Pen Disaster

Just heard a scream from the laundry room upstairs. Looks like I left my fountain pen in a load of whites. It busted up and bled in the spin cycle. Now we'll be walking around covered in strange brown spots.

Costumes, Part 2

Continuing yesterday's costume tips:


7. You can improvise a lot of costume details with samples of fabric combined with old clothes from your closet. It doesn’t matter if the color matches or if it looks good enough to go on stage. You’re just looking for information about folds and drapery.

8. If you can’t fine the right costume, don’t worry! Remnants of leather, satin, brocade, or velvet from a fabric store can provide you with helpful information about the behavior of the fabric. Steel bowls from the kitchen can give ideas for how armor would look.

9. For simple togas and capes, you can drape and pin fabric samples over your artist mannikin or dressmaker’s dummy. For the fabric to scale down to a miniature size, it should be a very light weight. Cellophane scales down really well over a miniature figure, and can be spray painted to give it opacity (Thanks, Graydon).

10. Don’t be shy to ask for help. If you know someone who is clever with a sewing machine and can think laterally, they might be able to help you improvise a few basic things.

11. Once you get your model (or yourself) in costume, you can take reference photos in a variety of poses. If it’s an easy pose to hold, you can work directly from the model. That's how I did the painting of Oriana above, which appears in Dinotopia: The World Beneath. I put pieces of tape on the floor to mark where the model's feet should return between breaks. The whole session only took about an hour and a half, which saved time over shooting reference or doing drawn studies.

12. If you attend a sketch group, ask if your fellow artists might enjoy sketching from a costumed model. If so, everyone can pitch in a costume or two, or the models may come with something. You can usually pay the model to stay after the sketch session to work with you for reference.

Costumes, Part 1

An artist like Edwin Austin Abbey (below: "Who is Sylvia") was legendary among his peers for lavishing a fortune on the right costume for reference. (More Abbey samples here)

Good costumes can be expensive to buy or rent. And they can be difficult to make. But having a real costume makes a huge difference in your finished work. You can tell right away if an artist just made up a costume or went to the trouble to get a real one.

Abbey’s illustrations commanded princely sums a hundred years ago. What are we mortals to do nowadays on a shoestring budget? Today and tomorrow I'll offer 12 tips to save you money, time, and trouble.



1. You can find costumes at thrift stores or junk shops. Almost every garage sale has a Halloween costume or an unusual hat that you may want to use later.

2. Many smaller communites have a local theater company with costume collections. They are sometimes willing to loan their costumes to illustrators.

3. Renaissance festivals have vendors with an assortment of hats, cloaks, corsets, gowns, breeches, and doublets. Example: Moresca Clothing and Costume. That’s where the blue and red jacket came from, and I’ve used it in many Dinotopia pictures.

4. People who work in living history museums wear very authentic costumes. I've found they're glad to model for a sketchbook study. They may also be willing to pose for photo reference, but be sure to get their written permission first. Examples: Plimouth Plantation, Old Sturbridge Village, Colonial Williamsburg.

5. Big cities like New York, London, or Los Angeles have rental agencies serving theatrical or movie productions. Sometimes they will sell off their older, worn-out costumes. That’s where the doublet with the slashed sleeves above came from. Examples: Palace Costumes, Adele's Costumes.

6. Large museums, like the Metropolitan Museum or the Victoria and Albert in London have costume collections which can usually be sketched or photographed. Examples: Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Tomorrow: Six more costume tips.

Too-Smooth Tones

When he translated his reference photo into a painting, Andrew Loomis softened the edges and subordinated the unimportant small forms. For example, he simplified the details under the model’s left hand, and eliminated the delicate tracery in the lower half of the dress.

To idealize the figure, he made the head of the model slightly smaller in the painting than it appeared in the reference.

He was also conscious of breaking up the flat tones of the photo.

“One of the main things that identify a photo as a photo,” he wrote in his classic book Creative Illustration, “is the ultra-smoothness of the tones.”

Where the photo presented monotonous values, such as in the pillows behind the model’s shoulders, he activated the surface with painterly variations.

“Note the accents placed here and here of dark against light, to add punch,” Loomis says. “The lights have been forced somewhat to obtain extra brilliancy. The background has been lightened in spots to avoid the monotony of tone in the photo.”
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From Creative Illustration (1947)

Waterhouse in London

On June 23, The Royal Academy of Arts in London will present the largest retrospective ever assembled on the art of John William Waterhouse (1849-1917).

This exhibition includes 92 paintings and drawings, along with sketchbooks. The London exhibition will continue through September 13, after which it will continue at The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Canada from October 1, 2009 – 7 February 2010.
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Royal Academy website, link.

Sargent by Herford

Here's Sargent doing the Duchess X
In pink velours and pea-green checks.
"It helps," says he, "to lift your Grace
A bit above the commonplace."

--Oliver Herford, from Confessions of a Caricaturist
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Download Herford's book of caricatures at Project Gutenberg, link.
Feature on Oliver Herford on 100 Years of Illustration, link.

Creature Design Workshop Update

Plans are going well for the fantasy art workshop that I'll be teaching July 27-31 at the Woodstock School of Art in New York State.


Each of us will be creating an image of Pan, the famous character from Greek mythology.

Pan, as you’ll recall, is half man and half goat. We’ll be doing observational studies from a live human model. I’ll offer lots of tips for animal drawing and creature design and I’ll bring glass goat eyes from a taxidermist, three gorgeous skulls and a pelt from Icelandic rams, and I’m working on getting a live goat (a first for the school).

The materials list that I’d like you to bring is now online, if you follow this link and click on "Supply Lists." You can do your finished art in whatever painting or sculpting medium you choose.

There’s still room in the class if you’d like to join.

Woodstock School of Art, link.
2470 Route 212
Woodstock NY 12498

For any questions about registration, lodging, costs, etc, please call the school at 845. 679. 2388 or email: wsart@earthlink.net.
Any questions about the class itself, you can ask me in the comments.

The Anatomy of the Ear

The external ear is also called the auricula or pinna. The outer rim or helix spirals up out of the bowl-like conchal fossa. A swelling known as Darwin’s tubercle is present in 10.4% of the population.

The antihelix curves inside the helix, separated by the groove called the scapha. It splits at the top into the superior and inferior crux or leg, with the triangular fossa in between.

The flap called the tragus protects of the auditory meatus, or earhole. Often with two distinct swellings, it uses the Greek name for goat because of its beard-like hairs.

Across the intertragical notch is the prominence known as the antitragus, part of the stiff cartilaginous shelf from which hangs the fleshy auricular lobule (earlobe). The depression behind the ear is called the auricular sulcus.

Wikipedia on external ear,
Darwin's tubercle (thanks, Donna)
tragus (thanks, Stape)

Two Things to Remember

Before his students graduate from the Hartford Art School, instructor Dennis Nolan sits each one of them down and gives them his intense wild-man look.

“You can forget everything else I taught you,” he tells them. “But I want you to remember just two things: how to place the horizon line, and how to draw an ear.”

Mr. Nolan told me that it’s rare to find a well-drawn ear these days, even among professional artists. “Most people forget to show the leg of the helix descending into the conchal fossa,” he said. “And not many artists know about Darwin’s tuber.”

Uh-oh, I thought to myself. I’m supposed to be a professional artist, but I’m not sure what he’s talking about.

So tonight after the workday is done I’m going to sit down and figure out the artistic anatomy of the ear. I’ll show you the results and we'll compare notes tomorrow.
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GJ post on the horizon line or eye level, part 1, part 2, and part 3.
GJ post on the Hartford Art School.

Puttin’ on Daubs

One day Edgar Payne was painting outdoors, far from any sign of habitation. He was surprised to find a man behind him, watching.

Then the man said, “ Why that’s nuthin but puttin’ on daubs!”

A little later the man shook his head and said, “But you sure gotta know where to put them daubs!” and walked away.
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Recollection by Evelyn Payne Hatcher in an addendum to Composition of Outdoor Painting by Edgar A. Payne.