Kushite King

In an earlier post I mentioned that a good way to develop reference for figure work is to pose yourself in front of a mirror and make a charcoal study on tone paper.



For this National Geographic illustration I needed to show a triumphant Kushite king accepting the homage of vanquished princes in Egypt in 724 BCE.

I first met with the project archaeologist Dr. Timothy Kendall in the basement of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He showed me primary-source drawings of the snake headdress, sandals, wing corselet, and transparent garment worn by Kushite royalty.

I wrapped myself in a sheer curtain to simulate the costume. I set up the tone paper on an easel and acted out the pose, looking at the reflection in a full-length mirror mounted on a door.

Even though I’m not exactly the right type for the character I was portraying, I was only looking for the basic structure of the pose. I could get the Nubian features from other sources.

I recommend the method for three reasons. It’s often faster than shooting photo reference. It gets you immediately away from the photographic look. And it forces you to begin interpreting the pose, making artistic decisions that give your result more coherence and impact.

Mirror studies have always been a favorite method for animators acting out facial expressions and gestures. For faces, you can use a medium sized mirror hung in front of your work table.
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For a previous GJ post on installing a full-length mirror, link.

Here's a selected list of articles I've illustrated for National Geographic:

March 2006 Battle of Hampton Roads
Dec. 1997 Patagonian Dinosaurs
Nov. 1990 Kingdom of Kush
Feb. 1989 Attic Scene
Oct. 1988 Moche, Peru
May 1988 Wool
June 1988 Etruscans
July 1987 Soybeans
June 1987 Eskimos
Aug. 1986 Ulysses
Sept. 1985 Jason
Sept. 1985 Humboldt

Outer Limits of the Pencil

One of the 19 works in the exhibition William Trost Richards: Land and Sea is a landscape drawing that pushes the limit of what’s possible with a pencil.

Executed in the 1860s, early in his career, the work reflects Trost Richards' allegiance to a philosophy of meticulous observation. According to the “New Path,” a statement of the Society of the Advancement of Truth in Art,

“The artist is a telescope…and the best artist is he who has the clearest lens, and so makes you forget that you are looking through him.”

The exhibit spans WTR’s career and includes plein air studies, watercolor and oil seascapes, and some larger oils that showcase his mastery of moisture-rich illuminated atmosphere.

Acting director of the museum Crista A. Detweiler told us that for most visitors Trost Richards is “an eye-opener. ‘How come I’ve never heard of him?’”

The exhibition has been extended through February 22.

Next up at the Arnold Art Gallery is an exhibit exploring academic art training, “Academic Allure: Art and Instruction in Nineteenth-Century Paris," It will be comprised of work borrowed from the Dahesh collection.

From the press release:

The academic exhibition will be on view from March 13 – April 19, 2009. An opening reception will be held on Friday, March 13 from 5-7 p.m. All events are free and open to the public. Gallery hours are Wednesday 5-8 p.m., Thursday and Friday 1 – 4:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. and by appointment for groups. Schools and other groups are encouraged to contact the Gallery at 717-867-6445 for a guided tour.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Dr. Barbara Anderman, curator of the exhibition, will present a lecture entitled “Politics, Practice, Discipline, Display: The Art of Academic Survival in Nineteenth-Century Paris” on Monday, April 6 at 7 p.m. in Zimmerman Recital Hall. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Trost Richards pencil drawing is courtesy William Varieka Fine Arts, who graciously loaned several works to the exhibition.

Other gallery lenders include Godel and Co. and Questroyal Fine Art in New York City.

Night Class, 1881

Electrical lights were a new-fangled invention when Jehan-Georges Vibert (French, 1840 - 1902) exhibited “A Night Class” (Un atelier de soir) in the Paris Salon of 1881 (See post below for the image). Congratulations to the 8% of you who guessed the right answer.

The artist himself describes the painting this way:

"Under smoldering electric lights, a model in historical costume poses for eager, ambitious art students. A few of them might have real talent, some could become commercial artists, but most, unfortunately, have no future in art at all."

The painting is in the collection of the Cleveland Museum and is not on display.

Cleveland Museum page: link
Biography and works by Vibert, link.
Timeline of the electric light, link.

Night Class Mystery

You’re looking at a picture of a costumed model posing for art students. It's nighttime, and they're working by electric light.



Can you guess when it was painted? Please vote in the poll at left. Answer tomorrow.
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For those coming to my 12:00 talk today "Dinotopia: Behind the Scenes" at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland, USA, here are some more details:

Free visitor parking only in lot 13 across Mannakee Street from the college to the left of the Board of Education Building. No ticketing in this lot from 10:00 AM until 3:00 PM, 2/16/09. The Theater Arts Building is at the center of the campus. Contact Professor Ahlstrom at 240-567-7639 Ed.Ahlstrom@montgomerycollege.edu

Art By Committee: Eye Out

The 15th of the month is the day for our group sketch game called "Art by Committee." I share an actual excerpt from a science fiction manuscript and each week you visualize it.

This month's quote was “I should stay here and keep an eye out.” This is one of those lines you can take literally or figuratively, and the results are surprising and impressive.

Peter Nyberg
Image
Website


Andy Wales
Image/Blog

Roberta Baird
Image
Website

Marisa Bryan
Flickr/Image


Elizabeth Khoo
Image/Blog


Patrick Waugh
Image
Website

Sean Hornoff

Mark Colton
Website

Thomas Nackid
Image
Blog


Kathy Jeffords
Image

Michael Geissler
Website
Image:

Rose Dawson
Image
Blog

Mei-Yi Chun
Website
Image

Dave Harshberger
Image

Rob Hummer
Image

And the one from the original sketchbook.

Next week's quote is:


Have fun! For next time, please scale your JPG to 300 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 full URL of the link to your blog, website, or larger image file (just one link, please) and please give me the URL, even if you gave it to me before. Please have your entries in by the 12th of March. I'll post the results March 15.

The Muse and the Marriage

On this Valentine’s Day, I’d like to raise a topic about being an artist and how it affects our relationships with the ones we love.

Blog reader Haylee, an art student, recently wrote me to ask about how an artist balances work with the demands of family life.


First, a couple of slightly depressing quotes:

“Here is a piece of advice worth having. Never let your daughter marry an artist. You will bring her to sorrow if you do…An artist cannot be hampered by family cares. He must be free, able to devote himself entirely to his work.” ---Ernest Meissonier

"If you must economize, be stingy with your wife, your clothes, your food, but never on what will make your pictures better. This may sound almost immoral but in the end if you make better pictures you will make more money and then you can enjoy the food and the clothes and buy your wife a mink coat." --Norman Rockwell

Shucks, guys, say it ain’t so!

I would agree with the general statement that you have to pull out all the stops and do your best work, and both Meissonier’s and Rockwell's legacies are proof of the value of their incredible effort.

Where I would disagree is the idea that the art life has to damage your personal life. Here are some things I would recommend to a young artist who is thinking about balancing the two:

1. Either stay single (like Frederick Lord Leighton or John Singer Sargent) or marry another artist (like Stanhope Forbes) or figure out an unconventional arrangement with fellow artists (The Red Rose Girls). An artist-spouse actually helps deepen your commitment to your work.

Let me hasten to add that there are plenty of happy marriages with sympathetic non-artists. And there are successful relationships where the couple function as a dissimilar team: an artist and a business manager, for example (Frank Frazetta or Andrew Wyeth). Hopefully the partner is someone who is OK with a wildly fluctuating income.

2. Put your studio in your home if it suits your work and temperament. If you have kids, make the studio a place that they're welcome. Then they can be a part of your work life. We used to have a box of Legos next to the painting table.

3. Try to keep normal hours and schedule regular family time off and time for inspiration. This just makes quality and productivity better anyway.

One of the most inspiring examples of an art life wedded to a family life is the Swedish artist Carl Larsson. In his memoirs he reflects that the paintings of his home and family "became the most immediate and lasting part of my life's work. For these pictures are of course a very genuine expression of my personality, of my deepest feelings, of all my limitless love for my wife and children."

I welcome any thoughts you might have, or better yet, comments from your spouse.

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Thanks to Francis Vallejo, who brought this topic up, link.
Thanks, Haylee!, and may you have a happy life, whatever you choose.
And thanks to Jeanette, and love of my life and my sketching buddy.

Sargent’s Painting Notes

1. Painting is an interpretation of tone. Colour drawn with a brush.

2. Keep the planes free and simple, drawing a full brush down the whole contour of a cheek.

3. Always paint one thing into another and not side by side until they touch.

4. The thicker your paint—the more your color flows.

5. Simplify, omit all but the most essential elements—values, especially the values. You must clarify the values.

6. The secret of painting is in the half tone of each plane, in economizing the accents and in the handling of the lights.

7. You begin with the middle tones and work up from it . . . so that you deal last with your lightest lights and darkest darks, you avoid false accents.

8. Paint in all the half tones and the generalized passages quite thick.

9. It is impossible for a painter to try to repaint a head where the understructure was wrong.

PALETTE: Silver White, Naples Yellow, Yellow Ochre, Ochre dew (English Red), Red Ochre, Vermillion, Ivory or Coal Black, and Prussian Blue.

These notes, attributed to American painter John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), are courtesy George Pratt. Mr. Pratt is a painting instructor at Ringling College of Art and Design. He told me he found these nuggests in the library when he was a student at Pratt Institute. Thanks, George!

These notes are just the tip of the iceberg. Two of Sargent’s students, Miss Heyneman and Mr. Henry Haley, also recorded extensive first hand observations of Sargent’s painting methods. If you’re interested in this kind of material, let me know, and I’d be happy to share it with you on future posts.

Hunger for Hand-Drawn Art

Children’s book illustrator Shirley Hughes, in her memoir A Life Drawing, reflects on the importance of book illustrations in the lives of young people growing up without much other hand-drawn art around them:

“It may be that picture books offer the only drawn imagery that some children will really come to grips with. They have such good visual memories, far better than most adults. It may be someone’s only glimpse of the work of someone’s hand.”

Smile or Grimace?

In the 1980s the Newport cigarette company ran a series of magazine ads showing women and men interacting. The tag line was “Alive with pleasure! After all, if smoking isn’t a pleasure, why bother?”

One ad showed a man and a woman embracing while squeezing giant, long balloons between them.

The ad campaign continued with a woman squirting her boyfriend with a drinking fountain, spraying him with a boda bag, and a holding an icycle up to his mouth.

The Freudian overtones are pretty obvious now that two decades have given us a little more objectivity.

But what is even more interesting are the facial expressions. Are those really smiles of pleasure, or something else?


Primate social behavior expert Jane Goodall has said, “The chimpanzee's smile so often seen on TV is actually a grin of fear.” Monkeys and apes pull their lips back from their teeth in social situations to show extreme discomfort.

Sometimes the primate smile has an aggressive side. Diane Fossey, who studied gorillas, said, "The primate grimace known as the threat face tells an aggressor to back off."


Humans have two kinds of smiles. One is the genuine smile of pleasure. The other is the nervous grin. It’s the uncomfortable smile that we see at cocktail parties or in conference rooms when people are unsure of their social position.

Anthropologists call it the “deferential grimace.” It’s often accompanied by a squinting of the eyes.

Above is a painting by contemporary Chinese artist Yue Minjun. Time Magazine describes the expression in Mr. Minjun’s work in this way: “a laugh that isn't entirely funny; an exuberance shadowed by deep unease.”

The Newport ad campaign affects us on two simultaneous and conflicting emotional tracks. The conscious track tells us that these are happy people having fun together. The unconscious track, which the conscious mind easily dismisses, awakens uncomfortable feelings of role reversal, alienation, or jealousy.

The conscious tag line is “Newport: alive with pleasure!” But the unconscious line should read: “Newport: fraught with social anxiety!”

But why does it sell cigarettes?
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More
A study suggesting that Americans and Brits use slightly different muscles when expressing the deferential grimace, link.

Coming to Philadelphia PA and Rockville MD

Saturday, February 14, Paleopalooza Event, Philadelphia
I'm thrilled to be part of the program this weekend for Paleopalooza, a family event at the Academy of Natural Sciences, which will include live reptile shows, screenings of dinosaur movies, dinosaur drawing workshops, and me, talking about how I came up with Dinotopia and what goes into making the pictures. The event goes on all weekend, but my illustrated talk in the auditorium starts at 1 pm and is called Dinotopia: Fact and Fantasy. A Dinotopia book signing will follow the talk.



Monday, February 16, Rockville, Maryland
The Montgomery College Arts Institute in Rockville, Maryland will be hosting me on Monday, February 16 at 12:00 noon in the Theatre Arts Building, Arena. I'll give a digital slide lecture showing how to make a realistic picture of something that doesn't exist, like a fantasy subject or a historical scene. I'll cover topics like research, maquettes, perspective, color keying, and costumes. The talk is open to the public, and there will be a book signing and some original paintings to look at afterward. For more information, contact Ed Ahlstrom in the Art Department at 240.567.7639.

The little listing on the left called "Upcoming Appearances" has some of the other events this spring. I'm sorry, the botanical illustration workshop in Denver in March is sold out. I'm tentatively coming to Toronto later in March. If you live nearby, I hope to meet you at one of them.