Painting the Campfire

Painting expeditions are close to home these days. This time I just walk to the backyard to capture the warmth of the campfire. 

As William Shakespeare said, "Fire that's closest kept burns most of all."

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Smooth the rescue husky chews on a deer's leg bone that he found deeper in the forest. 

Quadriga

A notable feature of the State Capitol in Saint Paul, Minnesota is a gilded statue of a chariot pulled by four horses. 

The four horses represent the classical elements of water, fire, air, and earth. The female figures standing among the horses represent agriculture and industry. 

The male charioteer represents prosperity. Added together, they represent civilization. The 1906 group called "Progress of the State" was sculpted by Daniel Chester French and Edward Clark Potter. 

This arrangement of sculptural elements goes back to ancient Rome and is known as a quadriga. They usually appear on triumphal arches. In ancient mythology, the chariots of the gods were in the quadriga configuration, with four horses abreast. The sculpted horses on St. Mark's in Venice were from a Byzantine group. 

Quadrigas were raced in the ancient Olympic Games, as demonstrated in the 1959 movie 'Ben Hur.' 

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Wikipedia on Progress of the State and Quadriga

Skin Tones in Sunlight

Could you imagine mixing these colors for the skin tones for a portrait? Hint: it's a light skinned woman in outdoor light. 

 

1. The patch in the upper left is taken from the side of her nose. 

2. The grayish color, top right, is from her cheek facing forward and catching sky colors. 

3. The deep red-orange color is from the side of her cheek facing us (admittedly a different local color).

4. The bright orange color, lower right, is from the top of her neck, catching mostly that orange transmitted light from the parasol.

Charles Courtney Curran (American, 1861–1942) On the Shores of Lake Erie, 1893

Oil on canvas size:18.12 x 22.12 in. (46 x 56.2 cm.)

The white local colors of her dress and gloves go through a similar range of colors.

Charles Courtney Curran studied at the Art Students League and in Paris. In those teaching environments, people were talking a lot about about the effects of colored light.

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Charles Courtney Curran on Wikipedia 

Augmented Reality from The Met Museum

The Metropolitan Museum has recently offered new digital tools to share their collection during the pandemic. 

Deity Figure (zemí), ca. A.D. 1000. Dominican Republic. Taíno.

Wood (Guaiacum), shell, 27 x 8 5/8 x 9 1/8 in. (68.5 x 21.9 x 23.2 cm).

One is an Instagram app that lets users see how Met objects would look in their own home by superimposing an image of the object against the background of your life.

Met Museum blog says: "What would a van Gogh look like on your bedroom wall? How about showing off an iconic Taíno sculpture in your living room? Or maybe try out a Boccioni sculpture in your backyard? Using these effects, you can do that and more—no matter where you are in the world.  

 

How One Art School Adjusted to the Pandemic

Shutdowns and social distancing have presented real challenges to brick-and-mortar art schools. Anthony Walsh,  founder of the Montreal-based concept art academy called Syn Studio, was kind enough to answer some of my questions about how they have adapted.

What was the original vision for your school at Syn Studio?

Syn Studio started as a traditional art school offering life drawing and then oil painting classes. Back then we were just lucky that some of our first teachers were also incredible artists such as Charles Vinh and Geof Isherwood who were working on some of the most exciting illustration and concept art projects in Canada at the time. Teachers at other schools in Montreal began referring their students to us to get additional practical hands-on instruction in the fundamentals and we started to grow.

I began speaking with the students and discovered that many of them wanted to become professional concept artists and illustrators but that they couldn’t find any affordable and high quality training options in Canada despite the high concentration of entertainment industry companies here. So I set out a vision for Syn Studio to provide the highest value for money training available not just in Canada but anywhere on the planet. I wanted Syn Studio to become the go-to Concept Art School for students who don’t have an unlimited budget but want high quality education. I visited schools and consulted with experts from all around the world, most notably Scott Robertson who founded the Entertainment Design program at Art Center. And in 2020, Syn Studio was ranked The #1 Concept Art and Illustration school worldwide by The Rookies.

What classroom space did you occupy at the beginning and how many students did you have back then?

At the beginning, we had one classroom and four students. The whole school was located inside an old loft with hardwood floors and high ceilings where I also lived. A few years later, we were running classes every day and I moved out. Then we needed another classroom and for a short period of time, we had two nearby locations. During that time we found a great space that we could grow into inside of a historic downtown building on Montreal’s main street. With the launch of our Concept Art Diploma Program in 2016 we are now up to four physical classrooms.



What was your initial response to the Covid-19 pandemic?

In early 2020, before the pandemic was declared, we recognized that we had better get ready for a move to online learning just in case the virus spreads. We started exploring the various software options for this. When the pandemic was declared and schools were closed, it was still a huge challenge to move everything online within a week or two during a school term but it didn’t catch us completely by surprise. Our staff went all out and did an incredible job helping the teachers adapt and finish their classes. We had to delay a few classes but ended the term successfully online and were ready to start the next term fully online.



What do your teachers and students miss most about being together in a classroom or studio?

Bonding with fellow students and communicating face to face is best done in person and we know many of our students and teachers want things to return to normal. We encourage students to activate their webcams and participate actively in class and we hold many online social and artistic activities for our full time students to help them bond outside the physical school. However, until we develop the holodeck from Star Trek or similar technology, the virtual classroom, studio or lounge will never capture all the social and emotional benefits of in person presence. Covid isolation is really bad for some people and while we do what we can to help them cope, we hope things return to normal soon.



How has the pandemic affected your school's income?

Initially it dropped as people were just more focussed on pandemic news than registering for art classes. But now we’re doing better than ever and still growing at a good pace mainly due to the competitiveness of our affordable online art classes.



How do you see the pandemic changing your school, for better or worse?

Definitely for the better. Due to the pandemic, we’ve launched an Online Art School which is very successful and still growing. We have access to talent from all over the world now! We’ve learned to use new technology and still be highly productive while our staff is working remotely. Any school or team that successfully makes it through an existential crisis with everyone intact becomes a stronger school and team that is more prepared for the next challenge. Our vision of providing the highest value concept art and illustration education on the planet hasn’t changed. We’re more excited and more committed than ever and ready for whatever the future brings!
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For more information, please visit the website of Syn Studio Concept Art School.

Previous posts on this blog about Syn Studio:

Speed Photoshop Battle

How do you choose limited-palette colors?

On Instagram yesterday, @leetheillustrator asked: "How do you decide on what colours to include when selecting a limited colour palette?" 

Leeds, oil, 11 x 14 inches

Answer: In my experience, a limited palette can be made out of almost any two or three colors, as long as they're separated from each other on the color wheel. Ideally at one should be cool and the other should be warm.  

In this case I often choose the colors that seem most important in the scene. In this case it was the red signs versus the blue of the sky. They're not complements (red and green would be), but they're warm vs. cool.

But when choosing colors, the goal is often not to select which colors you want to include, but rather which ones you want to leave out, for interesting color schemes result from what you've left out of them.

 

Catskill Roadhouse, East Durham, New York. Casein, 5x8 inches. 

Cadmium red scarlet, ultramarine blue, and titanium white over a yellow underpainting.

For this painting I used ultramarine blue and cadmium red scarlet, together with white, and I left out yellow and green. The red and blue colors are near-complements, and I'm painting over a surface primed with yellow. The yellow is about 95% covered up, but where it peeks through, it energizes the color scheme like a pinch of spice. 

Here's a video that shows that painting in the works: Link to YouTube.

You might try orange + violet + white over a cyan underpainting, or yellow + cyan + white over magenta. You can also introduce black, either as an accent if you want to deepen the darks, or if you want to use it as a color of its own (such as black + orange + white over blue).

A two-color-plus-white palette has some advantages:
1. It's extremely fast to set it up and get it running. 
2. It's good for beginners because it reduces your choices to light or dark and warm or cool.
3. It puts you into realms of color that you would never think of if you had all the color choices available.

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 TRIADS: Painting with Three Colors"  (plus white) is the subject of my recent Gumroad video. 

Richeson casein 

Watercolor sketchbook 

Travel brush set

Water cup

Homemade easel 

Tripod

Shishkin's Sketch vs. Finish

A popular meme these days is "sketch vs. finish." Late last year I did a sketch/finish comparison of the Russian landscape painter Ivan Shishkin (1832-1898).

Here's another set of comparisons, starting with a preliminary sketch in pencil where he explores the overall composition.

A road leads back through fenced pastures to a gate. In the distance is a turn in the Kama River. 

He must have liked this design because he drew a grid over it for enlargement. 

Ivan Shishkin, The Kama River near Yelabuga (Кама близ Елабуги), 1895

Here's the finished painting. He arranged the lighting to put a spot of light on the road ahead. To get to that farther spot of light in the valley, you have to pass through the dark forest.

Shishkin used this basic idea in a night scene, apparently drawn in charcoal with gouache.

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Ivan Shishkin on WikiArt

Previously: Ivan Shishkin's comments about photo reference

The classic book on Shishkin is this Russian edition from the 1980s.

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Computer-Generated Empty Spaces

Posted by _gnarlybrown on the subReddit "kenopsia"

There's a lonely feeling when you're traveling through endless abandoned hallways in the back of empty malls, conference centers, or hotels.

(link to YouTube) Computers can generate videos of endless hallways leading through empty conference rooms. It's an eerie, almost dreamlike effect.

These algorithmically-generated spaces can be endless stairways or maze-like rooms, and they're often used in video games.

They're also called "liminal spaces," and there are communities on the internet where people share photos and artwork that portray this feeling. Here's a video on YouTube that explores the topic.

Thanks, Kenneth Marc.

Via BoingBoing 

Does Sketching Cure Inattentional Blindness?

Here's another "The Ask" feature coming up in The Artist's Magazine.

I mention that "I feel like my eyes aren't even open until my observation is focused by drawing or painting. Even an hour later, I keep discovering things that escaped my notice at first: 'Where did that telephone pole come from?'"

There's a name for what I'm talking about: "inattentional blindness." Wikipedia says that it occurs "when an individual fails to perceive an unexpected stimulus in plain sight, purely as a result of a lack of attention rather than any vision defects or deficits. When it becomes impossible to attend to all the stimuli in a given situation, a temporary “blindness” effect can occur, as individuals fail to see unexpected but often salient objects or stimuli."

I did a post about inattentional blindness back in 2015, and there I shared the famous video of the guy in a gorilla suit walking through two teams of people passing a ball back and forth. 

Why does painting from life help us to see beyond our habitual blinders? It's a special kind of visual mindfulness that requires us to focus sequentially on different qualities of a scene. First, when we choose a subject, we try to see the gestalt in thumbnail terms. Then we concentrate on attributes of the scene, such as proportions, line of action, or perspective while we're starting to draw the scene. After that we might think about value relationships, textures, or color contrasts. 

But even with this heightened and sequentially strategized perception, we still only see what we're looking for. Art teachers often say that learning to paint is really about learning to see. That's true, but it only captures a small slice of the truth. We only see a small slice of the world at any given time. In fact, what we see is not objective reality, but rather a representation that is manufactured in our heads. We don't photograph the world like a camera. What we see are the predictive models that we store in our own brains. 

White Marmorean Flock

I mentioned sculptor Vinnie Ream a while back. She was a member of a group of American women sculptors in Italy dubbed by Henry James as the "White Marmorean Flock." 

Statue of Thomas Hart Benton by Harriet Hosmer, Saint Louis, Missouri, 1868

The term refers to a group of expatriate women sculptors who worked in a classical style. The names include Louisa Lander, Harriet Hosmer, Anne Whitney, Emma Stebbins, Edmonia Lewis, Margaret Foley, Florence Freeman, and Vinnie Ream.

Zenobia in Chains by Harriet Hosmer (1830-1898)

In Italy they were able to exist independently from marital and domestic commitments that typically ended the budding careers of young women artists in America. 

Harriet Hosmer, surrounded by with her assistants and carvers in Rome

Harriet Hosmer was one of the first women to support herself fully on her income from sculpting. She said: "I honor every woman who has strength enough to step outside the beaten path when she feels that her walk lies in another; strength enough to stand up and be laughed at, if necessary."

Louisa Lander, sculpture of Virginia Dare of the lost colony of Roanoke, 1859

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Related Previous Posts: 

Vinnie Ream's Statue of Lincoln in the Capitol

The White Rabbits (Women Sculptors in Chicago)

Read more about the White Marmorean Flock:

SF Bay Times

The Toast

Louisa Lander on Wikipedia