Giacomo Favretto

Giacomo Favretto (Venetian 1849-1887) was a 19th century painter who specialized in warmly anecdotal scenes of regular Venetians going about their work and play.

In the painting "Vandalism" or "Poor Old Masters," a retoucher dabs at a Titian or Tiepolo while his wife is busy sewing beside him. The sentiment is good-spirited and sympathetic, despite the title.

Favretto got his start working for a pittance in a stationer's shop cutting silhouettes out of black paper, when a wealthy person discovered him and set him up at the Venice Academy.

Favretto studied plenty of old masters at the Venice Academy with Pompeo Molmenti, and he also studied in Paris, but Favretto and other artists of his generation felt that the grand, serious compositions of mythological or historical figures was out of date.

"The Defect is in the Handle" 1881, by Giacomo Favretto

According to a 1902 book called The History of Modern Italian Art, he soon developed an independent style inspired by the younger artists of Venice such Domenico Morelli.

Subjects were taken from everyday life, ordinary people at work and play rather than mythological or historical figures. The paint surface alternates finished areas with loose sketchy passages, suggesting an improvisational approach to composition.

Favretto painted large areas of quiet colors, such as grays and browns, a patch of white and black, and a dash of orange, green, or red.

His success brought him to the top of society, with regular visits to Queen Margherita, quite an accomplishment for the son of a carpenter. 

But he had his hardships along the way, including the loss of one eye. 

 The 1902 book says: "The prominent traits of Favretto's character were the gentleness and kindliness of his disposition. He seems never to have wished anything but good to any human being, and he showed it both in work and in his relations with his friends."

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Book on Amazon: Giacomo Favretto 

Giacomo Favretto on Wikipedia

The History of Modern Italian Art free at Archive.org

Roman Battle Galleons

What if Rome never fell and they went on to conquer the world with motorized battle galleys? This concept plays out in Kirk Mitchell's science fiction series, Procurator. This was one of the preliminary sketches.

The final painting was a wraparound cover of a sand galley, an open-topped troop carrier, battle platform, and siege weapon built along the lines of a trireme.

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Previous post: Alternate History

Imaro Color Sketch

Imaro is an African superhero character created by novelist Charles Saunders. This is an unpublished oil sketch for a paperback cover.

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Imaro on Wikipedia

Sketch for a Space Comedy

I did this concept sketch for an unproduced Ralph Bakshi space comedy around 1981. It was kind of a mishmash of Star Wars, Wizards, and Heavy Metal Magazine.

Odd place to find a lobster

In the fishing villages of Connemara, Ireland, they say: ‘is fánach an áit a bhfaighfeá gliomach’ —"You'll find the lobster in the unexpected or neglected places."

When I'm looking for a subject to paint, I sometimes think of that saying. I have a hard time "finding the lobster" in the popular painting destinations where artists gather to paint picturesque views.

Instead I'm inspired by the odd, out-of-the-way places. An odd place to find a lobster. Sometimes the subject emerges when I see a weird juxtaposition of forms, a revealing effect of light, or a cropping that brings special meaning to a perfectly ordinary scene.  

  

Watercolor as a Controlled Emergency

RLD Studio asks: "I noticed you chose to eliminate some elements like several lily pads and make the frog larger in relation to the pad it was sitting on. I assume you did so to improve the composition. I find myself hesitant to change too much of an image when I'm painting outdoors... I'd love to hear your take on this and if you changed your approach over the years."

Normally, I try to stay true to what I'm seeing. But you're right, those changes happened, not so much as a deliberate compositional decision, but rather as the result of a sort of controlled emergency, like landing a parachute in a windstorm. I tried to lock in the frog first, assuming he'd move, and built the lily pads around him. I deleted some of the closer pads to make space for the rippling water which gave the picture some movement and context.
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Watch the video on YouTube

Painting a Frog and Wondering about Umwelt

In this new video, I paint a green frog from life. I'll need him to hold still over an hour. Will he do it? 

I consider the question of the frog’s Umwelt or its particular viewpoint of its environment, and I pose the philosophical question of whether we can ever understand the subjective experience or the cognitive ability of any animal, given that it lives in a very different perceptual environment.

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"I Paint a Frog and Wonder What He Sees" on YouTube

Book: "Outermost House" by Henry Beston

Foam on the Water

Rapids in a small stream pull air bubbles underwater. Those submerged bubbles take on a soft warm glow and rise to the surface in ringlets that are lightest just below the standing wave. A few dots of foam are flung up into the air. I soften the focus on the rest of the image both to save time and to put the detail in the areas where I'm most interested.

Louise Abbéma

Louise Abbéma (1853-1927) was a French painter who specialized in flowers and portraits, particularly of women.

She studied with  Charles Joshua Chaplin, Jean-Jacques Henner and Carolus-Duran, and one of her early successes was a portrait of the actress Sarah Bernhardt, who remained a close friend for life.

According to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, "Her high-society portraits executed with a light touch and rapid brushstrokes reveal the academic and Impressionist influences that shaped her style. Her sitters included French diplomats and other notable members of society. Abbéma developed a variety of techniques using oil paints, pastel, and watercolor, and worked on various supports, including fans."

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Louise Abbéma on Wikipedia

Academy Board

During the 19th century, the plein-air painting movement was fostered by several key innovations in art supplies, such as collapsible paint tubes, metal-ferrule paintbrushes, lacquered metal paint boxes, canvas board, and millboard.

Another kind of board known as "academy board" was a popular surface for oil studies. According to Alexander Katlan, "as its name implies, academy boards were an inexpensive, thin, semirigid support created for the professional artist's use in quick oil sketches and studies. They were a cheaper, disposable alternative for an oil painting support than prestretched canvas or wooden panels."

Academy boards were manufactured from pulp board and primed with a lead pigment in a light gray or white color. To solve problems with warping, they were sometimes primed equally on the back surface. Various manufacturers offered alternatives with a canvas or thin fabric surface, and with other priming colors.

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Source: The American Artist's Tools and Materials for On-Site Oil Sketching by Alexander Katlan, Journal of the American Institute for Conservation