New Composition Lecture

Jeanette and I are on our way to the Illustration Master Class in Amherst, Massachusetts, a team-taught workshop with about 80 fantasy and science fiction art students.


IMC goes on for a whole week, but we’ll be there just two days. I’ll give the Color and Light talk tonight, and a brand new lecture on Composition tomorrow.

I’ll also be presenting the composition lecture in a seminar this October at LAAFA in Los Angeles.

Composition has traditionally been taught in abstract terms, using concepts such as eye pathways, golden section, or balancing masses. Most art schools and books teach it this way, and I believe it’s useful...up to a point.

I’m going to take quite a different approach, focusing on three things:
1. Visual perception (how do viewers really look at pictures?)
2. Storytelling (what does the picture hope to communicate?)
3. Tonal design (how can the lights and darks be arranged for maximum effect?)

My thinking draws on the science of visual perception, and on the ideas of American illustrator Howard Pyle.

Pyle revolutionized the teaching of composition by making the story paramount. Pyle’s student Jessie Willcox Smith recalled how one’s awareness of the story influenced the choices in composition:

"At the [Pennsylvania] Academy [of the Fine Arts] we had to think about compositions as an abstract thing, whether we needed a spot here or a break over there to balance, and there was nothing to get hold of. With Mr. Pyle it was absolutely changed. There was your story, and you knew your characters, and you imagined what they were doing, and in consequence you were bound to get the right composition because you lived these things. . . . It was simply that he was always mentally projected into his subject.”

If you live in Los Angeles, I encourage you to sign up early for my October lecture/demo workshop at LAAFA.

This will be the perfect material for you if you’ve developed good figure drawing and painting skills but you want to know how to develop a multifigure scene. 

The Jessie Wilcox Smith quote will appear in the essay I recently wrote for the upcoming exhibition catalog called “Howard Pyle: American Master Rediscovered.”

Illustration Master Class
LAAFA workshop on Compositionhttp://reg125.imperisoft.com/LAAFA/ProgramDetail/3132393637/Registration.aspx

Envelope Contest Winners

The votes are in from the Group Mind.

Congratulations to Kenneth Fairclough for winning the Envelope Art Contest with the mountain riders drawn in markers and colored pencils. Emily Willoughby came in second with the very delicate drawing of the Anchiornis huxleyi. Patrick Waugh was third in the adult division with his tabletop still life covered with Dinotopian artifacts.

Arthur M. had the most votes in the young people's division with his impressive knight fighting the dinosaur (just the tip of the iceberg of his stack of envelopes). His brother Paul was right behind with his dinosaur origami menagerie. And Cassidy W. got a solid third with the multi-eyed spider and the sauropod. And kudos to Dmitri who did a wonderful drawing, too. At nearly age 5, he's off to a great start.

Everyone will receive a poster (some of you may have received them already), and the finalists will get a set of them. Thanks again to everybody for entering--I'm pleased as punch with the fantastic work you all did.

"Dear Mr. Rockwell: You painted one of my sons black."

From the Norman Rockwell fan mail archive:


“Dear Mr. Rockwell,
Let me start this letter by telling you that I am the mother of two of the boys that posed for the 1974 Boy Scout Calendar.

“This is a very difficult letter to write as my boys happen to be twins and you painted one of them ‘black.’ Of course, they are both ‘white.’




“The boys have been eagerly awaiting the calendars and so have all our friends. Yesterday I received 20 copies I had requested from Brown & Bigelow and I haven’t had the courage to show it to them.

“I realize nothing can be done now but maybe you could write Steve (the one you painted black) a little note of apology so he’ll know it was a mistake. Steve happens to want to be an artist and he has some talent (he’s been drawing since he was around 2 yr. of age). A note from you would mean a lot. He even has your book, “60 Years in Retrospect.”

“The twins never even cashed your check as they are saving them as a souvenir of the day they posed for you.

“Mr. Rockwell, if there’s anything you can say to Steve to explain this I would be very grateful.

Yours sincerely,
Jennie Negron”


For the 1975 calendar, Norman Rockwell cast an African-American young man for the role.

Masters of Science Fiction and Fantasy Art

A new book has just been published called “Masters of Science Fiction and Fantasy Art.”

The lavish volume spotlights 28 artists working in the field of contemporary fantastic art. It is written by Karen Haber, a Hugo-nominated science fiction novelist and writer for Locus Magazine.

Haber drew extensively from personal interviews and published material to give a biographical sketch of each artist and a description of their philosophy and working methods. In addition to finished works, some artists include step-by-steps and preliminary sketches.  The text emphasizes the tools of the trade. Artists are grouped according to digital, traditional, and combined digital / traditional.


Like its predecessors “Infinite Worlds” and "The Chesley Awards,” this volume will become a standard reference for the field, with plenty of useful tips for beginning artists and unique insights for collectors. Each chapter is around eight pages and includes about 10-15 images, beautifully reproduced.


Limiting the selection to 28 artists inevitably leaves out some really important people in the field, so not everyone is here, but the group includes: Jim Burns, Shaun Tan, Dave Seeley, Avi Katz, John Picacio, Pavel Mikhailenko, Ken Wong, Brom, Greg Spalenka, Bruce Jensen, Scott Fischer, Todd Lockwood, Stephan Martiniere, Tomasz Maronski, Camille Kuo, Galan Pang, Marta Dahlig, James Gurney, Kinuko Craft, Charles Vess, Donato Giancola, Rebecca Guay, Dan Dos Santos, Petar Meseldzija, Terese Nielsen, Bob Eggleton, Don Maitz, and Gregory Manchess.   

The book is 9x12 inches, softcover, 224 pages, with a dust jacket that folds out to a poster.
Masters of Science Fiction Art From Amazon
Masters of Science Fiction Art from the Dinotopia Store, signed by me if you like (send $30.00 plus $4.50 shipping. Item number is MSFFA, though it's not officially listed yet.)

Envelope Art Contest: Please Vote!

I’m very pleased to present the amazingly creative entries for the Envelope Art Contest, and I invite you to vote in the two polls at left.

The entries are divided into two groups: Under age 17, and the rest of us grown-folks. Each envelope has a blue sticker with a letter or number corresponding to the letters and numbers in the poll.


There are four entries for young people, labeled A-D in the blue labels (Click to enlarge). The ages are 4, 9, 12, and 14. Multiple entries form a stack (We had to pick just one to put on top). Please vote for the ONE that is your favorite. One vote per person, please.

The adult entries are placed in order of ZIP code, starting with one from Europe. If you click on the image file, it should open up to one big file two big files where you can scroll down through all the entries.

Part one

Part two:
 
  After you’ve checked out all the images above, please vote for the ONE you like best in the “Adult” poll at left. 

Winners and finalists in each of the two separate divisions will receive a group of signed and remarqued posters. Everyone who entered will receive a signed poster, too.

Thanks so much to everybody for voting and everyone who entered. Even if your piece doesn’t get a lot of votes, I will treasure it. The folks who work at our Post Office kept stopping us to say how blown away they were by all the work!

Kazu Sano: 1952-2011

Illustrator Kazu Sano has passed away, and Greg Newbold has posted a lovely tribute. 
and there's another portfolio at Robert Hunt's Drawger page.

Interest Chicken

This morning, our parakeet, Mr. Kooks, took a curious look at a box containing “Interest Chicken,” a wind-up toy from China.



When he came beak to beak with a bird his size that kept advancing—hopping and squeaking—his own interest rapidly turned to alarm.

Nowadays merchants call them "Wind Up Fuzzy Chicks," but you can still get them.

“Festival Day” to be auctioned

Two weeks from today, an important Dinotopia painting will be put to auction at Bonhams in New York.


In the last decade and a half, I have released only a very few Dinotopia originals. I have wanted to keep the body of work together to be available for museum exhibitions. I’ve decided to start offering some pieces to be auctioned each year.

The painting is called “Festival Day,” published in Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara. The scene shows an outdoor festival in the village of Jorotongo. Bix hangs out with kids playing lawn bowling and circle games, while singers belt out madrigals near an Einiosaurus, and a Stegosaurus awaits a game of “bucktail,” where he tosses teenagers into haystacks from his spike tail. To the left, the elders enjoy an outdoor banquet. The painting is an example of the mixture of cultures and the mood of playfulness that I enjoyed creating for Dinotopia.


The 12x18 inch oil painting is matted and framed was part of the museum exhibition that traveled to France and England a few years ago. I’m thrilled that it will be part of Bonham’s illustration sale in the company of artists I greatly admire,  such as E.H. Shepard, Arthur Rackham, Maurice Sendak, and Garth Williams.

For more information about this and other recent sales, please visit my original art blog, “James Gurney Original Art,” or you can go directly to the lot description at the Bonhams website.


Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara from Amazon

Reflected Sunbeams

When sunbeams reflect off a smooth lake or sea, they radiate upward. The perspective lines of the parallel rays appear to vanish a point well below the horizon, but actually the sun still hasn’t set.


These reflected sunbeams, or "inverted crepuscular rays", occur often toward the end of the day, not long before sunset. The rays show up best when there’s a dark band of clouds behind them.


During his sketching sojourn to Jamaica, Frederic Church captured the effect in this plein air painting.

More on Frederic Church in Jamaica
More on sunbeams in Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter

Blue Sky exhibit

This weekend the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachussetts opens an exhibition of the art of Blue Sky Studios, the folks that brought us “Ice Age,” “Robots,” and the maniac squirrel named Scrat.



On Saturday, June 11, starting at 6:00 there will be an opening party at the museum with co-founder/director Chris Wedge and character designer Peter de Sève.



The exhibit includes storyboards, character designs, backgrounds, and 3D maquettes, both digital and traditional. It will continue through October 31.
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Blue Sky exhibit at the Rockwell Museum
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Scrat from "Ice Age," TM & ©2010 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.