Triad Tests in International Artist

In the new issue of International Artist Magazine I share details about how to create a "triad test," a chart for seeing the range of your three-color palette.

I also show how to paint a gray color eight different ways. It's a very interesting experience to mix a neutral gray swatch with black and white and then to do it again with three transparent colors, and then again with three opaque colors.It's all covered on my video tutorial TRIADS 

How Do You Make Money as an Artist?

Allen Michael Voth, an aspiring artist, had some questions for me.

How do you make money [as an artist]?
My income has always been an evolving pie chart of many sources, including: book royalties, commissioned illustrations, digital downloads, lecture fees, workshops, exhibition rentals, sales of originals, book and print sales from our online store, consulting fees, merchandise licensing, and options of intellectual rights for entertainment (movies, theme parks, etc).

It sounds like a lot of active sources, but at any given time, 90% of the income will come from just three or four of these, and the distribution shifts every 5-10 years as art markets change.

I have resisted taking direct sponsorship money on my social media feeds; I have resisted Patreon-type crowdsourced models; I have turned certain down job offers for teaching at art schools, art director jobs, private commissions, concept art jobs for movies, and illustration jobs. 

These could all be valid sources of income and I've dipped into those wells before, but I have passed on opportunities because of being too busy or because they just didn't match my goals at the time.

Shelf of sketchbooks. One of my goals has been to make on-the-spot sketching

pay for itself without having to sell originals.

Do you do anything else to support your lifestyle?
No, but I'm keeping my dishwashing skills sharpened in case I ever need them.

Is the pay enough to make a living?
Not always. We've had some very good years, but there have been a few lean years where the income didn't match expenses and we had to rely on savings. 

The tightest years were when we had kids in diapers, and then 18 years later when those kids entered college. My wife and I have always been savers. We don't spend much; and we don't have employees. I recommend keeping enough in savings to allow you to survive for at least six months without any income.

Although I have sold quite a few originals, I've kept some of the best ones, 

which makes traveling museum exhibitions possible.

How long did it take to get to that point?
I worked for an animation studio (Bakshi) for about a year and a half before launching off as a freelancer. That gave me time to build up a reserve of capital, plus I acquired a set of skills and a good portfolio. My initial samples were strong enough to get me just enough freelance work right away, and I turned down an offer from another animation studio (Disney).

The income from working full time as a commissioned illustrator was barely enough to stay ahead, but it's what I wanted to do. After 10 years of working for other people I got it into my head to create my own fantasy world, which became Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time. That was a breakthrough in many ways both in terms of income and creative satisfaction.

Success will come eventually if you do high quality, original work and handle your business responsibly. I'd rather have a steady build than an overnight hit.

What would you avoid?
1. Don't borrow any more than you have to. Don't get stuck in consumer-loan or credit card debt. Don't marry someone who expects an expensive lifestyle.
2. Don't cut corners in your artwork. Every painting you create will follow you online. Always do your best work with every opportunity, whatever the time or money. Be the best at what you do best.

3. Don't be a pain to work with. Don't leave your clients or coworkers in the dark. Communicate clearly, briefly, and often. Deliver on time. Don't complain. Build up other people. Be cheerful, constructive, helpful, and professional.

Hope that helps,
James Gurney

Bringing Old Photos to Life

Old photos provide a window to life in the past. A great deal of information is contained in those photos, but a lot of visual data has been lost, too—not just the color, but other features such as the subsurface scattering.

A couple of recent digital innovations have helped to bring old photos and paintings to life. There's a lot you can do with Photoshop, but there are limits to what you can accomplish with denoising, colorization, and superresolution. 

The result here has reduced some of the cragginess of the original Lincoln photo and made him look younger, but presumably that could be dialed differently. 

'Time Travel Rephotography' is a technique for recreating the natural, full-color appearance based on the the original photograph and an input photo of a contemporary person. The metrics of the modern person are shifted to match that of the historic person.

The way to test this method would be to take a photo of a contemporary person using an antique process and see if you could restore the missing information to match a high-res photo of that person.  

Another digital reconstruction tool is My Heritage, an app that takes a photographic input, or even old paintings or statues, and animates them with blinks and turns (Link to YouTube video). 

Because it draws power from large data sets, the results have some convincing nuances, such as the movement of bags under the eyes. I think it would actually be more effective if the movements were more limited and subtle.  

Combining these techniques and animating them with a motion-captured actor's performance would yield even better results.

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More about Time Travel Rephotography on Two Minute Papers

Thanks, Mel and Roger

Is That House Abandoned?

When I'm painting a house, I'm always curious who lives there.

They usually don't notice me at all—or they pretend not to. But sometimes they come near to check out what I'm doing.

In this case I assumed the house was abandoned. I had never seen anyone come or go from there. Over the years, the house has been falling farther and farther into ruin. So I was surprised when there were signs of life (Link to video on YouTube).

Art Supplies
Ultramarine blue (gouache)
Cerulean blue (gouache)
Titanium white (gouache)
Cadmium yellow light (watercolor)
Scarlet pyrrol (watercolor)
Burnt sienna (watercolor)
Supracolor II water-soluble pencil (brown)
Supracolor II pencil set of 30
Watercolor sketchbook
Travel brush set 
Water cup 

Mountain Maquette

Yesterday on Instagram I shared my painting "Palace in the Clouds," and some people asked: 

@martinez_lucas.psd What did you use for reference?
@marcbanks_ Is this completely from imagination?
@s.error_ Have you made a model to help in this scene?

The answer is yes! 

For the mountain forms I draped a piece of plaster-impregnated burlap over some chunks of styrofoam, then made the buildings out of scraps of mat board hot-glued together. 

On top of all that I attached bits of white foam for the snow. Bringing that outside into the sunlight was a huge help for imagining the pattern of light and cast shadows.

Karl Fredrik Nordström

Karl Fredrik Nordström (1855-1923) was a Swedish painter who studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Art. 

During a sojourn in France he was inspired by artists like Paul Gauguin and by Japanese prints and other modernist trends.  

This experience led him and a few dozen of his contemporaries to write a formal letter to the Academy requesting that they modernize their approach to teaching and exhibiting art. 

The Academy didn't agree, but Nordström allied with like-thinking artists anyway.

Nordström's own paintings become more concerned with broken color, pointillism, and flat fields of color devoid of obvious subject matter. 

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Wikipedia Karl Fredrik Nordström

'Kenopsia'

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a website and book created by John Koenig which defines words that don't exist in English, but it feels like they should exist. 

Painting by Antonio López García (b. 1936)

For example, he defines Kenopsia as "the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that’s usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet—a school hallway in the evening, an unlit office on a weekend, vacant fairgrounds—an emotional afterimage that makes it seem not just empty but hyper-empty, with a total population in the negative, who are so conspicuously absent they glow like neon signs."

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Wikipedia: Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Website: Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows 

Books:  Antonio López García 

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Saved by A Piece of Charcoal

Filippo Lippi (1406-1469) and a few of his friends took to sea in a boat from Italy, but "they were all caught by the Moors who ranged about those coasts, and taken into Barbary (North Africa) and kept in slavery, each one being put into chains."

Standing woman (c. 1460–69), Fra Filippo Lippi 

(c. 1406–69) British Museum, London

"There he remained with great distress during eighteen months. But one day, being much in the company of his master, he had a fancy for drawing his portrait. Having taken an extinguished charcoal from the fire, he drew him full length, with his Moorish costume, upon the surface of a white wall." 

Painting by Frederick Bridgman, 1886

"This being told to the master by the other it seemed a miracle —neither drawing nor painting being practiced in those parts—it was the cause of his liberation from the chains that had so long confined him."

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The story comes from Vasari's "Lives of the Painters," as quoted in "Winters in Algeria," by Frederick Bridgman (1847-1928).

Franz Defregger

Franz Defregger (1835-1921) was an Austrian painter. Above is his self portrait from 1880.

He also painted genre scenes with people in local costumes from his native Tyrol.

Route 209 in Kingston

Nothing to see here, just a state highway overpass seen from a parking lot. 

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A post shared by James Gurney (@jamesgurneyart)

I'm pretty sure no one has painted this scene before. That is exciting to me, like being the first artist on Mars.

My friend Joe Paquet shared this quote with me: “If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet