Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

Here's a quick watercolor from one of the sketching excursions with ASAI.

We tried to sit high enough above the crush of tourists so that we could concentrate. Behind me, from left to right, is Masatoshi Fujimoto, Ian Stantiall, David Csont, and Gordon Grice.

Hi from Virginia City

I haven't been posting because there's no Internet at Yellowstone. Here's one sketch from Virginia City, an old mining town in the Rockies. This old Ford still runs, the locals told me.

The sketch is a mixed bag of watercolor, brown fountain pen, and water-soluble pencils. The original is about 3 x 4 inches in a mini Moleskine sketchbook. It's a big file if you want to click on it.

We've been enjoying the company of about 40 members of the Society of Architectural Illustrators. Members have come not only from America, but also from Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. These artists have experience in both architecture and illustration, and they create artistic but accurate renderings of proposed buildings, both in digital and traditional media. They meet annually for a juried exhibition, workshops, hikes, and sketching excursions. They're amazing watercolorists and sketchers. More information here: link.

Logan Airport

Jeanette and I are on our way to the annual meeting of the American Society of Architectural Illustrators (ASAI), which will be held this summer in Yellowstone Park.

We got to Logan airport in Boston a little early, so I did a watercolor study of an airplane in a small Moleskine watercolor sketchbook, working across the gutter. Usually planes don’t spend very long at the gates, but this one was held up for a while because of tropical storm Anna.

Dean Cornwell Article

The new issue of Illustration Magazine has a cover feature on American illustrator Dean Cornwell (1892-1960). The article includes over 40 large color illustrations, including some preliminary work and rarely seen paintings.

The story by David Hornung follows Cornwell’s career from his early days a student of Harvey Dunn and Frank Brangwyn to his later mural work from the LA Public Library.

His style evolved from the simple and dynamic shapewelding of his early magazine work to the ornate complexity of his later compositions and his advertising illustration, above.

This detail shows his characteristic juicy and planar handling of form.

The issue also includes a feature on the illustrator Murray Tinkleman and an excerpt on Constantin Alajalov from Fred Taraba’s upcoming book Masters of American Illustration: 41 Illustrators and How They Work.

You can order a copy of Illustration 23 at Bud’s Art Books, which also has other back issues of Illustration Magazine available.
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Illustration Magazine website, link.
War Art Archives (Have a Coke), link.
Thanks to Free Parking Flickr archives on Cornwell, link.
Bud’s Art Books, link.

ABC Collier Brothers

Wednesday is the day for our group sketch game called "Art By Committee." Usually I offer an excerpt from a story, but this time I challenged you to imagine the “Collier Brothers” based on their business card. The solutions show some real imagination about the brothers and their business. Here’s what you came up with:

Patrick Waugh

Mark Heng

Roberta Baird

Doug Jones Andy Wales

Mei-Yi Chun

Honey P. Amplegood

Rob Hummer

Susan Adsett
RA

Andy

Michael Geissler

And the one from the original sketchbook.

Here’s week’s quote:
Have fun! Please scale your JPG to 700 pixels across and please compress it as much as possible. Title it with your name, send it to: jgurneyart(at)yahoo.com, subject line ABC, and let me know in your email the URL of the link to your blog or website if you have one (even if you gave it to me before). Please have your entries in by next Tuesday at 10:00 AM Eastern Time USA.

Lived-in Future, Part 2

Yesterday we looked at ways to give your science fiction universe a sense of history by showing worn-out and obsolete equipment.

But your world doesn’t have to look decrepit or dystopian. You might show a city that had once been ruled by an authoritarian central government that is now in the hands of a vibrant local economy—think of Le Corbusier’s severe apartment blocks or worker houses, taken over by people who have added shutters and flowers in window boxes—which would make him turn over in his grave.

Or you might have a low-tech society reusing the parts of abandoned spacecraft for animal-drawn vehicles.

Another design strategy is retrofitting, modifying existing technology with updated elements, usually to adapt the system for modern uses, like putting an outboard motor on a rowing dory. Retrofitting was one of the design themes of the film Blade Runner, conceived by Ridley Scott and Syd Mead (above).

For most of the history of design, people have used decorative elements to evoke a civilization’s past or present glories. This explains hood ornaments, ship’s figureheads, and the Venetian Bucintoro.

We can’t assume that future civilizations will continue to adopt the Bauhaus aesthetic, which was an anomaly of the 20th century. Across time and culture, humans have always chosen to surround themselves with pattern and decoration, and we’re more likely to see a future with layers of ornament rather than minimalism. Check out CeGeBe's description of modern-day Dresden in the comments of yesterday's post.
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Syd Mead thanks to Kiel Bryant, link

Lived-in Future, Part 1

If you’re painting a scene set in the future, it helps to consider the period of time leading up to it. Some of the vehicles and buildings might be brand new, but others might be holdovers from an earlier period in your world’s history. Surviving elements from earlier times might show wear and tear, or they might reveal changes in the culture or even the government of your imaginary universe.

Here’s one of the concept sketches for Fritz, a “hoverhead” robot that I designed for Dinotopia: First Flight (1999). First Flight is actually a high-tech dystopia, set in Dinotopia's distant past, with vehicles based on the design of dinosaurs. Fritz is based on a ceratopsian head. He's rusty and dented, an outmoded model, and he’s missing the chrome ring that’s supposed to go around his right eye.

Early science fiction paintings, TV shows, and movies often showed a world where everything was in neat, new condition and was designed in the same style. But in real life we’re surrounded not only by the latest technology but also by antiques and out-of-date equipment that we keep using. Adding this sensibility to your science fiction artwork can give much more believability.

Here’s a plein air sketch in pencil and markers of a Buick Special. Note the rust stains, the cracked window, and the fender that has been replaced with a different colored panel.

You can give your future a “lived-in” look by adding such signs of decay: rust, dents, skid marks, pot holes, chipped paint, broken glass, dead bugs, bent corners, peeling labels, faded lettering, graffiti, litter, trash, and weeds. In both digital and painted artwork, surfaces usually come out looking pristine and new, so adding these qualities takes deliberate effort.

What Do Rainbows Mean?

In our scientific age, we tend to see the rainbow as a purely optical phenomenon, or we might think of the end of the rainbow as the place where leprechauns hide the elusive pot of gold.

The Greeks believed the rainbow was a path between the earth and heaven. In Norse mythology the rainbow was seen as a bridge between Ásgard and Midgard, the realms of the gods and mankind respectively. In Chinese mythology, the rainbow was regarded as as a slit in the sky sealed with stones of five different colors.

In the story of Noah, the rainbow serves as a sign of God’s promise that the earth will never again be flooded. In the Stuppach Madonna by Matthias Grünewald (c.1475-1528), above, or the painting by Joseph Anton Koch (1768-1839), below, it serves more broadly as a symbol of God’s covenant.


Durer’s famous engraving Melancholia features a rainbow, though scholars differ on whether to read it as a hopeful or a pessimistic sign.

Next week we’ll look at rainbows in more scientific terms. But for now we might notice that Grünewald breaks a basic optical law of rainbows, namely that the colors of the rainbow should always be lighter than the background, because the colored light of the rainbow is added to the light in the scene behind it.
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More about rainbows in my book: More in my book: Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter
Previously: The Science of Rainbows
Further Reading: Rainbow Bridge by Raymond Lee, link.

Brushes

I use three basic categories of brushes for oil painting: bristles, white nylon flats, and sables. The bristle brushes are made from Chinese hogs. These inexpensive brushes are stiffer than the others, and are useful for blocking in big areas, and manipulating thicker paint.

Bristle brushes are good for keeping your painting direct and simple, with a greater likelihood of getting soft edges. Generally the stiffer the brush the softer the edges. I like flats and filberts. Brights are like flats, but shorter. The Silver company makes an "extra-long filbert," which has a wonderful touch.

White nylon flats are excellent for detailed painting of architecture and technology. They’re available in widths as narrow as 1/4 of an inch to 1 inch wide brushes for laying in a transparent wash of thin paint. A flat brush should have a chisel tip, which you can use for a wide stroke or a thin line.

Nylon brushes are fairly inexpensive, but they don’t last long. Most of the manufacturers, like Dick Blick, Grumbacher, and Simmons make versions of these, and they’re all pretty good.

For small detail work, I use Kolinsky sable rounds. They're made from the reddish tail hairs of a kind of weasel, not a sable (which is a kind of marten). They’re intended for watercolor, but they work equally well for oil. These are the most expensive brushes, but they respond very sensitively to detail work.

The Winsor and Newton Series 7 has always been the standard, but they’re overpriced, and you can get good Kolinsky sables from Escoda, Silver, and other makers. Most often I use Raphael 8404, which is fairly priced, and as good as any others.

Dean Sketch

In honor of this season of speeches and campaigns, here's an on-the-spot sketch from five years ago at a Howard Dean rally.

Jeanette and I were driving through Hudson, New York on September 20, 2003 when we saw huge crowds down by the river. We parked the car and got as close as we could. I was hoping to do a portrait, but I was too far back, so I drew the audience instead.

Dean is just a light dot with a necktie to the right-hand side of the gazebo. After his speech as he was leaving the venue he stopped and signed the sketch.