Video Week Begins on Monday

Six videos. One each day. Each under two minutes. Don't miss them!

Baby Mammoth, Part 2

Yesterday I showed you the first steps in reconstructing the baby mammoth, known from a well preserved frozen mummy.

It would have been tempting to just find a wildlife photo of a mother elephant and baby in more or less the same pose I sketched from my head. But mammoths have important differences from elephants, most obviously the small ears and the long tusks (in adults).


So I made a quick maquette out of Sculpey, following a sketch I made from the photo of the actual discovery. I also made a head maquette of the mom and attached it to a body that was a cardboard cutout.

Now I could really experiment with lighting and angles, and after a lot of experimentation, I hit upon this pose. It has a much lower eye level than the sketch, which makes them look bigger.

After talking to the art director, Donna Miller, I decided to change the background to a light value, which made more sense for the arctic, and I flopped the layout from the original sketch that you saw yesterday.

Even though the baby was found most of its wool worn off, in life it would have had a good shaggy coat.

For the wool texture, I studied images of woolly bulls and musk oxen. I designed the lighting so that the mammoths are in bright light, with the middle ground in shadow, and the distance again in light.

Baby Mammoth

Let's return to that series of paleo reconstructions for next month's Ranger Rick magazine.

You may have heard about that amazingly well preserved baby mammoth named Lyuba that was found two years ago in the Russian arctic.

Scientists studying her frozen tissues speculate that she was healthy before falling into a stream and drowning.

I wanted to show her with her mother near the water's edge. Her mother's trunk reaches over her to protect her, as modern elephants do. This concept sketch was drawn out of my head. It was done with water-soluble colored pencils, ink-filled water-brush, and fountain pen.

Tomorrow I'll show how I went from this sketch to the finished painting.

Art By Committee: Chains

The 15th of September has arrived, and that means it's time for our group sketch game called "Art by Committee." The way it works is I share an excerpt from a science fiction story and you come up with a picture to go with it.

This month the quote was "He stood and held his arms out before him, pulling the chains taut. The muscles in his shoulders and his chest bunched, standing out in sharp relief, and a moment later, the chains snapped cleanly."

Everyone had fun dealing with those elemental forces, and the results are wonderful.

Mario Zara
Blog

Andy Wales
Link to art:
Link to blog:

Mei-Yi Chun
Image

Andrew Walker

Michael Geissler
Blog


Susan Adsett
Blog

Honey Amplegood

Here's the drawing that appears in the original ABC book, done by me and a bunch of friends.

Thanks to everyone who participated.

Now here’s the quote for next month: "I became immediately and irrationally angry. How dare this six foot chicken with a silly red crest on top of his narrow foolish head say that we humans were deficient in feii? I controlled...."



Have fun! Please scale your JPG to 400 pixels across and compress it as much as possible. Title it with your name, send it to: jgurneyart(at)yahoo.com, subject line ABC. Please let me know in your email the full URL of the link to a larger image or your blog or website so people can see your image in all its glory and learn more about your other work. Please have your entries in by the 12th of October. I'll post the results October 15.

Spectrum and Art Out Loud

Fantasy art is alive and well in large measure because of the tireless efforts of Cathy and Arnie Fenner (lower left photo), who publish the Spectrum annual collection of fantastic art.


New York's Society of Illustrators was the host on Friday for the opening of the second Spectrum exhibition, with over 100 paintings and their creators. Irene Gallo, art director of TOR books, is visible in the left foreground of the top photo. She spent huge amounts of time making the tough choices of what to include in the exhibition, and there wasn't room to include many deserving artists.

It was a privilege for me to meet many whose work I have admired, including Thomas Kuebler (photo lower right), whose vividly real sculpted fortune teller inhabited the center of the room.

On the following day, the Society opened its doors again for Art Out Loud, a live painting event that included Sam Weber, Charles Vess, Donato Giancola, Greg Manchess, and me.

I had the painted quick portrait sketches of Walt Reed and his son Roger. Walt is a renowned historian of American illustration and founder of Illustration House gallery. It was Walt's book Illustrator in America, 1900-1960 which got me interested in the profession when I was a junior high school student, and I was thrilled to have him sign my dog-eared copy.
-------
The Spectrum exhibition will be on display through October 17, and it's free. More info here.
Thanks to the Society of Illustrators and to Jessica and Gene for the photos.

"On Stranger Tides" Next Pirates of the Caribbean Title

Since the announcement at Friday's D23 Expo, speculation has begun about the next installment of the Disney Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. The title for the summer 2011 movie will be "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides." The title comes from the Tim Powers novel for which I did the cover of the skeleton pirate.
------
More at the blog "Coming Soon"
The behind-the-scenes story on GurneyJourney of the making of that painting.

The artwork will be featured in a large reproduction in the soon-to-be-released Imaginative Realism. At the same store site you can order a signed copy of the collectors edition of the book, which has just become a lot more collectible.

Baby Tattooville in Three Weeks

The blog BoingBoing spotlighted Baby Tattooville, an art event coming up in just three weeks.

The idea is to bring about 50 collectors together with a small group of artists for a weekend in an unforgettable destination. The collectors get a lot of cool free stuff and they can watch the artists at work and ask them questions.

The place will be the fanciful Mission Inn, in Riverside, California, which seems to be woven of dreams already.

The artists hail from the pop-culture surrealism genre, and they include Michael Hussar, Audrey Kawasaki, Travis Louie, Elizabeth McGrath, Miss Mindy, Johnny KMNDZ Rodriguez, KRK Ryden, Greg "Craola" Simkins, Yoskay Yamamoto, and me.

One of the paintings I'll exhibit and offer for sale is the painting I did for the creature design class that I taught at the Woodstock School of Art last summer (8x10 oil).

I'll be doing an Explorer's Journal of 50 sketches on location, documenting the rarely seen weirdnesses hiding just behind the observable world of the Mission Inn. Each collector will get to return home with one of the sketches.

Here's the full description from the organizer, Bob Self:

This October, Baby Tattoo Books is offering a rare opportunity for a very limited number of fans and collectors to spend a weekend immersed in a creative wonderland with James Gurney, Audrey Kawasaki, Travis Louie, Elizabeth McGrath, Miss Mindy, Johnny KMNDZ Rodriguez, KRK Ryden, Greg “Craola” Simkins, Yoskay Yamamoto, and a few surprise guests. This event, which is strictly limited to 45 paying attendees, is unlike anything you have ever heard of before. Imagine having three days and two nights to hang out with your favorite artists in a socially casual yet creatively stimulating environment; then imagine receiving a gift bag full of original sketches, exclusive prints, collectible art toys and other surprises (perhaps James will let you in on a few of the top secret details). The event is called Baby Tattooville, and you do not want to miss it. Full details and registration information can be found at http://www.babytattooville.com, but here are a few highlights...

- Collaborative live painting by all of the Featured Artists
- Limited edition print featuring work by all of the Featured Artists
- V.I.P. preview of “Son of Baby Tattooville” museum exhibition
- Dr. Sketchy’s life drawing salon with Featured Artists
- ‘round-the-clock art and entertainment
- Accommodations at Southern California’s most visually stunning hotel
- Multiple meals including a spectacular Sunday brunch
- Did we mention the jaw-dropping gift bag?

Baby Tattooville 2009 is taking place October 2-4 at the historic Mission Inn in Riverside, California. It is truly an experience beyond your imagination. Fewer than 10 tickets remain available, and the event is only two weeks away. Register now at http://www.babytattooville.com.

-----
There are still a few spots left for collectors to join the fun. Sign up soon; they'll go quickly.
BoingBoing piece.
BabyTattooville.
Photo credit: Cal State Riverside

Gryposaurus, Part 2

With the maquette described in yesterday's post, I went outside and set it up on a piece of filmmaker's grip equipment called a C-stand. Now I could experiment both with different angles and different light directions and see exactly what was happening with the shadows.


I found some very tiny leaves and put them in the dinosaur's mouth. I wanted to see real leaves to study the transmitted light. I also went to a botanical garden to photograph magnolia leaves, and used those leaf shapes for reference.

Here's the final painting in oil on illustration board. I concentrated detail and dark accents around the eye and the tongue, which in the maquette is curling back to grab the leaves.

The far forest goes way out of focus to subconsciously suggest that this is a wildlife photo. Technically I handled this with white nylon flat brushes after a bristle block-in.

Shallow depth of field is common in wildlife photographs because they are usually shot with telephoto lenses, which have a very narrow focal plane.

I also used an effect called "bokeh," which I haven't really defined yet on the blog. Bokeh (Wikipedia explanation here) is that cool photographic effect where far away bright highlights or sky holes become circles that increase in size with distance.

Even though I'm a traditional painter, I'm using a lot of photographic effects here quite deliberately to create a photographic impression and to blend the images naturally in Ranger Rick. Although I used those effects, I didn't trace the reference photos because there were a million ways I wanted to improve on them.

A lot of what I've learned about light and color and vision has come from my conversations with professional photographers, who think about imagemaking a little differently than artists usually do. Hope all this stuff isn't too dry and technical.
------
I'll be heading into New York City today for the Spectrum opening and Art Out Loud, so probably won't post tomorrow.

Gryposaurus, Part 1

Today we continue the behind the scenes look at the new paintings for the October issue of Ranger Rick magazine.

The next creature I needed to visualize was a duck-billed dinosaur called a Gryposaurus (and I misspelled the name). As you can see from my colored pencil sketch, I wasn't too sure what the forms would look like. Even though I was looking at lots of fossils, he looks lumpy and unconvincing. If I went ahead on the final painting, it would only have looked about 10% better.

I think you really learn a form through your fingers (that's why I love museums that have casts of great sculptures that you can run your hands over). By making a tiny sculpture of this particular dinosaur, using Fimo over tin foil and armature wire, I came to know my subject.

I kept checking it against the drawing. That nasal bone is not quite high enough.

I painted it with acrylic, darkening around the eyes. Many animals have dark color around their eyes for the same reason that football players smudge stuff around their eyes: to cut down on glare.

Tomorrow I'll show you how I photographed the maquette and proceeded with the painting.

Titanoboa, Part 2

The next step in the painting of the giant fossil snake was to make a maquette of the snake and the croc out of Sculpey, painted in acrylic. It only took a few hours to do this rough model, but without this step I never would have understood how the forms needed to wrap around each other.

I set up the maquette in a tiny diorama, with a rock and some sticks that I found in the backyard.

The wrestling reptiles are sitting half submerged in a take-out food container which I painted black inside and filled with muddy water. The background is a piece of mat board.

I lit the maquette with a theater spotlight and shot it with a Canon Digital Rebel single lens reflex camera and printed out several variations.

With that information, combined with many photographs of living snakes, I proceeded with the final pencil drawing and then the painting. For more info on this procedure, check out these earlier posts “Technique Nuts and Bolts” “Utopiales Line Drawing.”

Here’s the painting in progress. The pencil drawing shows through in the lower area.

And the final painting, 14 x 19 inches, finished five days after starting the maquette. By contrast to the Cumberland painting, this painting went together pretty briskly. Inset in the painting is the page layout as it will appear in the October issue of Ranger Rick magazine.

I find that the greatest value of the maquette in a case like this is in providing little accidents of cast shadows, like the hand of the dying croc on the snake’s neck, and the tail’s shadow crossing the snake's body farther down. It also helped in the placement of the highlights, something that can be tricky to guess at on an organic form.

Those little unexpected nuances are almost impossible (for me) to invent out of pure imagination but they give the ring of truth that I believe is vital in a piece like this.