Illustration Master Class 2010, open for enrollment

Illustration Master Class is now open for enrollment. Seven days of class time, lectures, figure drawing, critiques, and portfolio reviews. These are intense days. Starting at 10:00am, ending well past midnight. This is, without a doubt, my favorite event of the year. (To see why, you can check out these past Master Class posts.)

A word of warning: the past two years sold out.

Illustration Master Class
June 12-18, 2010
Amherst, MA
$1,950.00 - includes studio class, lectures, room and board.

Faculty:
Julei Bell
Dan Dos Santos
Scott Fischer
Irene Gallo
Donato Giancola
Rebecca Guay
James Gurney
Greg Manchess
Boris Vallejo

Illustration Master Class Days 6 and day 7's goodbyes.

DAY 6 (PHOTOS HERE)

Last full day. Packed day.

We had three business lectures:

Shelly Bond from DC/Vertigo talked about working in comics, using James Jean and the Fables series as the example. She described what it's like to be a comic editor and talked about how an artist can market themselves to a comic company. The main lesson: drawing, drawing, drawing! My favorite line, "The important thing to know about black and white is, color wont save it."

David Saylor from Scholastic did a presentation on children's picture books, showing a number of examples -- the most exciting for me was a Jon J Muth Christmas book coming this fall. It's drop-dead gorgeous, but then isn't J always drop-dead gorgeous.

Both Shelly and David took time in the afternoon to walk around the studios, look at portfolios, and collect samples.

I gave my formal lecture of the week in the evening. I was, to tell the truth, very nervous about the whole thing (everyone's presentations were so good...a few were even tear-inducing) but I think I did alright. I spoke about my daily work concerns, how I find artists, what I look for in portfolios, my usual website rant, and ran through a project from thumbnail to book cover. The hour and a half flew by.

A quick dinner break. (Shout-out to Amherst's Fresh Side.) And then back to the studios. Back to painting. Back to critiquing. And even a bit of relaxing and talking and feeling sad that it would all be over tomorrow.

At 12;30 in the morning Charles Vess announced that he'd give his History of Fantasy Illustration 1850-2009 lecture. I think that epitomized everything I love about IMC. People were either shutting down, knowing the class was essentially over, or panicked to finish up as much as they could. Either way, everyone was tired. But given the opportunity to learn something new, we jumped at it and spent an hour in the middle of the night ooh-ing and ahh-ing over great and largely unfamiliar art.

I've seen Charles give this lecture before and each time it's been different -- which means I will have see it again at ComicCon this year.

DAY 7
(PHOTOS HERE)

Clean up. Closing remarks, with a few (and a few more) tears. And then we opened the studios as a gallery. A number of IMC alumni, other artists, and art directors drove in from surprisingly far away. Viewers were able to see the paintings created in class and flip through portfolios. Throughout the day everyone started signing each other's sketchbook...hours and hours of sketchbook signing. No one really wanted to leave.

IMC is the brain child of Rebecca Guay. If I sounded overly gushy all week it's because, through her remarkable and generous heart, Rebecca has created something truly special. I know all of the instructors came away supercharged and inspired. I feel confident that all of the students did as well. We are all indebted to her and her assistant, Sara. And being the greedy folk that we are, we're already excited about next year. IMC3, baby!

Greg Manchess painting at Illustration Master Class

Four minutes of bad, low resolution shaky cam! Okay, so this isn't great, it was mostly meant to see if I could figure out Youtube. Tonight I'll try to quick wrap-up of the last two IMC days. (For thems not sick of hearing about it.)

UPDATE: Not to turn this into a commercial but as Chuck in the comments points out, you can get much better video, from beginning of a painting to the end, with the Massive Black downloads, part one and part two.

Illustration Master Class Day 5

[IMC 09 DAY 5 PHOTOS]

OK, I'll admit it, Friday was a complete blur. Luckily I have notes...sorta.

Jon Foster came by for the afternoon lecture. Jon works without as much planning as many of the faculty members do. He talked about hating the process of painting because he kept thinking the painting had to come out "right." He credits Rick Berry with having helped him enjoy the pure process of laying paint down. Playing with pigment. You can always wipe the board down and start over. He talked about learning his chops by working very hard on lower-end black and white work, earning his way up. Jon also talked a lot about doing paintings for yourself -- even small experiments -- to keep your excitement up and new ideas coming.

Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell did the evening lecture. It's clear some students have been timid to place pigment on their canvases. Boris and Julie used a collaborative painting they recently completely as an example and talked through the entire process, piece by piece. Boris freely admitted that, "even after 50 years I'm still scared of a white board -- So get used to it, it doesn't go away." A great and detailed look into building a picture, and a inside into collaborative working.

Beyond that, Thursday's "oh my god we're half way done" giddiness gave way to Friday's "oh shit I better get moving" focus. It was (at least for me) a day were there was little extra energy outside of the task at hand.

Illustration Master Class Day 4

[IMC09 DAY 4 PHOTOS]

Day four's theme: Holyshititsthursday!

It's both more panicky and more sociable today. Not that it hasn't been sociable before but today's realization that the week will come to an end has pumped up the volume of work and support.

My biggest regret of the week may be missing 98% of Robert Sweeney's lecture and demo today. I knew I missed something right away when walked in and saw that Greg looked like a kid who just met Santa. Sweeney is a local landscape artist with a great ability to articulate the act of painting. The one point I did catch was Sweeney describing painters as dramatists -- every shape, color, value, and object can be seen as a balance of protagonists and antagonists, often changing roles as you paint or view the picture.

The afternoon lecture was by guest instructors Dennis Nolan and Gary Lippinicott, focusing on watercolor painting and children's books.

The evening lecture was by Charles Vess. One of the the great things about this combination of instructors is having so many equally valid yet contradictory styles and methods. Dennis and Gary (along with most of the full-week staff) spoke a lot about planning, sketching, and reference. And then Charles comes along and talks about minimal planning and referencing. More than anyone else, Charles seems to let he picture find him. Calmly sketching and letting the narrative elements, colors, and value grow into place...with the confidence that he can wrangle them in when necessary.

With only three days left, the late night hours have been met with even more frank critiquing, more talking, more painting, a bit more junk food, caffeine, and a dash more wine and whiskey. The push is on.

Tony Deterlizzi dropped by for a few minutes today. Tomorrow we have Jon Foster for a lecture and demo. Saturday is business day -- lectures from art directors at DC/Vertigo Scholastic, and some place called Tor Books. Sunday...frantic touch-ups, open studio, and sad goodbyes.

Illustration Master Class Day 3

[IMC 09 DAY 3 PHOTOS]

Day three...

Energy is high even is thoughts are starting to blur. Bonding is....bonded-er. Anyone that did not start painting yesterday has been given gentle-yet-firm pushes. Those that started yesterday have struggled through every painting's inevitable ugly phase and they are starting to see the light again.

Michael Whelan gave the afternoon lecture. He talked about his career and process. About having turned to gallery work as a means to wake himself up from a creative block -- and how his illustration and gallery now work in tandem. Story telling is clearly important to Michael. He talked a lot about being true to the source material but also adding details and nuances to enrich to the narrative of the image.

Donato gave the evening lecture. If you ever need to remember how inspiring and regenerative fantasy can be, call Donato. He was born of Star Wars, Richard Scarry, and Tolkien. (A favorite moment of mine was hearing Charles Vess quietly laugh, "I did one of those" when Donato showed a Balrog/Gandalf drawing he had done as a teenager.) When Donato speak s about influence he isn't talking about technical ability so as much as an ability to inspire imagination and create moments of great emotion. Donato's work is always going beyond the job as required by the client and he spoke a lot about how that has helped him advance, both in terms of his career and creatively. When asked about times of strong growth in his work he replied, "When you are in the midst of it, you can't see if you are successful -- all you can do is be passionate about what you are doing."

And then it was back to work for everyone. Students painted. Michael Whelan did a demo. Charles decide to jump in on the Lady of the Lake assignment and did a large drawing which looks like he's nearly ready to start inking. Instructors continued their hands-on cris. We got collegiate and played frisbee. (Now people can hate Justin Gerard for being a great painter and for being the best frisbee player.) By 2:00 am everyone left to get enough sleep to be productive on day four.

Illustration Master Class Day 2

IMC 09 DAY 2 PHOTOS

48 hours, and 30 hours of active instruction time, into the program....

It feels like the students are about a day ahead of where we were last year. By midday most people had finished their drawings and started to prep their paintings surfaces. By late afternoon the smell of turpentine started to slowly rise.

Dan Dos Santos' afternoon lecture focused on utilizing reference photos. He had taken a shot of one of the students and then "frankensteined" various shots together, taking details out of context to create bits of costuming from them, playing around with background elements. Afterwards, he redrew it, making all the pieces coalesce into a unified picture and then jumped into painting it for the rest of the night.

The night lecture was Greg Manchess showing his influences throughout the years, namely focusing on Frank Brangwyn, Sert, Duveneck, Schaeffer, Sargent and other chunky painters, and talking about how they all still play a vital part in how he paints. He also stressed the degree to which getting good is about hard work and constant study, not a passive talent. It was a funny and honest talk and it got everytone jazzed to get back to work for another 5 hours.

Studio time is a mix of some of the instructors demoing and others going from easle to easle giving hands on advice......Then I decided to jump into Allen Williams' armour.

Illustration Master Class Day 1

[IMC 09 Day 1 photos]
[IMC09 Day zero photos]

It's like the first day of school...only with much more work is getting done.

An impressive amount of year-one alumni have returned -- we spent as much time reacquainting ourselves this morning as we did introducing ourselves.

After a few quick opening remarks, and an amazing video of all the instructors work that Rebecca Guay put together, we leaped straight into a six hour sketch critique. After dinner, Boris Vallejo, Julie Bell, Donato, and Dan Dos Santos did a hands-on photo shoot lecture. (Once again unleashing Donato's inner ham.)

Currently, it's midnight. Many of the instructors are demoing while the students either watch and ask questions or work revising their sketches.

For those following along at home, the choice of assignments were:

• Firstborn: military science fiction story
  
• Steampunk Wizard of OZ.
  
• Lady of the Lake
  
• Berserker Lord: Viking-ish fantasy, two warriors fighting a polar bear.
  
• Princess of Mars

There seems to be a whole lot of ringers in this group. I can't wait to see what these rooms look like by Sunday.

Off to the Illustration Master Class

Illustration Master Class 2009, more spots have opened up

Just in...Rebecca Guay has secured a slightly larger classroom for the Illustration Master Class -- five new spots have now opened up.

I feel a little sheepish every time I gush over the IMC but it was clearly one of the most rewarding events I have been involved with.

Illustration Master Class 2009
June 15-21
Amherst, MA
$1850.00 -- includes room and board. (Prepare to gain 5 pounds throughout the week. I did.)

Instructors:
Rebecca Guay
Charles Vess
Greg Manchess
Donato Giancola
Julie Bell
Boris Vallejo

Guests:
Dan DosSantos
Scott Fischer
Irene Gallo
Michael Whelan

Dorian Iten Step-by-Step

Dorian Iten, a student at last summer's Illustration Master Class, did one of my favorite paintings of the class. Of the five assignments, one choice was a plant-human hybrid. I shouldn't admit this but it was an assignment inspired by having the worst flu of my life while stuck in a hotel room at LunaCon...bad enough that I spent all night wathcing America's Next Top Model. (Hey, I was realy sick!) One of the photo shoots dressed the women up as flowers. Needless to say, the class did much more interesting things with the idea.

Dorian just posted an extensive step-by-step of his piece. If you check out hos website, you'll that he is a highly trained classical drawer, it was fun watching him take that disipline and paticence into the fantasy field.


REALTED: Illustration Master Class posts

2009 Illustration Master Class registration now open.

I will write about this more in depth on Tor.com in the upcoming week but I have a feeling it will sell out fast -- in fact, it's already half filled by from last year's alumni -- so I wanted to mention it quickly here first. Illustration Master Class is a one week intensive class that is i-n-t-e-n-s-e!

Illustration Master Class
June 15-21, 2009
Amherst, MA
$1,850.00 - includes studio class, lectures, room and board.

Full and guest faculty:
Julei Bell
Dan Dos Santos
Scott Fischer
Jon Foster
Irene Gallo
Donato Giancola
Rebecca Guay
Greg Manchess
Boris Vallejo
Charles Vess

Some notes from this year's class here, here,and here.

Message Board.

Flickr set here

Visiting Hours: Evan Shipard

Evan Shipard is a concept artist and matte painter for the Narnia movies, 300, the upcoming Wolverine movie, and others. He attended the Master Class and created the very cool Robin Hood painting you see here. Evan had some time in New York before heading back to Australia so, of course, lots of food and great conversation was called for.

Safe travels, Evan.

Master Class, Days 6 and 7

To wrap up....

Day six was the last push to get as finished as possible. The whole faculty was on call from 9:00 am to 2:00am. Scott Fischer and Greg Manchess tag-teamed and quickly got a reputation for being the "Car Talk" guys of the art world. (There must be a web series in this!) Everyone seemed primed to stay up late-late and some stayed up it until 7:00 the next morning. Considering they all took a project from start to finish in six days, while having three hours of lectures and three hours of figure drawing each day, they all got really far on the assignment.

Day seven was sad and exciting. The paintings were brought to Wunderarts Gallery. While the faculty set up the exhibit, the students on their own imitative, hired one of the models to come in for more figure drawing and reference shooting. After lunch, the students came into the gallery, hopefully with semi-fresh (if exhausted) eyes to view the work. The Amherst paper had run an article on the class so we had a number of townspeople in to see the show. The exhibit and the following dinner was full of signing each other's "Master Class 2008" sketch books. High school was never so much fun.

This truly was an incredible group. Everyone was open to all suggestions. Even when we threw out conflicting information, they all took it in and digested it as best they could. We had students from Europe, Australia, and all over the States. They ranged from 19 to 50 years old. Some are respected working professionals and others had not drawn or painted in years. I particularly admired the students coming into the class after a long hiatus -- for them to paint in front of Boris Vallejo must be a bit like me handing Stephen Hawking my math homework. Their bravery paid off, each of the instructing artists treated every student with the same respect they treat each other. If Rebecca chooses to do this again, I have no doubt that it'll be even better...And yet, there can never be another inaugural class and we all felt an intense bond that we'll carry with us forever.

Just so you know, it was not a 100% positive experience. I did gain five pounds in just seven days. Not only did we have dessert every day, we had dessert with every meal of every day. Sometimes two. Or three. And somehow my plan to eat tofu and steamed fish to cancel out the pizza and hot dogs every lunch and dinner didn't quite work out so well.

ART SHOWN:
I told everyone at the class not to apologize when showing work...and here I go apologizing: These photo's are poorly taken by me. They are off color balance, keystoning, and the works themselves are still in progress. That said, they are still some kick-ass paintings. I only got a few shots in - there are many more cool paintings to see. I believe they will be shown on the Master Class website once everyone has had a chance to put some finishing touches in.

Top: Dorian Iten, Eric Deschamps, Rob Alexander, Bud Cook. Below: Alan Williams, Kristina Carroll, Scott Murphy, Mark Winters.

Master Class

Too. Tired. To. Think.

Back home now. Here are some scenes from day six. A better summary of days six and seven after some long needed sleep.

Master Class Days 4 and 5

There was a point on Wednesday when I thought, "Wow, we're only half way through the week!" Just a few hours later I thought, "NO! We can't be almost done." We've been so steeped in this program, it's hard to imagine that it'll end. We're scheduled for 14 hours a day and yet, there is a full studio for hours after quitting time, including the instructors. Although I am "of an age" where it's getting harder to wake up in the morning after so many 2:00 in the morning nights in a row.

And in fact, it's 2:00 am right now and I'm sitting on the floor in Studio B. Occasionally it gets quiet and all you hear is a lot of squeaky plastic chairs as people lean back to reach their palette and then forward to paint, and then long moments of talking and laughing.

If there are reoccurring themes of the week they would be: Hard work makes all the difference, hard work makes all the difference, besides hard work, networking is and community building are super important, work smartly, and work hard.

Now, it's off to bed with me -- tomorrow is scheduled to be a 17 hour studio day.

Master Class Day 3

Master Class, Days 1 and 2

Two days into the Master Class and before I say anything else, Rebecca Guay is a god for having put this thing together. This is the most hard working and inspiring group I have ever been in.

Class is run from 9:00am to 11:00pm and every minute is packed with information. The focus of the week is serious hands on, nuts and bolts, instruction. Studio time is spent with the attendees working on an assignment. Afternoon and evening lectures have covered concepting, inspiration, reference and lighting, business practices.....And we're only two days into the program.

A few weeks ago we gave a choice of five assignments: Robin Hood, a character inspired by Jay Lake's short story Green, Toby Buckell's Pepper character, a futuristic Amelia Earhart (steam punk or far future) or a plant life creature. We told the attendees to have some rough thumbnails to show, but warned them that we may ask for any number of changes.

The first hours of studio time was spent doing crit of their sketches, including digging in drawing over the attendee's sketches. All of the instructors have been stressing the importance of careful planning before picking up a paint brush.

I was amazed how open the students have been to changing their ideas on the fly and working out new drawings in such a strange environment, on such a tight deadline, and surrounded by so much other activity. Hallways have turned into photo studios, people are grabbing the guys next to them to help figure out a hand position or twist of the hip. By Tuesday morning people kept walking us through a series of drawings saying, "This is where I was around midnight. A few hours later I got to this point...." It’s now day three and, as I type this, I can smell that jars of paint and medium are starting to open up. To be continued.....

I'm in Amherst

We drove up tonight and did some last minute prep for tomorrow's start of the Illustration Master Class. Rebecca Guay has done an incredible job putting this together. The students look very excited to get going, as is the faculty. Amherst campus is drop dead gorgeous -- it's almost intimidating. Unlike my school, Copper Union, this looks like such a "real" college. I mean, we never had mastodons on campus...or even a campus for that matter.

Illustration Master Class Prep

Rebecca has been hard at work on all the details of the Illustration Master Class. She called for a summit meeting of all the instructors to finalize the curriculum. Here we are in Society's library doing just that. And, of course, the eating Indian food afterwards.

There are only 5 positions left for the Master Class. If anyone is debating attending, now is the time to decide.

Illustration Master Class
June 16-22, 2008
Amherst College Campus
$1,700.00 - includes meals and housing.

Instructors:
Julei Bell
Dan Dos Santos
Scott Fischer
Irene Gallo
Donato Giancola
Rebecca Guay
Greg Manchess
Boris Vallejo