Vintage New-Year's Postcards

Let's welcome the new without forgetting the best of the old. Thanks for joining me on the GurneyJourney. There are lots of good topics coming in 2018.

Willard Mullin and Sports Cartooning

In the 20th century, sporting events were often covered by cartoonists, who captured the action in exaggerated poses. 

This series shows what happened when featherweight
Willie Pep's dislocated shoulder stopped the match.

One of the greatest was Willard Mullin (1902-1978), who worked for the New York World-Telegram. He is best known for creating the "Brooklyn Bum" character, a reference to the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Mullin often attend the games, sketched key poses, and worked up the drawings for publication in his studio. 

His cartoons are fast, loose, and relaxed, often created under intense deadline pressure. But beneath the surface was a solid understanding of drawing and anatomy.

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More
Flickr set by Leif Peng on Willard Mullin
Animation Resources: Willard Mullen on Animals
Cartoon Snap: Willard Mullin Goes to the Races
Website for Willard Mullin

Alaskan painting residency welcomes applicants

Lisa Grossman, a painter from Kansas, traveled to the wilderness in Alaska for a six-day camping, kayaking, and painting excursion.

She says, "I was determined to use my favorite media, oils, though it presented challenges. I pared down my painting gear to fit into two dry bags stuffed into the kayak hatches, and created a dozen small sketches from about eight locations, plus a few watercolors." 

"The ice was absolutely enthralling and I could have painted 'bergs and glaciers endlessly. It was thrilling to witness glaciers calving in person, but also unsettling. The effects of a warming planet finally felt real to me in a visceral way. Never having experienced tides, any effects of sea levels rising also became easy to imagine. Seeing and hearing whales spouting, catching glimpses of harbor seals and porpoises while kayaking, and so many sea birds, was so moving.”

Lisa was part of the Voices in the Wilderness program, which selects painters, photographers, and other artists to participate in a unique artist residency. Applications are now being accepted for the 2018 season. Coordinator Barbara Lydon says that many of the successful applicants have come from GurneyJourney. 

You can find out the details at the website of Voices in the Wilderness, or email Barbara Lydon at [blydon [at] fs.fed.us]

Previous GJ posts about the program

North African Landscape by Fortuny

Spanish artist Mariano Fortuny (1838-1874—also known as Marià Fortuny) traveled through Morocco in search of material for paintings of battles that had taken place there.



Inspired by the work of the Italian impressionists, he sought to capture the vast spaces and bright light and North Africa. This was one of his studies he did there. I love the grand, empty silences of this picture.
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More information about this painting

Winter Pond, Behind the Scenes

Painting snow scenes in gouache can be a challenge, especially when the temperatures dip below freezing. 

There are at least four solutions: 1) Vodka in the water, 2) Hand warmers under the palette, 3) Painting from inside a car, 4) Waiting for a day that gets above freezing, or 5) Painting next to a bonfire.  

I used the last strategy for this painting of the pond in our forest. (Link to YouTube) I built up the bonfire earlier in the day and it was throwing off a lot of heat. I wanted to paint it during the last 45 minutes of daylight, when the sun gets low and glimmers off the bronze-colored water.

There are so many ways to start a painting in gouache. The opacity lets you find your way back if you need to restate or lighten a passage. This time I started wild and loose, trying to get the big tonal areas worked out early on.



There was a lot detail in the scene, but I figured I could find it with the brush.
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Gumroad tutorial: Gouache in the Wild

Previous posts: My favorite gouache masters

Gouache Materials List

Winter Pond in Gouache

Yesterday I painted this gouache of a small pond in our forest under four inches of new snow. The air was below freezing, but a bonfire next to me kept the paint from freezing.

Here's another blog post showing behind the scenes of the making of this painting.

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Thanks to everyone who follows me @jamesgurneyart on Instagram. We just passed 80k followers! If you do Instagram, please check out my feed. I often share additional images and videos than what you see here.

Video Games on Christmas

My sons Dan and Frank Gurney play Nintendo "Rocket League" on Christmas.
(link to video on Facebook).

Nintendo Christmas, gouache, 5 x 8 inches.

A Visit from the Boon Sloth

The Boon Sloth is an absent-minded Megatherium who visits on midwinter’s eve. He brings gifts for all—if he can remember who gets which one. Merry Christmas and happy winter holidays to all.

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From “Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara.”

Halsman's philosophy of portraiture

Photographer Philippe Halsman snapped his picture of Einstein just after the scientist had recalled his regrets about contributing to the development of the atomic bomb.

Photo of Albert Einstein by Halsman 

Halsman created hundreds of portrait photos for Life Magazine. Each one was a different challenge.

What he said about the portrait photos applies equally to painted ones:
"If the photograph of a human being does not show a deep psychological insight it is not a true portrait but an empty likeness. Therefore my main goal in portraiture is neither composition, nor play of light, nor showing the subject in front of a meaningful background, nor creation of a new visual image. All these elements can make an empty picture a visually interesting image, but in order to be a portrait the photograph must capture the essence of its subject."

Woody Allen by Philippe Halsman, 1969

"Herein lies the main objective of portraiture and also its main difficulty. The photographer probes for the innermost. The lens sees only the surface. Most people hide behind a socially attractive mask. Others lose their composure in front of a camera. Lighting and photographic equipment are less important for the portraitist than psychology and conversation. If he uses them effectively, sometimes in the short span of a sitting a miracle happens. A fragment of evanescent truth is captured and instant eternity (simply add hypo!) is born. The end result is another surface to be penetrated, this time by the sensitivity of the onlooker. For it is now up to him to decipher the elusive equation between the flat sheet of photographic paper and the depth of a human being."
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From the book: Halsman: Sight and Insight
Wikipedia on Halsman
Previously: Dalí and Halsman capture a moment

Project Puppetron

Recently Adobe unveiled a new artificial-intelligence technology that can render your face in any art style.

At left is an African wood carving, and at right is a a subject's face translated into that style. All the metrics and the surfaces match the target art style. 

Here, the same person's face is translated into a bronze statue. This process harnesses machine-learning techniques for style transfer, which we've seen before on the blog. 

The system is not daunted by the complications of reflective surfaces and multiple light sources.

Doing this with still images is amazing enough, but what if you could animate the avatar in real time as your face moves? In this video, the still images come to life with character animation software. Link to YouTube (Start at 5:20 for the animation)

The software is called "Project Puppetron," part of "Adobe Sensei," which harnesses AI to assist graphic designers, illustrators and animators.

Adobe took pains to assure the creative professionals in the audience that tools like this won't replace artists, but instead will introduce new forms of expression. Do you agree?
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Previously: Style Transfer
Read more in Wired: "Artificial Intelligence is Killing the Uncanny Valley and Our Grasp on Reality"