Remembering Frank Duveneck

Frank Duveneck (October 9, 1848 – January 3, 1919) painted this oil portrait of a fellow artist. 

The portrait has some animation in the mouth and eyes, as if the subject was talking. The portrait is essentially made up of spots of tone, almost like pixels. But under the strokes is a careful arrangement of tone and edges, gradating down from the light area on the forehead.

A few days ago (January 3) marked the 100th anniversary of his death. Artists in Cincinnati, such as Linda Crank, Carl Samson, Jeff Morrow, and Richard Luschek, went through a scrapbook of Duveneck's paintings at the Mother of God Cemetery in Fort Wright Covington, Kentucky.


(Link to video) There were other commemorations at the Cincinnati Art Museum, including a group of artists doing master copies of Duveneck originals. Read more at Linda Crank's Facebook page.

Reading Rooms

Public libraries today offer a collection of books that you can borrow, as well as a place to read periodicals.

Reading room, Magnus Enckell 1899

In the 18th and 19th centuries, those functions were typically separated. A reading room, or cabinet de lecture, was a place where you could, for a small fee, read newspapers, magazines, novels, and pamphlets. 

Libraries didn't stock those publications, and most ordinary people didn't get them delivered to their homes.

Johann Peter Hasenclever's The Reading Room (1843)

Reading rooms were also open late, and they were well heated and well lit, so they were attractive places to hang out together.

Etching by Gustave Janet after Charles Yriarte

In France, cabinets de lecture were especially popular after the Revolution, as people became more interested in politics. According to Wikipedia:

"Often at the cabinets, as with at the clubs, coffee houses, salons and bookshops, serious discussions would break out. People argued, hurled abuse and fought one another over specific facts in order to attack or defend the public figures being discussed. Whether by the light of a lantern or a simple oil lamp, people came to feed their political appetite and to leave better prepared for the debates that took place in the street."

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Wikipedia on Cabinet de lecture

Did you make a New Year's Resolution?

Did you make an art-related New Year’s resolution? If you don’t mind, please share it in the comments, and I’ll try to address the topic in future videos.

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Check out my other videos on Gumroad

Ron Lesser in Illustration #62

The new issue of Illustration magazine features the art of veteran illustrator Ron Lesser.

Ron Lesser cover for Curtains for a Lover, gouache
(I'm not sure why the colors are so different.)

Lesser, who is still active as an illustrator, started doing book covers in the late 1950s. He has done it all, from movie posters to advertising art to gallery work, but he's probably best known for painting sexy crime paperback covers.

Many of his early covers were painted in gouache. He says: "I was using water-based paint—casein white for body and then designers colors [gouache], which have more covering ability than watercolors, but less than casein."




Lesser used photographic reference from professional models in New York City. The models charged around $150 per hour in the 1970s, and all the costs—professional photographer, model, and print costs—were covered by the publisher.

The second article in the current Illustration magazine chronicles the art that was created for World War I, from recruitment posters to battlefield sketches by artist-reporters.

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Online preview of Illustration #62
Order a copy of Illustration #62
Website: Art of Ron Lesser 

Shake Your Head to Make an Image Appear

If you shake your head, an image should appear out of this illusion.
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via: BoingBoing

Using machine-learning to arrange a bedroom

This computer rendering shows a 1980s teenage bedroom. There are posters on the wall and some stuff on the floor. It's a little messy. 

The elements were arranged by a recently announced machine-learning program called "Promethean AI."

(Link to YouTube) This video announces how the automated system selects and arranges elements in the room according to a written description.

The creators of the program say: "It knows what goes where, just like you and I do. It also has something we call a context. It can pick it up from the environment or you can expressly set it by saying that we are in the 80s for example and then it will make sure the suggestions fit the context."

This may be a glimpse of things to come, at least in the VFX and game worlds. However the video is a little misleading, because it's not creating things ex nihilo. The assets being arranged by the machine-learning algorithm are separately created with more conventional techniques.

Although this kind of emerging technology fascinates me, for my own art, I'll stick with pencils, paint, and brushes. If my role was limited to "specifying high level creative intent," I wouldn't be closer to the creative nexus; I would be banished from it. I'd rather be an artist expressing my intent at much lower levels.
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Website: The Tricks of Learning Game Art

A Dinosaur on a Bicycle

Yes, dinosaurs can ride bicycles. And they'll give you a lift.

Don't worry if you're riding in the back seat. Civilized dinosaurs poop intentionally.

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From: 

Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara (Signed copies on my website)

Dinotopia: Journey To Chandara (On Amazon)

Shishkin's 'First Snow'

First Snow by Ivan Shishkin, 1875 

The snow has melted in contact with the relatively warm, wet ground, but it still clings to the branches, surrounded by the colder air. 

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Books:
Ivan Shishkin
Russian Landscape

Is it cheating to base my art on computer-generated images?

Artistic-looking mages created by computers
courtesy Medium essay "What are Creative Adversarial Networks?" 

Barrett asks "I've seen these new CGI tools that can generate any kind of scene in any artistic style, and it makes me wonder: Is it OK for a painter to use computer-generated imagery for reference and inspiration? Sometimes it seems like the computer is doing the artistic work for me, and making aesthetic decisions, and I wonder if it's cheating for me to use them?" 

My answer: Like photography, these new computer techniques merely present us with another way of seeing.

Artists have always been sponges for new imagery. You can see the effect of photography on painting over the last 150 years. There are so many types of lenses, films, and processes before you even get into digital manipulation and CGI. Photography lets us freeze action, see through things with x-rays, and witness wildlife action up close. Photography has given us new eyes.

That doesn't mean we have to project and copy the random detail of a single given photo, though that's OK, too, if that's what you want to do (as long as you take the photos yourself or you have cleared the copyrights, of course).

The more we understand how cameras see, and now how computers can generate images, the more we appreciate the little "meat cameras" we were born with. And the more we learn about technologically-derived imagery, the more we realize our eyes and our visual brains behave very differently.

In my case, I'm usually trying to interpret my experience of reality directly into a sketchbook, or I'm trying to visualize a scene from the ancient past or from a science fiction future. I often think about photos I've seen and the effects they create, and I'm influenced by those images.

In some cases I want my paintings to look like photos so that they can fit into a magazine presentation that's mostly comprised of nature photos. To get those effects, I try to learn the theory behind photography, and I also surround my easel with a lot of different reference photos, taking a little from one and a little from another to make something new.

I don't know how the CGI technology will influence me, but I welcome it and am not threatened by it. Some CGI video imagery blends abstraction with reality in ways that resemble hallucinations or hypnagogic dreaming.

So I would say, embrace it all, vacuum it up into your eyes and see where it takes you. But don't forget to develop your skills, and to trust your own imagination and memory. It's essential to get beyond style and technique, beneath the surface, and dig down to an authentic expression that belongs to you. To get there, sometimes you have to unplug from all references and tunnel inside your own mind.

In the end, whatever tools you use, as long as your work is original and it communicates your own experience, it's not cheating.

Thérèse Schwartze paints a portrait

A Dutch portrait painter named Thérèse Schwartze (1851-1918) was invited to paint the daughter of the mayor of a coastal town.

She packed up her portable easel and paints and set up in a temporary studio in the mayor's attic. Fortunately someone took photos of her at work.

The girl sits in a chair facing a high window, supervised by a nursery maid. The artist's back is to the window.

Thérèse Schwartze, Portrait of Geradine
Marguerite van Hardenbroek, 1903

Here's the portrait that resulted from the sessions. 

And here are a couple other portraits by Thérèse Schwartze.

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Thérèse Schwartze on Wikipedia
Blog: More portraits by Schwartze
Book: Thérèse Schwartze (Dutch Edition)
Website with more about the Thérèse Schwartze book
Thanks, Maaike Dirkx and Linda Crank