Portrait of the Year Competition

(Link to YouTube) TV producer Sky Arts has taken a reality-TV-show approach to a portrait competition, pitting 21 painters against each other in an elimination round. The finalists were drawn from nearly 2000 applicants from all over the U.K., based on a preliminary stage where entrants sent in a self-portrait.

The judges, who are artists, art historians, museum curators, and gallery dealers, verbalize their reactions to the paintings as they progress.

The structure of the video is almost identical to the Great British Bake Off, with brief backstory excursions, commentary from the models, tense music, a ticking clock, and a moment where the finalists face the judges with their four-hour paintings.

Such artificial constraints may seem anathema to making a good painting, but it makes good TV entertainment. It's an expensive and ambitious undertaking to produce a show like this, and it would be great if they expanded the competition to entrants from beyond the U.K.





They also have a Landscape Artist of the Year competition (link to YouTube).
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Website for: Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 
Previously: Portrait Society Competition
Portrait Society Conference

Siggraph Previews Photo-Real Computer Graphics

Every summer when computer graphics experts gather at Siggraph, they reveal new technical breakthroughs. (Link to video on YouTube)

This year's preview video reveals realistic simulations of goopy frosting, ferrofluids, and human anatomy. It will be possible to change the lighting in photos, graft an art style onto a captured video, and seamlessly change what a talking head is saying by editing a text transcript.

Silly Rubber, viscoelastic and elastoplastic material
by Fang, Li, Gao, Jiang

These technical innovations will find their way into the visual effects that you will see in TV commercials, movies, and eventually consumer graphics programs.

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Siggraph 2019 will 28 July - 1 August in Los Angeles

Podcast about Sketching Irish Music

If you like sketching Irish traditional music, this podcast is for you. Boston-based musician Shannon Heaton talks to Brian Vallely, Vincent Crotty, Catharine Kingcome, and me. Topics covered include about traveling pipers, a dilapidated hotel in the Hudson Valley, Dudley Street dance hall in post WWII America, and a country home in County Clare.
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Trad on Canvas by Shannon Heaton

Shortcomings of American Art Education

In the following essay, a famous artist discusses the shortcomings of art education in America, and proposes some remedies. At the end of the post, I'll let you know who wrote the essay.  

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Portrait Class, 1901

"It seems to me that no one could seriously dispute the fact that a great school of art in America is needed, or that such a school would have the very greatest influence in the development both of the spirit and the practice of art. As art is now taught in this country, it is too fragmentary. The pupils are not thoroughly grounded. Any one who wants to study art here can do so. The examinations are too easy. In the foreign schools the examinations are very difficult. The student must know a good deal to pass them. There should be an American school with equally high requirements. 

If a young man [or young woman] wants to enter Harvard or Yale, his preparation must be thorough. That is the way it should be with the school of art, for the school of art should really be like a university. The student, before being admitted to the university, should have passed beyond the elemental stage of study which properly belongs to the grammar-school grade. As it is now in America there is no place where parents who think their son is a genius can send that son to find out that he isn’t a genius. There are very few people who can’t be taught to draw more or less well, but the mere ability to draw does not make an artist. 

"There seems to be a desire on the part of a very large number of persons either to become professional artists, sculptors, and painters or to acquire some of the principles of decoration. But there is also widespread ignorance that a thorough grounding in certain facts is absolutely essential to the serious student before he is prepared to avail himself of the experience of others. 

Those who wish to study art here are admitted to classes far too leniently. In the schools abroad the entrance examinations are very severe, and by a succession of examinations, the less talented are eliminated. This refers, of course, to the great schools — not to the irresponsible studios, where a model or two is hired and a few painters with a present reputation are engaged to call in occasionally to give advice; to such schools anybody, with no experience whatever, can, by paying a small fee, be admitted. 

It has been immensely to the advantage of America that there is nothing for architects abroad which corresponds with the irresponsible painting ateliers referred to. The student of architecture going to Paris, for instance — although my remarks do not apply to Paris alone — can only study his profession by going into the “Beaux Arts.” The entrance examination is very severe, of course, and should be so, but the effect upon the American student is everywhere apparent here, and has given the architects of the United States the great position they occupy to-day. 

If the money is provided — and one of the things which surprises me on coming back to America is the amount of money there seems to be — there would seem to be no reason why a great American school of art should not be established and be put in working order within a reasonably short time. A building should be furnished, among other things, with copies of the best examples of art in foreign countries in sculpture, painting, and architecture. There would be little difficulty in acquiring these, although it would take time. 

The American Art Federation would be the institution which would most naturally father the work of establishing an American school. And the question of a location for the school would have to be answered by circumstances. It should be in a center, some place where it would be to the advantage of both pupils and instructors to live. The location might be a problem. One would name New York as the obvious place for the school, as the National Academy is there, and the various art societies to which most American artists contribute hold their exhibitions there. 

The art ability of Americans is not to be belittled. The best American artists can hold their own anywhere. American art as a whole, however, has the tendency to be preoccupied with problems of a technical nature, such as how to put on paint, and things of that sort. The painting of individual pictures is not art in its highest form. Pictures are only fragments. The great things are works which carry an idea through to completion. 

I do not think that the great problems of adapting one subject or composition to its environment is sufficiently studied, if it is studied at all. The three great branches of art — painting, sculpture, and architecture — should be independent. Without a knowledge of the other two, each is incomplete. The restraining influence the study of each one has upon the others is of the greatest importance and of the greatest service. 

A school should have, first of all, the great artists of the country as overseers. That is the method pursued in Munich, where the great artists are given studios in the school, and the students are allowed, several days in the week, to consult them about ideas. In addition to the influence of American artists of first rank, the American school might also make arrangements to receive the benefit and advice of prominent foreign artists who are visiting this country from time to time. As to the instructors, there should be many of them, and there is no reason why they should not be drawn from the ranks of American artists. 

The curriculum of the school should embrace sculpture, painting, and architecture, and every student should be made to learn something about all three branches of art. There are many Americans who are quite competent to act as instructors, under the supervision of artists of first rank. And the great thing is that the school should have one inspiring head. The advantage of having great artists on the staff, to whom students can have access, lies in the fact that one can learn much more by working with a man than by simply being told what to do, or what not to do. The establishment of the school would mean, primarily, the sifting out of the incapable. It would push forward those who had real talent, and would discourage those without talent. 

An art atmosphere is hardly to be spoken of as something which is created; it is rather something which happens. It is a matter of tradition. A whole country grows up to art, and the atmosphere comes gradually into being, one can hardly explain when or how. And a people who have once developed an art atmosphere may degenerate. Take Italy, for example. The Italy of the past was a paradise of art. Rome is an eternal city because of the handiwork which immortal artists have left there, if for no other reason. But take the Italy of to-day—where is its art atmosphere? The average modern Italian likes the worst pictures and loves noise. It would seem as if all the art air had been breathed over there. An art atmosphere is not generated entirely by pictures. The kind of houses men build, and what they put into them; the decorations of public buildings; the beautifying of public parks; the care of the streets, all these things play important parts. In this day, it is not so much the love of pictures as care for vital things which needs to be encouraged. 

The generating of an art atmosphere requires a great deal of money, as well as a great deal of good taste on the part of a great many people. Public building decorations of the highest order are so expensive as frequently to make them impossible. The artist who does the work, too, must inevitably make sacrifices. But the man who takes up the profession of art must have higher aims than financial considerations. The painting of an important and thoroughly careful work is much more expensive than most people realize.

King Lear, Act I, Scene I (1897-98) By Edwin Austin Abbey -
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Public Domain, Link

The essay was written by the American illustrator and painter Edwin Austin Abbey, and it appeared in Brush and Pencil magazine. Abbey was an illustrator and painter, trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He was a good friend of John Singer Sargent, and alongside Sargent, he painted murals for the Boston Public Library. He lived and worked for most of his career in Great Britain, and exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy. The essay was published in the March, 1902 edition of Brush and Pencil magazine.

Questions for discussion:

1. Abbey argues for maintaining high standards and weeding out those of lesser abilities. Is that position tenable in our time, and in today's art world?

2. Should an art school have a shared set of standards or values, and what should those standards be?
3. Why does our contemporary artistic culture allow for these standards in music conservatories, such as Julliard, Bard, or Eastman, but not in art schools?

4. He says "American art as a whole has the tendency to be preoccupied with problems of a technical nature, such as how to put on paint, and things of that sort." Is it still true that Americans are preoccupied with tools and technique? 

5. Abbey argues that the curriculum should embrace painting, sculpture, and architecture. For those of you who have studied sculpture or architecture, what has that study given you as a painter?

Dean Cornwell Panoramic Sketch

Up for auction right now is an unusual preliminary sketch by Dean Cornwell.

The panoramic gouache painting is 6" x 83", matted and framed. Cornwell painted it in preparation for the mural "Telephone Men and Women at Work" in Boston in 1951.

The 190-foot mural circles the lobby, with 197 life-size portraits telling the story of the history of the telephone.

Such a monumental mural requires a lot of planning. Cornwell produced a series of small sketches, first to get hired for the project, and then to plan the figure groupings.

Cornwell gave the original gouache sketch to teacher and painter Jack Faragasso, who turned 90 recently and has preserved the sketch all these years. 

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Online Auction: Christies Dean Cornwell Sketch through May 22

Book by: Jack Faragasso: The Student's Guide to Painting

Book: The Art of Dean Cornwell

Unusual Uses of the Palette Knife

(Video link to YouTube)
Most people associate "palette knife painting" with the look of thick impasto and broad handling.

But it's a tool that can also deliver fine lines, smooth gradations, and delicate textures. 

What is a palette knife? It's a metal blade attached to the end of a wooden handle. In older-style palette knives, the blade is made of a long flexible steel strip lined up with the handle. But the majority nowadays are offset to keep your knuckles out of the paint.

I prefer to use triangular designs, both for mixing paint on the palette (where it's known as a "palette knife") and for applying it to the canvas (where it becomes a "painting knife").

Because it doesn't hold onto paint the way a brush does, it has unique value as a tool for applying paint. It can be completely cleaned off quickly with a rag, letting you change colors quickly. 

The palette knife works especially well for blending colors. With a little practice, you can get a smoother gradation than you can get with a brush.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) used a painting knife to achieve his enamel-like surfaces. He would rough in a passage with a brush and then smooth the paint with the painting knife.

Camille-Felix Bellanger (1853-1923) described Bouguereau's paint application:

"His lay-ins were broad and thickly-painted ... He never left them in this state: as soon as the piece — which to anyone else would have seemed completed — started to solidify, he took up his palette knife and, with incredible skill, would go over the whole, in all directions, evening out, stripping, until the surface had acquired the desired finish and transparency."

There are a lot of palette knives to choose from, but the ones I like best are the ones with the triangular shape, with fairly straight sides.

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Source for the quote: Bouguereau at Work by Mark Walker

More info in the new tutorial: Unconventional Oil Techniques: Fast-Drying Methods for Realistic Painting
Digital download at Gumroad
Digital download at Sellfy
DVD from manufacturer
DVD on Amazon: DVD on Amazon

Pen Sketching is a Confidence Builder

Pen Sketches by Édouard Detaille, 1848-1912

Sketching directly from life in pen with no pencil lay-in is a good thing to do once in a while. It builds confidence and sharpens your accuracy.

Because pen sketches preserve every touch—every boldness and hesitancy—they're like an indelible record of thought itself.

On the Way to Dog Park

Smooth, the husky, wants to get out and play with other dogs. So we drive to the dog park. I'm sitting in the back seat with my sketchbook open.

I start painting Smooth with his mouth closed. But once he opens it, I change my mind and want to capture that doggy smile, with the tongue draped over his teeth and the red color on the underside. 

I'm using watercolor with casein white on a casein underpainting. It's a fairly non-absorbent surface that makes the paint float on the surface. But it's nice for getting fur textures. (Link to video on Facebook)

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Video tutorial: "Painting Animals from Life"

Digital download:
69 minutes Widescreen, MP4 video. 

at Sellfy

at Gumroad 

at Cubebrush 

DVD

Direct from manufacturer Kunaki

at Amazon
at JamesGurney.com
Review on "Lines and Colors"

How Do I Make a Posable Maquette?

Robert Post asks: "James, I need to build a maquette that is flexible to pose as a model for paintings. What material do you recommend? "

Robert, it depends how much flexibility you want. If you just need your maquette to flex a little, there's a kind of flexible Sculpey that bends a bit after curing.

If you really need a model that you can pose, you can use the build-up technique, using soft foam and latex, as shown in the video above.

The easiest way to make a skeleton is to use an aluminum armature, and you can bulk out the forms with foam, as with the simple robot maquette above.

That's more or less how I made the poseable skybax maquette (right).

Or if you want an exact shape with a smooth outer surface, you can sculpt, mold, and cast latex or silicon, but those processes are a lot more involved. Stop Mo Nick has some pretty good videos on this.

Bill Wiist asks: I am planning to build posable human maquettes. Have you done a blog on articulation, best materials to use, etc.

Bill, I haven't done a blog post about articulated joints yet. The simplest solution is to build your person or creature over an existing action figure by grinding away material and then adding what you want to add with Magic Sculpt.

If you want to build a posable figure from scratch, you can get a metal stop-motion armature or use the cheaper one made of plastic called a Modibot. (above, right)


Finally, the small artist manikins have gotten a lot better since the old "jointed wooden doll" era. For example, the Color LILIJ male and female manikins shown at right are quite realistic, and not as expensive as they used to be.

A Gannam Sketch

Following up on yesterday's post, here's a preliminary sketch in gouache and ink by John Gannam of  polo players.

The book Forty Illustrators and How They Worked describes how tireless he was with these sketches, which were created quickly out of his imagination from the moment he read the story he was asked to illustrate:

"At the outset we find John engrossed in his manuscripts, a pad and pencil handy for notations of illustrative possibilities. Then comes the graphic struggle with countless pencil and brush sketches. First ideas are as likely as later ones to be the best, but he won't be satisfied until he has worked all around the problem. He says he spends far more time in preparatory study and gets more fun out of it than in the execution of the finished painting."

Resources
There's no Wikipedia page on John Gannam. Would someone out there like to start one?
Flickr set: collected by Leif Peng
Online bio: He was honored in Society of Illustrator's Hall of Fame.
Book: Forty Illustrators and How They Worked
Magazine: Illustrators 51 with article on John Gannam (free digital preview with option to pay for download)
Previous posts which mention John Gannam
My book Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist  covers the sketch process.