Nature Drawing with John Muir Laws

When you're drawing plants or animals, there are two major issues you have deal with: the mechanics of how to draw, and the understanding of what you're drawing.

It's rare for an instructional book to offer a thoughtful approach to both of these areas, but The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling does it.

Artist and naturalist John Muir Laws breaks down the subject with a different sub-topic on each page, taking a fresh, comprehensive look at sketching and journaling from nature.

He discusses how to focus your attention, how to think visually, and techniques you can use with pens, graphite, watercolor and gouache.

Whether you're an artist who wants to understand nature better or a naturalist who wants to draw, you can benefit from the structural insights into flowers, birds, and mammals that Laws offers.

For example, he analyzes the symmetry of flowers and identifies the parts of mushrooms. It's all well illustrated with diagrams and step-by-step stages.  

After you read the book, you'll have a much deeper appreciation of the skeleton, the muscle groups, and the fur / feather patterns on a variety of species. 

Laws has a special awareness of body posture and attitude, and how to sequence your drawing to capture it accurately. For the field observer, he is practical about what you can reasonably observe with your eyes and record from memory. 

The emphasis of the book is on drawing from direct observation. If there's a shortcoming of the book, it's that he doesn't really adequately cover the pros, cons, and practical benefits that photography can provide.  

The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling is 300 pages, softcover, with illustrations on every page. It lists for $35, but you can get a copy for $24.00 on Amazon. If you're specifically interested in birds, I'd also recommend The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds, which is a shorter volume that stays with just that subject. 

Haddon Sundblom Book Review

A new monograph on the art of Haddon Sundblom (1899-1976) is now available.

Sundblom was dominant in the field of advertising illustration, expressing the exuberance and confidence of mid-20th-century American society.

The 224-page hardback monograph continues the splendid series from the Illustrated Press spotlighting notable American illustrators.



Born of Swedish immigrants, Sundblom's cheerful, colorful oil paintings were influenced by Anders Zorn and John Singer Sargent. He was a famously fast painter, producing complete illustrations alla prima.



He is best known for his portrayals of Santa Claus for Coca-Cola, basing the character described in Clement Moore's original poem, but making the character more human-sized and rosy-cheeked. His neighbor posed for many years, and later the artist used his own face as reference.



In addition to his advertising art, Sundblom made significant contributions in the field of dramatic story illustrations. He also influenced a generation of other illustrators in the Chicago area. His circle of friends, colleagues, and students included Harry Anderson, Andrew Loomis, and Gil Elvgren.



The book has a brief biography and 300 illustrations taken from both original art and tear sheets.

224 pages, 9x12 inches, hardcover with dust jacket. $44.95 (U.S.)
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Resources
Haddon Sundblom on Wikipedia
You can get The Art of Haddon Sundblom at Amazon
The standard edition also available at the publisher's website
You can preview the book online here
Another book: Dream of Santa: Haddon Sundblom's Advertising Paintings for Christmas, 1932-1964
Magazine: IIllustration Magazine with features on Haddon Sundblom, James Avati, and Jack Faragasso

Review of 'History of Illustration'

Longtime readers of this blog may recall a post way back in 2011 where I pointed out that there is no book on the history of illustration, and there ought to be one. It's such a big topic that no one dared to attempt it before.

Since then, a team of college professors, museum curators, illustrators, collectors, and historians divided up the gigantic task of writing one. There were long debates in group emails about how to define illustration, and how far back to take the story. Should non-western image-making traditions be included? Who would write about them? How much academic theory should there be, compared to biographical detail or stylistic analysis? Should the book be lavishly illustrated, or should the pictures exist in a digital supplement to the printed book?

The team opted to define illustration broadly as 'visual communication through pictorial means,' and they decided to encompass a vast scope of history, from cave paintings to the digital age, as well as a worldwide geographic reach.


I was skeptical at first that such a wide-angle approach to the topic was even possible, given the risk of skimming too lightly over the universe of information. I was also worried that it would narrow the coverage on any given subject (such as Golden Age American illustration) to such brief coverage that it wouldn't be deep enough. I was also frankly dubious about a book led by academics, who often obscure a topic by burdening straightforward facts with political agendas.


But I think they largely avoided those pitfalls and came up with a book that's authoritative, encompassing, and yet still accessible, with something to satisfy the eye and the mind of almost any reader. History of Illustration is a monumental survey of the art of the visual communicator. It's a good thing that the book is tailored for college classes, because professors can assign it for a variety of visual studies classes, and illustration majors can at last have a printed history of their own vocation. The book is also a must-buy for libraries, since it fills a very large gap. For aficionados, it's a celebration of visual culture in all its variety. There's no other book like it.


There are forty-nine contributors, each an expert on their topic. Each is given a chance to explore his or her subject in a series of deep-dive chapters and spotlight articles. For example, Illustration historian Alice Carter oversees the chapter about "British Fantasy and Children's Book Illustration, 1650-1920" and David M. Mazierski, an expert in biomedical communication, writes a section about "Medical Illustration after Gray's Anatomy: 1859 to the present."

The book looks at the illustrator's work in pre-print cultures, not only in Europe, but in China, India, Latin America, and Africa. After the development of print, literacy, and mass media, illustration reached with a wide audience, and the authors chronicle the rise of the illustrated magazines, the children's picture books, wartime propaganda posters, popular and pulp magazines, and underground comix.

History of Illustration is published by Bloomsbury, a leading textbook publisher. There are 870 illustrations, mostly printed quarter-page size and in color. The book comes as a hardcover, softcover, and e-book, 554 pages, 9 x 12 inches, and it's priced at around $200 for the hardback and $90 for the softcover, which is par for the course as textbooks go, but a high price for art students and general readers.
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History of Illustration, 554 pages, 870 illustrations, 9 x 12 inches, full color.

 If you're primarily interested in American illustration history, I think the best book is Walt Reed's "Illustrator in America," which is really a biographical survey.  and Susan Meyer's "America's Great Illustrators," which focuses on a few of the leading Golden Age-ers. ---

Book Review: Homer and the Camera

A new exhibition called ‘Winslow Homer and the Camera: Photography and the Art of Painting’ opens this Saturday at Bowdoin College in Maine.

The show and the associated catalog examine the longstanding engagement of Winslow Homer (1836-1910) with various aspects of photography: its purely visual effects, its usefulness as a picture-making tool, and its role in shaping the artist’s public image.

"Winslow Homer, Charles S. Homer, Sr., and Sam at Prout’s Neck,"
ca. 1884, albumen silver print, by Simon Towle. Bowdoin College Museum of Art.

I had always assumed that Homer was camera shy and there are few photos of him, but recent scholarship has turned up new discoveries, many of which are included in the exhibition.

Homer’s interest in photographs gained momentum during his time as a sketch artist covering the Civil War. He collected photographs that were taken by others, which helped him visualize the scenes he portrayed for the popular magazines.

By the 1880s, he sought fresh inspiration for his artwork, so he traveled to Europe, and he bought the first of three cameras.

Though he never wrote about his use of photographs as reference, the authors explore the various ways his art was shaped by the camera, a tool that could simultaneously capture accurate information and deceive the viewer.

His painting of a fish in mid-leap was his painterly response to the ability of the camera to freeze action. Though probably not based directly on a photo, the very idea of painting a moment from fast action was unusual in the nineteenth century, when most other artists would have painted a fish as a still life object.

The exhibition and book contain other insights into Homer's process, including doll-size mannikins with simple costumes, which he used for reference when drawing and painting working-class women.



The exhibit ‘Winslow Homer and the Camera: Photography and the Art of Painting’ is the product of years of study by Bowdoin art historian Dana E. Byrd and museum co-director Frank H. Goodyear III. Bowdoin College hosts the first showing of the exhibition, which travels in November 2018 to the Brandywine River Museum.

The catalog is 208 pages with 138 color illustrations, hardbound, and published by the Yale University Press. The exhibition will be up from June 23 - October 28, 2018.
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Other books that explore the relationship between painting and photography:

Art and Photography by Aaron Scharf, 1968. Covers the influence of photography on portraiture, landscape, realism, and impressionism.

Shared Intelligence: American Painting and the Photograph, Edited by Barbara Buhler Lynes, 2011. Chapters on Eakins, Remington, Steiglitz, O'Keeffe, and Bechtle. In this book the main emphasis is on modern painters.

Painting and Photography, 1839-1914. by Dominique de Font-Réaulx, 2012. Textbook-style coverage of the intersection between realist painters and the photographic image, with chapters on genre photography, photographing the nude, portraiture, and painters who were also photographers.

The Artist and the Camera: Degas to Picasso. Oversize book with features on key artists who used photography.

Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera. Shows Rockwell's reference photos compared to his finished illustrations, as well as information about how he took photos and how he changed them to suit his purposes.

Previously on GurneyJourney
Using Photo Reference

Book Review: How to Survive and Prosper as an Artist

Are you looking for the perfect gift for that art school graduate in your life?

How to Survive and Prosper as an Artist: Selling Yourself without Selling Your Soul offers practical and encouraging tips to help a young artist build a career selling paintings.

The author began as an artist herself, and is a career coach and advocate for artists.

There are many aspects of running an art business, such as: creating presentations, promoting and marketing, handling public relations, pricing a painting, dealing with galleries, and applying for grants.

She begins the book talking about psychological blocks, a place where many people get stuck. She addresses being intimidated by others, feeling insecure, requiring validation, and overcoming rejection.

The book is mainly concerned with gallery art. She reminds young artists that they have a lot of leverage in negotiations, and she recommends having a written contract, rather than trusting to a handshake. There's a discussion of discounts, artist statements, market values, pay-to-play, and mailings.

No single book can cover every aspect of the art business. In this volume, there's not much coverage of illustration, concept art, or other studio or commissioned jobs. Also, the coverage of social media is not very thorough. It also doesn't get into much detail about publishing contracts or other legal matters. For that, I'd recommend Tad Crawford's Legal Guide for the Visual Artist.

The back of the book is has a very well-stocked Appendix of Resources, with a list of publications, organizations, websites, and mailing lists.
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How to Survive and Prosper as an Artist: Selling Yourself without Selling Your Soul 358 pages, $24.99 list.
Related Post: 72 Tips for sharing art on social media 
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Hollywood Backdrops: Illusion at a Cinematic Scale

A coffee table book called The Art of the Hollywood Backdrop showcases an art form that is often overlooked because it is designed to be invisible.

Photo: Warner Bros/Photofest

Backdrops, or "backings," as they are called in the industry, are huge painted panoramas that fill in the setting behind the live action. Unlike matte paintings, which are smaller-scale paintings that are optically combined with the action, backings are actually positioned on the back wall of the set.

Photo: Dennis Welch/Art Directors Guild Archives/Courtesy of JC Backings

Sometimes backings are used where you don't expect to see them, such as an interior setting, which can be easier than building a set or shooting on location. This painting is 13 feet tall by 20 feet wide, and was used multiple times as a rental from the inventory of Coast Backings Corporation.

Photo: Courtesy of JC Backings

Above, scenic artist Ben Resella paints a backing for Earthquake, (1974).

The book is organized into three parts: first, an introduction that explains the history and technique; second, a survey of the main artists and companies that dominated the industry; and third, an essay on the future of the hand-painted backing in film.

Even though backdrops have been largely replaced by CGI techniques, they're still used for productions that want to achieve an other-worldly look. Backdrops were used extensively, for example, in the 2004 movie Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. 

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The book The Art of the Hollywood Backdrop is a lavish, oversize coffee table book, 324 pages, hardbound, slipcased, with huge photo reproductions that spill across its 11x14" pages.

One of the co-authors is Karen Maness, an atelier-trained painter who teaches at the U.T. Austin's Department of Theatre and Dance. Sheworks as a Scenic Art Supervisor at Texas Performing Arts, and recently co-founded the new Atelier Dojo.

Related titles: The Invisible Art, about the history and methods of matte painting, written by veteran matte painter Craig Barron.
Windows on Nature: The Great Habitat Dioramas of the American Museum of Natural History, which features the diorama illusions of James Perry Wilson and Duncan Alanson Spencer, who painted background illusions both for movies and for museums.

New Book on Edwin Georgi

A young woman is startled by a sound while raiding a jewelry box.

The artist is Edwin Georgi (1896-1964), the subject of the latest monograph on an American illustrator by The Illustrated Press.

Georgi was a pilot in WWI, but was shot down and injured. While recovering, he took up an interest in art. Mostly self-taught, he began his career doing paste-ups in an advertising agency. His early illustrations were muted and restrained.

His earliest illustrations were for advertising clients, portraying exotic women in elegant settings. As time went by his approach to color became more daring.

He is best known for a shimmering, golden backlighting, painted in a pointillist style. He often accentuated color effects by placing strong warm and cool accents near each other.

He was a bold experimenter with lighting ideas, and he painted in many media, including colored ink, watercolor, gouache, and oil. 

The book starts with a short bio, but the bulk of the pages are devoted to large reproductions of originals and tearsheets. 

The book is loaded with art, and includes a lot of preliminary studies rendered in pencil, ink, and gouache, sometimes with the art director's comments written in the margins. Many of the sketches are paired with the finished work, so you can study how the pictures developed.

The Art of Edwin Georgi is hardback 224 pages, 9" x 12" full color. The standard edition is $44.95, and there's also a collectable slipcased edition of 100.

Previous books in this series by The Illustrated Press are each limited to 1000 copies include Tom Lovell—Illustrator and The Art of Jon Whitcomb

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