispense with recollections of oratorios and catechisms, and of other paintings he had seen or books he had read.

Hagner recalled this story as advice for birdwatchers. Especially when they're seeing something unusual, birders must report their observations accurately, uncolored by the assumptions and errors that inevitably come with interpretation.

The advice is equally valuable for artists seeking to paint what they see. Doing so requires the ability to see colors without naming them and to evaluate shapes without being influenced by mental images.

Chuck Hagner went on to become a leader in the world of birding. He's the editor of BirdWatching magazine. His chapter called "Practice Seeing" is included in the book Good Birders Don't Wear White: 50 Tips from North America's Top Birders.

Fake Food Art in Japan

A peek behind the scenes at the artists who make the realistic-looking fake food for display in Japanese restaurants. (Link to YouTube)

Image from Amusing Planet

According to Amusing Planet:

"Making plastic food is an art in itself, and the manufacturers fiercely guard their trade secrets. The process typically starts with the actual food which are brought to the factory from the restaurant or client to serve as the model. Pictures are taken, sketches are made and a mould is prepared. Liquid vinyl chloride is poured into the mould and once hardened, the mould is taken apart and out comes the model. These are then hand painted by talented craftsmen who examine every detail of the actual food and applies oil-based paints to the plastic using fine brushes. The replicas reproduce every detail of the real food, from browning on bacon and eggs, to grill marks on chicken, or the difference between steaks cooked rare or medium. Almost all food replicas are handcrafted to order, as the same dishes can differ in their shape, color or presentation at different restaurants."

Van Dyck Exhibition at the Frick

Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
Self-Portrait, ca. 1620–21
 oil/canvas 47 1/8 × 34 5/8 in. (119.7 × 87.9 cm)

A major exhibition of the portrait art of Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) has opened at the Frick collection in New York. The exhibition contains about 100 drawings and paintings, making it the largest US exhibition of his work in over 20 years.

The show includes many of his supremely elegant finished portraits from Italy, France, Flanders, and England. But it also delves into his sketches and drawings, with considerable scholarship devoted to his preparatory sketches and working methods.

Anthony Van Dyck Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1640
29 7/8 × 23 1/4 in. (75.9 × 59.1 cm)
Speed Art Museum

About the portrait above, for example, the curators note:

"The treatment of the face is highly finished and refined, but the woman’s bust and hand await finishing glazes, and there are extensive areas of unpainted canvas that suggest a shawl wrapped around her body. As with many other works from his London studio, Van Dyck must have painted his sitter’s face from life, resulting in a halo still visible around her head. A workshop assistant would probably have completed the painting of the background and draperies before Van Dyck applied a few final touches."

For larger and more complex group portraits, Van Dyck painted individual studies from life. This one was only rediscovered in 2000 during an episode of Antiques Roadshow.

Van Dyck, drawing of Sebastiaan Vrancx, ca. 1628–31
 7 x 10 inches, black chalk

The show includes his informal sketches of fellow artists, which conveys the spirit of camaraderie that must have prevailed among working artists. Sebastiaan Vrancx was known for his landscapes and battle scenes, as well as being a poet, playwright, and book illustrator.
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Catalogue: Van Dyck: The Anatomy of Portraiture
Online:  Van Dyck: The Anatomy of Portraiture, March 2, 2016 to June 5, 2016
Survey the exhibition in expandable thumbnails at their Visual index
Video lecture by Stijn Alsteens: "Drawing for Portraits"

Painting a Drainage Ditch

The air is warming and the water is flowing. The fields are grooved with drainage ditches to carry off the rain water.

James Gurney, Drainage Ditch, gouache 5x8 inches 

Sun-sparkles dance on the water surface. Under the water the drowned grass moves lazily in the current. In the sky above, the geese ply their lines northward. (Link to YouTube)



Abraham Maslow said, “The great lessons from the true mystics, from the Zen monks, is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, friends, and family, in one’s backyard, and that travel may be a flight from confronting the sacred. To be looking everywhere for miracles is a sure sign of ignorance that everything is miraculous.”  

Thanks to my brother Dan for the quote. You can read his blog about exploring estuaries here.



For more about gouache painting, check out my video tutorial, Gouache in the Wild.
Previous posts: Lightweight Sketch Easel

Harold Speed on Reynolds, Gainsborough, Hals, and Rembrandt

Today we'll continue Chapter 9: "Painting from the Life" from Harold Speed's 1924 art instruction book Oil Painting Techniques and Materials.

I'll present Speed's main points in boldface type either verbatim or paraphrased, followed by my comments. If you want to add a comment, please use the numbered points to refer to the relevant section of the chapter.

Today we'll cover pages 173-180 of the chapter on "Painting from the Life," where he talks about Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, Frans Hals, and Rembrandt van Rijn.

Sir Joshua Reynolds unfinished portrait

Reynolds

1. Reynolds executed his portraits in monochrome and then glazed the color over it.
The unfinished portrait above shows how his portraits must have looked in progress.

2. Reynolds' business approach for portraits
He'd charge half on commencement and the second half on satisfaction. But "he had a room full of rejected portraits in his house when he died." According to Speed, he produced 150 portraits per year.

3. "The smaller the source of light, the less half-tones you get."
Sharp, small lights create a sharp division of light and shadow. Soft light, which comes from large light sources (large windows or exposure of sky) leads to a more gradual shift from light to shadow.

Speed argues that smaller sources are more flattering, but that's generally not the consensus among portrait painters and photographers. Photographers of women in particular routinely use softer or more diffused lights, that is lights that emanate from a larger area. This soft light downplays highlights and unwanted lines and texture in the halftones.

4. Simplifying the modeling will flatter a face, even without changing the features or proportions at all. Powdering has the same effect by reducing highlights.
"The artist is not obliged to catalogue all these details." He says that a "mean vision," (meaning one that focuses on small, trivial forms) misses out on the larger, nobler vision.

I think what Speed is recommending is using a relatively smaller source of light, but ignoring or downplaying the minor details of wrinkles and highlights.

Gainsborough The Painter's Daughters (with ghost cat)

Gainsborough

5. Method: paint thinned with turps and linseed oil. Commenced by rubbing in with burnt umber cooled with terra vert (green).
This produces cool half-tones, into which reds and yellows are added into the lights, followed by darker accents. Note the drawing with the brush on the toned canvas. Also note the ghost cat.

In ateliers, the coloring of the first painting is called "dead coloring," and it is brought to life with warm glazes later.

6. "Swift unity of impression is one of the secrets of the charm, a thing that must always be caught on the wing."
Painting children is always improvisational, even in Gainsborough's day.

Hals 30 Year Old Man with a Ruff, London

Frans Hals

7. Spontaneous handling, painted with a simple palette. Painted with soft brushes, not hog hair (bristle). Speed speculates that a painting like the one above was accomplished in one sitting.

8. Blacks: thin painting over a warm ground.
Note the brushwork in the ruff. Speed notes that it was painted with a gradated middle tone into which he has flicked lights and darks.

Rembrandt Head of an Old Man

Rembrandt

9. Analyzing R. is more difficult because of his variety of handling.
Paint laid in with broken color and glazes, and sometimes with direct opaque handling. Generally Rembrandt reserves the thick paint for the lights, and keeps his darks smooth and transparent.

10. Color: "Rembrandt was a great master of getting the utmost variety out of a few earth colors."
That was true of most of the old masters. Ultramarine blue, so common today because it has been chemically synthesized, was more expensive than gold, and was usually reserved for the cloak of the Virgin Mary.


Next week— Tone and Color Design

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In its original edition, the book is called "The Science and Practice of Oil Painting." Unfortunately it's not available in a free edition, but there's an inexpensive print edition that Dover publishes under a different title "Oil Painting Techniques and Materials (with a Sargent cover)," and there's also a Kindle edition.

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Spring Cleaning

The fox family cleaned out their den, and look what they threw out -- a perfect raccoon skull.

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Previously on the blog: Baby Foxes Nursing

On-the-Spot Surrealism

I have an article in the new issue of International Artist (#108 April/May) called "On-the-Spot Surrealism."

I share tips for putting an imaginative twist on your plein-air painting—not just fantasy and science fiction ideas, but also changing the lighting, pose, or background of what's in front of you. 

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More on this approach to outdoor painting in my tutorial Fantasy in the Wild

Buy now

Modeling Clay Maquettes

When all you need is a quick reference sculpt, you can use modeling clay. This oil-based clay never hardens and can be infinitely recycled.



This behind-the-scenes video snippet shows how I used modeling clay to visualize the lighting for a painting of a snake attacking the nest of baby sauropods. (Link to YouTube)



I based the stone figures of Ebulon (Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara) on a modeling clay maquette as well.

These maquettes take only minutes to make, but they provide a wealth of information. You can turn them to any angle or put them into any real lighting environment. Note for example how the warm light bounces around in the little shadows on the lit side. 

I recommend using clay with a light gray or cream tone, which photographs well while allowing you to see the qualities of light and shadow. 

After you're finished with a project, you can smoosh it together and use it again on the next job. It's cheaper than oven-hardening polymer clays like Sculpey. Modeling clay is non-toxic and safe for kids. 

It is is available from several manufacturers, using closely related trade names:

Plastilina (cream)

Plastalina(various neutral tones)

Modeling clay (light gray)

You can also get Air-Dry modeling clay, but it won't be reusable after it dries and hardens.

More about making maquettes on my video "How I Paint Dinosaurs"