Teaser 1: Painting a Husky Mix

Here's a little preview of the new video on "Painting Animals from Life." (Link to Facebook video)

69 minutes Widescreen, MP4 video. 

Digital download

Sellfy
Gumroad

Cubebrush 

DVD

Direct from manufacturer Kunaki

DVD at Amazon

Animal Body Silhouettes

Let's start with basics. An art instruction book from 1862 says "a horse should not be mistaken for a cow, or a pig for a sheep."

Simplified outlines for a horse, cow, sheep, dog, and goat, Charles Weigall, 1862

He presents basic outline shapes for each type of familiar domesticated animal. They are constructed from the same three body parts: the shoulder, the rib mass, and the pelvic area. The cow holds its head lower than the horse, and it's much more bony and angular in the pelvis area.

The dog is the only meat-eater in this group, and his rib cage is consequently smaller and the waist thinner. He needs less gut to digest his food, so his frame is much lighter and faster than the goat or the sheep.


Weigall recommended sketching at the Zoological Gardens, where he said "every liberality is shewn to artists." I also like to sketch at county fairs, dog shows, and farms, warming up by drawing those simple silhouettes.

For my upcoming video on painting animals from life, which releases this coming Wednesday, I decided to heed a request that many of you have made: to follow a painting all the way from start to finish, so that you can see every step. In this video, I do this with both a dog and a horse.

Jeff Hein, who paints only from life, says: “James Gurney never ceases to amaze me. I’ve painted animals from life and it is hard. James is not only a master of life sketching but he’s an excellent teacher. In this video he breaks down his process into manageable parts while clearly expressing his approach to problem solving. I finished the video feeling like I might be able to channel James in my next painting attempt. Ok, that’s not likely, but I’m confident I learned a lot nonetheless. I highly recommend this video to any artist of any skill level.”
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A Guide to Animal Drawing for the Use of Landscape Painters by Charles Weigall, 1862

"Painting Animals from Life" 69 minutes Widescreen, MP4 video. 

Digital download from:

Gumroad

Sellfy 

Cubebrush 

DVD

Direct from manufacturer Kunaki

DVD at Amazon

Evolution of a Picture, Part 3 of 4: Maquettes and Animals

Ernest Meissonier, study for Friedland

This is Part 3 of a 1901 article called Evolution of a Picture: A Chapter on Studies by academy-trained Edgar Spier Cameron. Yesterday's installment discussed studies, facial expression, and drapery. Today we look at maquettes and animals.

Maquette by Meissonier

Part 3: Maquettes and Manikins
"Meissonier was so scrupulous in his drawing that he sometimes modeled his horses and sometimes his figures in wax from which to make his drawings.

"In a subject in which there are numerous figures, animals, or objects of similar size, the element of correct perspective is of great importance, and the grouping together of maquettes, or small models in wax or clay, makes it possible to avoid those errors which creep into the work of some of the greatest artists.

Lord Frederic Leighton in his studio

"Sir Frederic Leighton frequently made use of the plan, and it is said that Detaille, in composing his battle scenes, arranges whole companies of pewter soldiers on a table on which the inequalities of the surface of the ground have been represented in various ways.

"Maquettes and manikins are of great service in composing decorative subjects when it is desired to show figures in unusual positions requiring violent foreshortening, as in flying, or in a perspective system such as is sometimes used in ceiling decoration, with a vanishing point in the air.

Aimé Morot with the skin of a lion

Animals in Motion
"When animals are introduced into a picture many studies of them are necessary because of the great difficulty in securing a suitable pose or action, owing to their almost constant movement.

"In making studies of animal motion, many painters resort to the use of instantaneous photographs with the result that they frequently show movement too rapid to be observed by the human eye. In their efforts to avoid such solecism, artists have resorted to various devices to study the motions of the animals they paint.

Aimé Morot

"Aimé Morot, who has painted some of the most spirited cavalry charges ever reproduced on canvas, was attached to the General Staff of the French army, and had all the horses and men he desired at his disposition. His favorite mode of study was to have horses ridden past him, and at a certain point he would give one quick glance at his models, close his eyes, and open them only when he had diverted his gaze to the white surface of the paper held in his lap on which he quickly jotted down the impression received. (See previous post: Morot's motion device)

Horse study by Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier

"Meissonier had a track built, along which he had himself propelled as horses were ridden along a parallel course. Another excellent way for an artist to gain an appreciation of a horse's movement is to see and feel it at the same time by riding the animal along a wall in sunlight and observing its shadow."

Editor's note: The author is muralist and critic Edgar Spier Cameron (1862-1944) from Chicago. He studied at the Art Students League in New York and the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His teachers were Dewing, Inness, Cabanel, Lefebvre, Boulanger, Laurens, and Benjamin-Constant.

Previously:

Evolution of the Picture, Part 1: Compositional Studies.

Evolution of the Picture, Part 2: Studies and Drapery
Morot's motion device

Books:
You can find more about these methods in my book Imaginative Realism.
Ernest Meissonier exhibition catalog.
Frederic Leighton Abrams book.

Sources and More Info:
Evolution of a Picture: A Chapter on Studies by Edgar Cameron in Brush and Pencil Magazine
Vol. 8, No. 3 (June, 1901), pp. 121-133

Von Hayek's Animal-Painting Academy

German impressionist painter Hans von Hayek encouraged his students to paint animals from life.

Painters at von Hayek's art colony in Dachau

Von Hayek arranged for his students to visit farms, where farmhands would hold the animals relatively still.

According to Wikipedia, "One of his students, Carl Thiemann, wrote in his memoirs that the local farmers frequently complained about them trampling the grass and leaving oil paints behind."

Hans von Hayek

These art lessons took place in the Dachau district of Germany before it had its wartime associations.

Hans von Hayek

Von Hayek studied at the animal painting academy of Heinrich von Zügel.



Von Hayek had many famous students, including Hugo Hatzler, Hermann Stenner, Julie Wolfthorn, Anna Klein, and Norbertine Bresslern-Roth, who I mentioned in a recent post.

Women painters were attracted to the colony because they weren't allowed into the State Academy in Munich until 1926.

Hans von Hayek sketching

The artists took their sketchbooks everywhere and often traveled by bicycle to their destinations.

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Previous posts about Heinrich von Zügel

Dachau Art Colony on Wikipedia
Hans von Hayek on Wikipedia
Julie Wolfthorn, one of von Hayek's students

Paul Brown, Equestrian Artist

Paul Desmond Brown (1893-1958) was an American illustrator who specialized in equestrian subjects. He developed his skills by his own study and practice rather than at an art school.

According to the Chisolm Gallery: "He used his wonderful powers of observation, drew heavily upon his copious notes and studies and greatly accepted the benefits of the camera only to cement his ideas. The rest was practice and care." 

"His photographic memory proved to be an invaluable asset, enabling him to render images of specific moments sometimes years after they had taken place."

"Brown preferred to draw with a pencil and, although not fond of painting, he successfully employed a technique of using tinted paper with white highlights."

Brown was the author of several drawing books on horses, including Drawing the horse: Gaits, points, and conformation and Draw Horses: It's Fun and Easy.

He also illustrated Black Beauty and other books about horses.

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Bio and samples at Chisolm Gallery

Thanks, Sam Robinson

Hondecoeter's Birds

Melchior d'Hondecoeter (1636-1695) was a Dutch animal painter who specialized in birds.

Many of his contemporary animal painters focused on painting dead animals in still-life positions, but Hondecoeter preferred to show them in living poses.

It was said of Hondecoeter that he "displays the maternity of the hen with as much tenderness and feeling as Raphael the maternity of Madonnas."

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Melchior d'Hondecoeter on Wikipedia

Animal Linocuts by Norbertine Bresslern-Roth

Norbertine Bresslern-Roth (1891-1978) was an Austrian printmaker who specialized in animal subjects.

Her preferred medium was the linoleum block print, which suited her strong sense of design.

She studied at the animal painting academy of Hans von Hayek, where students painted landscapes and animals on farms near Dachau. 

She was inspired by a trip to Africa, and later by trips to the zoo. Most of her African compositions are based on her deep knowledge of animal anatomy, with poses that could never be taken directly from photography. 

She often used the linoleum reduction process, where the same plate is used several times for progressively darker ink runs. With each color run, more and more of the block is cut away. 

Even for a simple subject, this process requires careful planning, and since you destroy the plate, you can't go back and print more.

Her birds, fish, and insect subjects, show striking color combinations. Her art is well known to lino-cut artists, but not as well known as it should be to painters and other artists.

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Online biography and more samples at "Adventures in the Print Trade"

Wikipedia (in German) Norbertine Bresslern-Roth 

Samples of N.B.R. on Artnet

More examples, including paintings and illustrations, on Dorotheum

Reduction process explained by Sherrie York

Louis Wain's Cats

Louis Wain (English 1860-1939) was an artist who loved to paint cats, and he painted them in a variety of styles. When viewed in the sequence below, his cat pictures seem to reveal a person losing his grip on reality.

Do Louis Wain's cat pictures reflect a brain suffering from mental illness? People have speculated for years:

"Wain's schizophrenia may have been precipitated by Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite which is excreted by cats in their feces." —Nietzsche Girard Mimetism 

"Wain may have been suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder" —Scientific American

In fact, most of Wain's images are not dated, and he produced conventional cat pictures alongside highly patterned ones throughout his career. The sequence of images from cute to bizarre was arranged by psychologists to support their theories.

"The belief that his abstract drawings demonstrate the progressive deterioration of his mental state is quite likely a falsehood – the result of a claim made in a book called Psychotic Art that was published in the 1960s. All art should be considered as an expression of the artist and Wain’s progression into psychedelia is just one aspect of his creative identity." —Illustration Chronicles

It is known that Wain's life encompassed much unhappiness and anxiety, but without more concrete diagnostic information, we'll probably never really know exactly why he painted cats the way he did. Psychologists and art historians who infer mental states purely from artwork may be dancing on thin ice.

Wikipedia on Louis Wain

Book: Cat Compendium: The Worlds of Louis Wain

Akeley's Fight with a Leopard

When artists and scientists produced the dioramas for the American Museum of Natural History, they went to Africa in search of suitable animals. But sometimes the encounters didn't go as planned.

In Ethiopia, taxidermist Carl Akeley was hunting warthog and ostrich when he took an ill-advised shot toward a noise that he heard in the bush.

Unexpectedly he had injured a leopard, which pursued him and later attacked him. He knew that once engaged in a fight, a wounded leopard would never give up, and it would be a fight to the death.

"A leopard, unlike a lion, is vindictive. A wounded leopard will fight to a finish practically every time, no matter how many chances it has to escape. Once aroused, its determination is fixed on fight, and if a leopard ever gets hold, it claws and bites until its victim is in shreds. All this was in my mind, and I began looking about for the best way out of it, for I had no desire to try conclusions with a possibly wounded leopard when it was so late in the day that I could not see the sights of my rifle.”

Read the rest online at Mental Floss: The Time Carl Akeley Killed a Leopard with his Bare Hands.
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From Akeley's book In Brightest Africa

Detailed Photos of Insects

Photographer Levon Biss came up with a way to photograph insects in extremely high resolution.

Biss teamed up with the Oxford University Museum of Natural History to record some of the best specimens from their collection.

The process overcomes the problem of shallow depth of field inherent in all macrophotography by taking thousands of exposures as the camera moves in tiny increments through the Z dimension. The focused layers are then stacked digitally in the computer.

In addition, the insect is shot in as many as 30 sections, with different lighting setups for each section. 

Insects are covered with finely textured microstructures, and the function of those tiny structures is still not completely understood.

According to Dr James Hogan of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, “It’s thought that microscopic structures alter the properties of an insect’s surface in different ways, reflecting sunlight, shedding water, or trapping air. The evolutionary process of natural selection should account for all this wonderful diversity of microstructures, but for many species their specific adaptive function is still unknown. By observing insects in the wild, studying museum collections, and developing new imaging techniques we will surely learn more about these fascinating creatures and close the gaps in our current understanding.”



After compiling the huge image files, he printed them out in a large format for museum exhibitions (The show is currently in Basel through October 29, 2017).


Here's a behind-the-scenes video (link to YouTube). On Biss's website, you can zoom deeply into the surface textures, like a drone flying over an alien landscape.
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Book: Microsculpture: Portraits of Insects
Microsculpture website

Painting Live Sheep at the Fair

At the Dutchess County Fair this weekend, I find a Southdown ewe lamb that could make a good model. She's wearing a coat to keep her clean after being slick shorn and washed. (Link to video on YouTube)

The limited palette of gouache includes white, yellow ochre, ultramarine blue, purple, and red. I skip the drawing stage and dive right in with the brush, working out the big shapes immediately. 

The great thing about gouache is that if I find a mistake in my reckoning, I can easily fix it as I go.

The painting takes a little over an hour, compressed into about a minute of time in the time lapse sequence above. 

I'm using a new camera, the mirrorless Canon EOS M6, which has a built-in time lapse function.

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Prize Rooster

I sketched a prize rooster from the Dutchess County Fair, and shot a little video to give you a glimpse behind the scenes.

(Link to video)

Zig-Zags at the Zoo

Zig Zags at the Zoo was a lighthearted illustrated feature that appeared in London's Strand Magazine in the 1890s.

The articles were written by Arthur Morrison and illustrated by James Affleck Shepherd. Each article featured a different animal, such as a bear (above), lion, camel, simian, and fish.

Like the work of T. S. Sullivant and Heinrich Kley, Shepherd's drawings show the animals in different anthropomorphic guises, clearly based on observation.
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Find Out More
Zig Zags at the Zoo Strand Magazine (free download at Archive.org)
All the articles collected on Project Gutenberg
J.A. Shepherd in the blog Yesterday's Papers

Series on Anthropomorphism on GurneyJourney

Part 1: Antropomorphic Absurdities

Part 2: Humanization

Part 3: Near Relations

Part 4: Animalmorphism