Arthur Guptill Renders a Window

In 1935, Arthur Guptill demonstrated a sequential method frequently used by architectural illustrators for painting a window. 

Guptill first draws the subject in pencil, giving careful attention to the perspective. 

He rules the lines of the shutters very evenly. Then he lays down a warm wash in watercolor over the wall and the curtains, and sets up variegated flat colors for the stonework. He washes in the shutters in green.

The dark interior spaces are painted over the mullions, but not the sash. The dull orange color of the interior gives a feeling of depth and transparency.

Next come the shadows cast on the curtains and the shade from the sunlight coming from the upper left. He then adds the darks of the mullions and the outer moldings with a ruling pen.

If you're not familiar with a ruling pen, it's a tool for drawing a line of constant width, usually guided by a ruler that's raised a bit off the surface. It has two sharpened metal tips that taper together. The spacing of the gap between the tips governs the width of the line.

That gap is controlled by an adjustable wheel on the side. Ink or watercolor, applied by an eyedropper (Edit: or a brush), sits in the gap and flows by capillary action.

Guptill then draws mullions with the ruling pen filled with opaque white watercolor, slightly yellowed. The consistency has to be just right. Too wet and it puddles out; too dry and it won't flow at all. When a ruling pen works well, it's a joyful feeling.

Edit: After reading the post, blog reader Glenn Tait got out two of his old Kern ruling pens, ran some tests, and sent the photo, saying: "By rote, after so many years, I filled the pen by loading my brush (using M. Graham watercolors) and pulled it across the open side of the pen to fill it then, after adjusting the tip width, dragged it a bit along my left forefinger to get the flow started. The watercolour works great."
Thanks, Glenn. I'm going to throw one in my sketch kit, too.
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Arthur Guptill's classic book about rendering architecture in watercolor is called Color in Sketching and Rendering.
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Plein-Air Architecture in Two-Day Sessions

This painting of the Grand Canal in Venice by Richard Parkes Bonington (1801-1828) looks immensely detailed and at first it looks like it would have taken a long time to paint. 

But he used a time-saving method that works really well for both plein-air and studio paintings of architecture.

The trick is to paint the large areas of the building fronts in opaque paint with big bristle brushes. Then let that dry completely. This might take 24 hours or several days, depending on whether there's a drying agent in the paint, such as Liquin or a drop of cobalt drier.

On the second day's session, you can go back over those big areas with a smaller brush to subdivide the building fronts. A straightedge can help you find the vanishing points and keep the horizontals in perspective and the verticals true. Note that underneath the vertical strokes of the big windows above, he lightly marked the spacing of the windows in burnt sienna before actually painting them.

Not all of the strokes are dark. You can also pick out some light accents, such as the light stones and the insides of the windows catching light on the brown building at left.

Here's another Venetian painting by Bonington. This one is on millboard, 14 x 18 inches, and was painted on location in 1826. It uses a similar technique—and it's also similar to the technique used by the master of Venetian architecture, Canaletto. You can read more about this image and about Bonington at the website of the Kimbell Art Museum, which owns this painting.

If you're painting on location in oil, these two-day paintings take some planning, and you have to be staying somewhere for a while. You can start several paintings one morning, then put them aside and go back to that spot a day or two later to finish them up. But if you're painting in gouache, acrylic, or casein, you can use this method all in one sitting. The mantra is "Large shapes first, small shapes last."

The first painting is from the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut.
Richard Parkes Bonington on Wikipedia

Watercolors by Charles E. Dana

Here's a painting of a door in Friburg by Pennsylvania artist Charles E. Dana (1843-1924). He studied architecture in Munich, and then went to Paris to learn from Gérôme and Bonnat.


The iron grille in the window, with rectangular mullions behind it, would have taken considerable patience and skill to record in the subtractive medium of transparent watercolor.

A 1915 article described him "as a student always, living much in the past, searching out the works of old craftsmen. It is only natural that his subjects should have been for the most part along the lanes and by-paths where these interests led him. So we find his work quite removed from that of the painter of moods, and his pictures depicting and recording certain real things which were in themselves the expression of the artist-craftsmen of a bygone period."

Left: A street in Cairo by Charles E. Dana

Hannibal, Missouri, 1983

Hannibal, Missouri, August 25, 1983, by James Gurney. Pencil, 11x14 inches.

In 1983 I sat on the curb in Hannibal, Missouri and sketched the storefronts on Broadway. In the margins I wrote the following notes:

A mortician told us that the Schwartz Funeral Home caught fire. He said, "It really went. Biggest fire they had around in a long time. Luckily there was no stiffs inside. Old Schwartz don't do much business."

The owner of the TV repair shop came over. His name is Frank Brashears, and his shop used to be a confectionary. It once belonged to Molly Brown's sister. Upstairs there used to be a bordello. Frank brought over the title and the deed, dated 1823.

Frank has a ham radio set. He recently spoke to Bombay, India. He showed us his postcard, with a picture of his radio equipment. It said "88s" which means Love and Kisses. All ham operators have postcards with their call letters. Frank wrote his: WØCJH.

We met a black artist named Larry Washington whose idols were Boris and Frazetta. He had a pencil drawing of a snake lady. He had a girlfriend who was pregnant. She saw her mother drive by, and her mother stopped and picked her up.

A hobo told us the clock over the P-D Sports Store is five minutes slow. 

Everyone recommends the Steamboat Inn on Main Street. We ate there--good ribeye steak. At the Steamboat Inn, a fellow told us that Mark Twain stayed on the second floor.

All the businesses have changed now, according to Google Street View. That page from my sketchbook is just a yellow leaf, drifting in the winds of time.

How McKim, Mead, and White celebrated a big commission

When the architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White won the competition to design the Rhode Island State House in 1892, they made paper hats and costumes and conducted an "architectural mass" to celebrate the commission.

They marched around swinging a Venetian lamp like a censer and singing the following words to the tune of "Onward Christian Soldiers":

"Onward, All ye Draughtsmen,

Marching as to War,
With our office T. Square
Going on before.

We are not divided
All our office, we,
In all competitions,
Ours the Victory . . .

Foes may struggle vainly,
We will Vanquish all,
For they are not in it,
They will have to crawl.

Providence is with us
Thro' the darkest night;
In our blest profession
We're simply out of sight."

From "Architecture Here and There."

Martin Rico Exhibition

The first-ever comprehensive exhibition of the landscape paintings of Martin Rico y Ortega (Spanish, 1833-1908) is currently on exhibition at the Meadows museum at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

The exhibit features 106 works of art, including paintings, drawings, and sketchbooks, with sparkling views of Paris, Venice, and Madrid.


According to the museum, "Rico championed the technique of painting en plein air, famously painting while stationed in gondolas throughout the Venetian canals."


(Video link) The show is the fruit of a longstanding collaboration between the Meadows museum and the Prado in Madrid. It will continue through July 7.
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"Impressions of Europe: 19th-Century Vistas by Martín Rico"

Article on the show in Art Daily

Thanks, Fine Art Connoisseur magazine

Part 3: How the golden mean caught on with artists

After considering the Parthenon and Leonardo Da Vinci, let's see if we can continue taking a rational look at the claims about "phi," (or the "golden mean" or "golden ratio") that has been so popular with artists.

The story gets more complex in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as artists begin to consciously adopt it in their work, and so it gets harder to separate fact from fiction. Let's start with what we know for sure.

One of the nineteenth century champions of the golden mean was German psychologist Adolf Zeising (1810-1876) who found the golden mean in nature, especially in branching patterns, leaves, and seed patterns. These manifestations of the ratio are acknowledged by even the most skeptical scientists.

Over the years scientists have found other places where the golden mean turns up. In 2010, the journal Science published a paper about how these numerical patterns appear in crystals at the atomic scale.

The golden mean appears most often in terms of numerical relations, such as the Fibonacci numbers that appear in flowerheads, seeds, and shells.

Zeisler promoted the idea that the golden mean could be found in the Parthenon and the works of Leonardo. He made broad claims that the golden ratio was: 

"the universal law in which is contained the ground-principle of all formative striving for beauty and completeness in the realms of both nature and art, and which permeates, as a paramount spiritual ideal, all structures, forms and proportions, whether cosmic or individual, organic or inorganic, acoustic or optical; which finds its fullest realization, however, in the human form." 

Whether or not Zeisler's ideas had a solid grounding in observable fact, they caught on with artists and mystics. 

A group of painters led by Jacques Villon and called "Section d’Or," (French: “Golden Section”) held exhibitions in Paris between 1912 and 1914. They included Juan Gris, Robert Delaunay and Giro Severini and several others, though not all used the mathematical principles. Later artists such as Salvador Dali also claimed to use golden mean principles. 

In the 1920s, Jay Hambidge, a student of William Merritt Chase, published a book called Dynamic Symmetry  which presented a grid system based on the golden mean. The system was picked up by artists such as Maxfield Parrish, whose preliminary drawing for the famous painting "Daybreak" is above. Here's one person's analysis of the structure behind Daybreak. 

Above: Architects' Data (German: Bauentwurfslehre) First published in 1936 by Ernst Neufert,

Golden mean principles were adopted in extremely different aesthetic quarters in the twentieth century. Many readers of this blog have encountered golden mean principles in the context of contemporary realist ateliers.

The methods were also embraced by the Bauhaus school (literally "House of Construction"), founded by Walter Gropius in Germany between World War I and II, and run by influential architects such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. 

The Swiss architect Le Corbusier, who championed the international style of building design, used the golden ratio and the Fibonacci series as a central tenet of his work and teaching. He described the patterns as:

 "rhythms apparent to the eye and clear in their relations with one another. And these rhythms are at the very root of human activities. They resound in man by an organic inevitability, the same fine inevitability which causes the tracing out of the Golden Section by children, old men, savages and the learned."

Many Bauhaus teachers emigrated to America, where their ideas about the golden section became incorporated in university art educations, where they are taught to this day. 

Tomorrow we can evaluate claims of Zeisler and Le Corbusier about whether the golden mean really does appear in natural forms such as the human figure.
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Book: The Elements of Dynamic Symmetry (Dover Art Instruction)
Book: Bauhaus 1919-1933 (Taschen 25)
Book: Maxfield Parrish by Coy Ludwig
Photos of planet, hand, etc. from here

Coneflower from "Math Surrey" 

GurneyJourney series: Mythbusting the Golden Mean

Part 1: Debunking claims about The Parthenon

Part 2: The golden mean and Leonardo
Part 3: How the golden mean caught on with artists
Part 4: The golden mean and the human body
Part 5: Last question about the golden rectangle

Mythbusting the Golden Mean, Part 1

In architecture and design schools, it's common to hear the claim that "golden mean" geometry was used in the design of ancient buildings, especially the Parthenon. 

According to mathematician Keith Devlin of the Mathematical Association of America, this is a groundless myth, with no basis in fact whatsoever.

The golden mean (also known as the golden ratio or the divine proportion) refers to the relationship of 1:1.618..., an irrational number also known as "Phi." The ratio is found in nature, and has been championed in the last two centuries, but many other claims are unfounded.

Although Greek mathematicians knew about Phi, there is not a shred of evidence that any Greek architect used such a system as a design principle. Euclid's study of Phi occurred long after the Parthenon was already finished.

Devlin says:

"The oft repeated assertion that the Parthenon in Athens is based on the golden ratio is not supported by actual measurements. In fact, the entire story about the Greeks and golden ratio seems to be without foundation. Numerous tests have failed to show up any one rectangle that most observers prefer, and preferences are easily influenced by other factors. As to the Parthenon, all it takes is more than a cursory glance at all the photos on the Web that purport to show the golden ratio in the structure, to see that they do nothing of the kind. (Look carefully at where and how the superimposed rectangle - usually red or yellow - is drawn and ask yourself: why put it exactly there and why make the lines so thick?)"

In the examples above, the placement of the golden rectangle doesn't agree from one diagram to the next. In the top example, the sides of the rectangle hug the columns, and in the next, they're touching the edges of the pediment. In some, the bottom of some rectangles correspond to the bottom of the columns, while in others, they're several steps down the base. In the middle example above with the white lines, the source photo itself seems to be stretched vertically by about 15%.

According to University of Chicago math professor Phil Keenan, it doesn't matter how you arrange the diagram, because the lines in the Parthenon aren't straight or parallel anyway due to entasis and other factors. He says:

"One cannot define an exact rectangle on the front or back faces of the Parthenon. Even though the Parthenon is built to extremely accurate specifications, its curvature precludes rectangular measurements of any greater precision than about 1%. This built-in error precludes finding any Golden Mean rectangles, since the required accuracy is simply not attainable."

George Markowky elaborates:

"The dimensions of the Parthenon vary from source to source probably because different authors are measuring between different points. With so many numbers available a golden ratio enthusiast could choose whatever numbers gave the best result."

Keenan points out that, "the presence of the Golden Mean in the Parthenon was postulated by Adolf Zeising in the 1850s, and appears nowhere in ancient Greek architectural treatises."
Devlin concludes: "I am not convinced that the Parthenon has anything to do with the Golden Ratio."

Anticipating some questions and comments:
1. Does the golden mean appear in nature? Yes, and I'll get to that later in the series.
2. Is it a useful tool for composition or analysis? Sure, if it works for you. Busting this myth doesn't take away anyone's candy.
3. Do contemporary architects use it? Bauhaus training has reinforced both the myth and the practice.

Articles cited:
The Myth That Will Not Go Away by Keith Devlin
Misconceptions about the Golden Ratio by George Markowsky
Debunked Legends About the Golden Ratio by Julia and Jesse Galef
Meandering Through Mathematics by Phil Keenan, Ph.D.
Diagrams from this, this, and this website

GurneyJourney series: Mythbusting the Golden Mean

Part 1: Debunking claims about The Parthenon

Part 2: The golden mean and Leonardo
Part 3: How the golden mean caught on with artists
Part 4: The golden mean and the human body
Part 5: Last question about the golden rectangle

Bleecker and 11th

Yesterday in the West Village of New York City, a slice of afternoon light spotlit the brick apartments on the corner of Bleecker and 11th Avenue. 

What attracted me was the way the left tree was a dark pattern against the light building, while the central tree was a light texture against the cast shadow. Since my main interest was this tonal relationship, and since I only had a half hour to work, I limited my approach to a black and white wash drawing.

I'm sitting on a park bench holding the watercolor notebook on my knee. On the right is what the sketch looks like after about 10 minutes. At this stage I'm dropping in big tones over a rough perspective grid, careful to paint around the white of the branches and the windows.

For the big tonal areas, I use two Niji water brushes, one filled with water, and the other filled with Higgins Eternal ink. The light gray areas are the clear water brush picking up a little ink.

Here's a detail of a section the size of a postage stamp. After the big washes dry, I use a black watercolor pencil for the linear details of the windows, mullions, cornice details, and small branches.

Animated Architects

The ABC of Architects from fedelpeye on Vimeo.

(Link to Vimeo video) Here's a whimsical romp through the ABC's of notable architects' names and works, courtesy of Andrea Stinga and Federico Gonzalez.

Via BoingBoing

Painting the La Fayette Statue

(Link to video) Here's a super quick demo of a gouache painting I did a couple of days ago.

ImagineFX on Sketching Buildings

The new ImagineFX magazine is on the newsstands in Britain, and soon will be in the States. It has an article that I wrote on sketching architecture on location.

Since ImagineFX specializes in fantasy, science fiction, and concept art, I emphasized how on-the-spot work fits into my imaginative painting, and how I sometimes give a surrealistic twist to what I observe.

The article has quite a few images that haven't been published before, and I hope it will be inspiring both to digital and traditional artists, whether you do fantasy or not.

The magazine includes work by the 2011 Rising Stars winners, Marta Nael, Jean-Sebastien Rossbach, David Gaillet, Eric Deschamps. And one more extra: The magazine comes with a free DVD with one of my painting videos on it. By the way, when you're at the bookstore or newsstand, look for the magazine in the computer section, not in the art section.
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ImagineFX magazine
Video produced by IFX about the entire issue,

Architectural Cast Collections

In the 19th century, several museums assembled collections of full-size plaster casts of architectural details, such as doorways and choir stalls. The philosophy was that "a replica of a masterpiece was superior to a mediocre original." 

I made these pencil studies in the 1985 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. At left is an ornate Celtic wood-carved ornament. On the right is a 15th century Spanish cloister doorway.

In an age when travel to Europe was a rarity for average Americans, cast collections gave everyone a chance to see masterpieces of architecture. They also provided architecture students with fine examples to study, especially when the original detail is high up or otherwise inaccessible.


According to the Carnegie Museum, which has a fine collection, "In the 19th century, the demand for plaster casts skyrocketed. As centerpieces of the great international fairs, casts nourished nationalistic pride, while independent cast galleries served the Victorian fervor for education by providing instruction to both the amateur and the art student. Also, the dominance of historical styles in premodern architecture required that the architecture student study the outstanding buildings of the past; in this pursuit, plaster casts played an essential role."

Unfortunately, twentieth century trends conspired against architectural cast collections. Making casts from fragile originals is no longer possible. The study of ornament fell out of favor in architecture schools. Museums came to prefer originals over reproductions. And casts take up a lot of space in museums.

In 1949, the Art Institute of Chicago intentionally destroyed their cast collection, and many other museums and universities followed suit. In 2005, the Metropolitan Museum dispersed its architectural cast collection. Two of the lucky recipients were the architecture school of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and the Institute of Classical Architecture in New York.

If you live near London, Edinburgh, Pittsburgh, South Bend, or New York, visit their collections with a sketchbook, and make sure you let the museums know that you appreciate them keeping their collection on view.
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More info and links:
I just finished writing an article on plein-air studies of architecture for ImagineFX magazine, so that will be out in a couple of months.
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Victoria and Albert architecture collection/ History of the Cast Courts
Carnegie Hall of Architecture
University of Notre Dame Cast Collection
View the UND collection online via gigapan technology
Institute of Classical Architecture and Art in NYC
Edinburgh Cast Collection
George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum in Springfield, Massachusetts
Previous GJ post on figural plaster casts

The Burial Vault

Last Sunday, while my wife sang sacred harp music with Bard College students in the meeting hall, I sat outside nearby painting the burial vault. 

As the shadows flickered across the stones, I could hear the music and words of a song called "Greenwich" drifting out from the chapel.

Lord, what a thoughtless wretch was I,
To mourn, and murmur, and repine,
To see the wicked placed on high,
In pride and robes of honor shine! 

But O their end, their dreadful end.
Thy sanctuary taught me so;
On slipp'ry rocks I see them stand,
And fiery billows roll below.

—Words by Isaac Watts, 1719

Bard's sacred harp (Shapenote singing) club is led by Benjamin Bath and is open to all.
Bartlett Burial Vault.
Sacred Harp music on Wikipedia
See and hear a group singing Greenwich 183 on YouTube

Langweil's model of Prague

(Video link) Antonín Langweil began as a painter of miniature portraits. Then, starting in 1826, he began his big project: a detailed model of the city of Prague. 

He measured each building and then drew the elevations on stiff paper. 

Then the paper could be folded and attached together. This is a good way to make reference maquettes, too.

Langweil's Prague is scaled at 1:480, and includes not only an accurate portrait of each building, but also tiny details such as signs and sundials.

The model is a valuable document for historians of the city because it shows how things looked before 20th century modernization efforts.

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Prague's Langweil model

More on Langweil

First steps in a watercolor

After yesterday's post, Tom Hart asked:

"When you're doing a quick painting of architecture, how likely are you to carefully draw with respect to perspective (checking horizon line, etc.) as opposed to free-wheeling it? I get the impression that for your longer plein aire sessions that include buildings you do a quite detailed drawing of the architecture. Is that right, and if so, how much by contrast do you wing it on these quicker sketches?"

So Tom, here's your answer. I do try to get the eye level, perspective, and big lines right before winging it later. If I rush ahead with color and washes before working that out, I regret it later.

The top image shows the picture partway finished, at the point of blocking in the main tones in watercolor with a brush. You can see the underdrawing just establishes the main lines, not the clapboards and smaller window details.

I added those smaller details with water-soluble colored pencils after the big tones were laid down.

Hugh Ferris Drawings

There’s a Flickr set of 341 drawings by Hugh Ferriss, the early 20th century American architect. The drawings come from the collection at the Avery Library of Columbia University.

LINKS
The Metropolis of Tomorrow by Ferriss (Dover Books on Architecture)
Wiki on Hugh Ferriss
Via Arkinetblog
Thanks, Kosmograd

Saint Louis Courthouse

Here’s a pencil drawing I did of the old courthouse in Saint Louis, from my hotel window.  It was a cold day, and across the street there were billows of steam pumping out of some ducts.


I was excited by the atmospherics, because the steam added life and mystery to what otherwise would have been a fairly ordinary architectural study. But I had to make sure to draw the whole structure and measure everything out before I covered it up. Some parts of the drawing are erased with a kneaded eraser.

"Decoration is a Sin"

In the documentary “Sketches of Frank Gehry,” American architect Frank Gehry (b. 1929) says, “I grew up a modernist. Decoration is a sin.”


A sin, really? Does Mr. Gehry believe that Notre Dame would be better off stripped of its angels and gargoyles? Would he stucco over the arabesques of the Alhambra? Would he delete the ornaments from the Parthenon?


Although I respect some aspects of Mr. Gehry’s work, I disagree with him on this point. In able hands, decoration is a gift, a joy, virtue. Decoration is not a frosting applied to form. When it’s well orchestrated, it meets our fundamental desire for visual rhythm, order, and variety of scale.

Decoration in some form has been central to every visual culture through all history and across all cultures, until it was banished by the priests of minimalism in the twentieth century. The absence of decoration is one cause of the sterility and impoverishment of much modern architecture.


If decoration is a sin, then I’m a sinner. If I’m going out to a concert, I’d rather go to the Paris Opera, which is gloriously decorated.....


.....than Gehry’s Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, Bard College, New York (above), which is not.
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"Sketches of Frank Gehry" Documentary--2 minute trailer 
Notre Dame Cathedral
Alhambra on Wikipedia
Parthenon on Wikipedia
Frank Gehry on Wikipedia
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addendum: Adolf Loos's 1908 essay "Ornament and Crime" on Wikipedia
Thanks, Digitect and Christoph Heuer