The Red Eye from Newark

Sunset at Newark airport. Our red-eye flight has boarded. Floodlights shine on the fuselages of the airliners.

The painting is just 2 x 3.5 inches, the size of a business card. I like that size for a quick color thumbnail study.

Some questions from Instagram:

sarahstergiotis I‘m wondering how much time you had to complete the painting before the plane took off?

I had about 20 minutes before pushback, when I had to fold up the tray table. I painted a little more on it later from memory.

annscottpaintings What the heck is that pen you are using? I want some!
It's a gel pen: Gelly Roll Sakura Number 10

hermiispainting Which colours do you use? How are they packed to manage them while travelling? I pulled out five colors. I keep them in a little sandwich bag inside my carry-on belt pouch.

1. Prussian blue (gouache)
2. Titanium white (gouache)
3. Yellow ochre (watercolor)
4. Pyrrol red (gouache)
5. Alizarin crimson (watercolor)

scottzan@jamesgurneyart What kind of brushes do you use for sketching?

These are synthetic round brushes—the Jack Richeson Series 7130 #8 and #4, which are part of a travel set that works for gouache, watercolor, and casein. I also sometimes use really cheap brushes from big-box craft stores.

nmsgwatercolors Would you mind saying what kind of paper are you using?

It's a Pentalic watercolor sketchbook, which has "European milled, 140 lb. (300 gsm) acid free paper" sized for watercolor.

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There's a link-filled list of all of my sketching materials at this Google Doc.

 

Edwin John Alexander

Edwin John Alexander (1870-1926) was a Scottish artist who portrayed animals and plants in an elegant style that emphasized composition and subtle color. 

A Turlum Stag by Edwin John Alexander (1903)
Dundee Art Gallery and Museum, oil on canvas

As a boy he accompanied his father to North Africa, and spent four years living on a houseboat on the Nile.

Many of his paintings, such as these yellow daisies, were created with watercolor and gouache on tinted paper.

It appears that he often drew with a brush, defining forms with sparing touches and separating them with delicate, milky washes.

Alexander was inspired by Joseph Crawhall and by Japanese prints. 

Edwin John Alexander, wildflower, 1900,
watercolor, 20 x 10.5 cm. (7.9 x 4.1 in.)

There are online portfolios of Alexander's paintings on Artnet and on Athenaeum. He co-illustrated a book on Wild Flowers in 1912.

Comparative Searches about Art and Media

Google NGram Viewer is a free tool that lets you compare how many times a given term is mentioned in books. It's one way to gauge how public interest in a given subject has changed over time.

There have been a lot of books and articles about watercolor in the last 40 years. Below, the up-and-down bumps in the watercolor line reflect the seasonal cycles of popular interest in painting.

These graphs are just one indication of popularity, though. You can also search Google Trends, which compares search traffic over time, though the timescale of computer searches is short compared to the life of the published word.

Persian Book of Monsters

People who love monsters will enjoy these watercolor drawings from a treatise on spells and demons compiled by an Iranian soothsayer. According to the Public Domain Review:

"Most of the figures shown are far from ordinary or angelic. A blue man with claws, four horns, and a projecting red tongue is no less frightening for the fact that he’s wearing a candy-striped loincloth. In another image we see a moustachioed goat man with tuber-nose and polka dot skin maniacally concocting a less-than-appetising dish. One recurring (and worrying) theme is demons visiting sleepers in their beds, scenes involving such pleasant activities as tooth-pulling, eye-gouging, and — in one of the most engrossing illustrations — a bout of foot-licking (performed by a reptilian feline with a shark-toothed tail)."

"The wonderful images draw on Near Eastern demonological traditions that stretch back millennia — to the days when the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud asserted it was a blessing demons were invisible, since, 'if the eye would be granted permission to see, no creature would be able to stand in the face of the demons that surround it.'"

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Public Domain Review: Persian Demons from a Book of Magic and Astrology (1921)

Ulpiano Checa

Father Time rides bareback on a fiery black horse through the stormy night. He wields his bloody scythe, and we wonder: Who will be his next harvest? 

Ulpiano Checa (Spanish, 1860-1916)  (63 x 94.6 in.)

Ulpiano Fernández-Checa y Sanz (1860-1916) was an Spanish painter, sculptor, and poster artist who studied in Madrid and who spent time in Paris and Algeria.

French Naturalist Henri Biva

Henri Biva, c. 1905–06, Matin à Villeneuve (From Waters Edge),
oil on canvas, 151.1 x 125.1 cm.

Henri Biva (1848-1929) was a French landscape painter devoted to extreme naturalism and an accurate portrayal of light and detail.

He painted outdoors directly from nature, typically seated on a low stool with his canvas on a folding tripod easel.

Henri Biva, By the river, oil on canvas, 122 x 162 cm

His paintings often depict a very specific time of day, with tantalizing glimpses of far space through openings in the foliage.

Henri Biva, Forest in the spring, oil on canvas, 73 x 60 cm

Because Biva's paintings contain so much carefully observed information, it's likely they were painted over several consecutive sessions, not on a single day.

Henri Biva, The River

His truth to nature and devotion to detail is reminiscent of Ivan Shishkin, Peder Mork Mønsted, and William Trost Richards, all of whom have been discussed on this blog.
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There's a collection of his work on The-Athenaeum

Aisha's Questions

Art student Aisha Ling wanted to interview me for a class project, so I sent her all my previous interviews and asked her to come up with two questions I haven't been asked yet.

James Gurney writing "The Artist's Guide to Sketching," 1981, age 23

Have you ever faced criticism, and how do you deal with it?

Even before the age of social media, every artist or writer who has ever put their work out in the public has had to deal with both praise and criticism. If you don't receive either, it means no one cares about your work. The first book that I co-wrote, The Artist's Guide to Sketching, only got one published review and we received about five fan letters, and that was it. That was the only feedback, really, but that was normal back then for a book like that.

Now of course, in the age of Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, comments come flooding in. It's best not to be too concerned about either praise or criticism. Being attached to praise can be as damaging as being obsessed with critical comments. 

I've been pretty lucky because I try to give out positive, constructive energy, and that's mostly what I get back. You can't please everyone, and that's OK. Sometimes criticism is a matter of taste: not everyone likes everything that any artist produces. But if professional reviewers or smart amateurs offer a thoughtful, valid critique given in good faith, I take the comments seriously and see if I can make my work better. It's rare that someone will point out a weakness in my work that I'm not already well familiar with. I'm my own severest critic. The person whose artistic judgment I seek out most often is my wife, who I can always count on for giving me honest feedback.

How do you overcome artist's or writer's block?

I've never had an issue with slumps or blocks, probably because my earliest work experiences (painting backgrounds for animated films) didn't allow for them. I had to produce 11 paintings per week or I'd be fired. The same was true with my freelance illustration work. There was a lot riding on me producing a good result on a deadline. Working on a schedule like that means you can't choke. If something isn't working well, you keep working it until it succeeds.

Some people complain that it's as hard to finish something as it is to start it. You often hear art mentors say that you have to quit working on a painting to avoid overworking it. But I think that's usually unhelpful advice. Too many paintings and book projects are abandoned too soon or undertaken without enough experimentation and planning. 

If there is any way to make a picture better, it's worth considering. Many projects bring you to a place where you want to abandon them, and that's the time to redouble your effort to make them better. Sometimes that means starting fresh or wiping down the canvas, or reshooting video. But you can't do that forever. It's good to have a deadline to work toward so that you're not stuck with an endlessly polished rock.

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Thanks, Aisha!

Mr Smooth Tries to Look Casual

The famous dog head trick.

Here's my favorite version of the gag.

Dean Cornwell Painting to be Offered at Auction

Dean Cornwell's original oil painting for "The Fight at Minowa" will be sold at Heritage Auctions on November 1, 2019.



If you haven't seen it yet, here's a glimpse of Cornwell working on that very painting. (Link to YouTube)

The Fight at Minowa will be at Heritage Auction, November 1, along with a lot of American wildlife and western art, illustration, and landscape painting.

Spectrum 26 Flip Through

Spectrum is the annual book collection of contemporary fantastic art.  The 26th edition has arrived, and here's a flip-through. (Video on Facebook).

Spectrum is the "premier showcase for imaginative fantastic arts in the book, comics, film, horror, illustration, sculpture, conceptual art, fine art and videogame genres. With exceptional images by extraordinary creators, this elegant, full-color collection showcases an international cadre of creators working in every style and medium―both traditional and digital. It features more than 600 works by over 330 diverse visionaries, including Alex Alice, Brom, Rovina Cai, J.A.W. Cooper, Jesper Ejsing, Ki Gawki, Annie Stegg Gerard, Donato Giancola, James Gurney, Tyler Jacobson, Vanessa Lemen, Jeffrey Alan Love, Mark Newman, Victo Ngai, Greg Ruth and Yuko Shimizu."

Here's a link to preorder