SCAD Lecture Tomorrow

Looking forward to spending a full day tomorrow at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD Savannah). Here's more.

Art Crit Generator

If you're in need of a pretentious sounding art critique, try the Instant Art Critique Phrase Generator." 

It produces whoppers like, "With regard to the issue of content, the mechanical mark-making of the spatial relationships verges on codifying the essentially transitional quality." 

All you do is type in five random numbers. For example, "54321" yields: "Although I am not a painter, I think that the reductive quality of the spatial relationships contextualize a participation in the critical dialogue of the 90s."

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Instant Art Critique Phrase Generator." 

From BoingBoing. Art by Moebius 

Previously on GurneyJourney: Artist Statement Generator

Career Connections

On Wednesday I gave an illustrated lecture at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland.


The topic was "imaginative realism," and I use the term to include not just fantasy or science fiction art, but any kind of picture-making that visualizes something that can't be observed directly.

That imaginary scene could come from from history, paleontology, archaeology, mythology, or from a movie screenplay.

Since the theme was "Careers in the Visual Arts," I ended the talk the with some suggestions for annual association meetings or conventions that students might try to attend. At these gatherings you can meet many of the top people in the field and learn techniques and business insights.

I promised I'd give you the list, so here it is:

1. Guild of Natural Science Illustrators (GNSI)

2. Association of Medical Illustrators (AMI)

3. American Society of Marine Artists (ASMA)

4. Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP)

5. American Society of Architectural Illustrators (ASAI)

6. Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) 

7. Fantasy art conventions or masterclasses (Spectrum Live, Illuxcon, IMC)

8. Animation (CTN Animation Expo)

Each group varies with respect to rules for membership and attendance, but most of them go out of their way to reach out to students interested in breaking into the field. 

Bracht Mountainscape

Here’s a dramatic landscape called "The Shores of Oblivion" by Eugene Bracht (1842-1921). The lighting makes the shot here, but what’s especially noteworthy is what he did with the chiaroscuro. 

 

The obvious approach would have been to set the illuminated tops against a dark sky, and to place a lighter sky behind the shadowed bases, using counterchange.

Instead he did the opposite, placing light-against-light and dark-against-dark. One might think this would make the scene confusing or harder to read. But what it does is lend “bigness” to the picture, and draw attention to the shadow edge. And somehow it lends a sense of mysterious, foreboding gloom to the distant, dark reaches of space near the horizon.

Teaching Art in Malawi

Freelance illustrator Jessica Casner sent me this inspiring email:

"My name is Jessica Casner, and I recently traveled to Malawi for two months to teach the process of storyboarding and illustration to a wonderful group of students. My professor, Ron Mazellan, said that you would be encouraged to know that I left "Imaginative Realism" and "Color and Light" with the teachers due to the fact that their library had insufficient examples on understanding art and the process of its making."

 

"The Chichewa word for car is "gallimoto", and needless to say there were many shrieks of delight as they understood that some "gallimotos" could fly. Please know that the teachers and students are overjoyed to be able to learn even after I have left, and that you have given them hope and inspiration to create beyond our understanding."

Thanks, Jessica! I have a special feeling for your gift because my own interest in becoming an artist came from art instruction books I found when I was young. 

If anyone else would like to share my books in a special teaching setting, or with their local community center, teen hangout, retirement home, or hobby group, you can order directly from me, and I would be happy to sign it specially for your group.  

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JamesGurney.com online bookstore

Jessica Casner's website

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New Horse-like Robot

(Video link) Boston Dynamics has introduced a new walking vehicle that is designed to carry heavy payloads through rough terrain. Powered by an internal combustion engine, it can stand up and navigate through heavy brush. The head is packed with terrain sensors that allow it to follow a person walking in front of it.

Boston Dynamics

Ludgate’s strutter models

Dinotopia enthusiast Glenn Ludgate of Australia has been working for a while now on a whole fleet of Dinotopian strutters.

These maquettes are all scratch built, and are based on the biologically based vehicles that appear in Dinotopia: The World Beneath.

Go Glenn!

Many of my own original reference maquettes will be exhibited at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum show, which opens September 22.

Chimp (and Elephant) Art

When he served as curator of mammals at the London Zoo, animal behavior expert Desmond Morris studied a chimpanzee named Congo, who loved to paint.

 

According to Wikipedia, Morris “observed that the chimp would draw circles, and had a basic sense of composition in his drawings. He also showed the ability of symmetrical consistency between two sides of a sketch; when Morris drew a shape at one side of a piece of paper, Congo would balance the structure by making marks on the other half of the paper. Similarly, if a color on one side contained blue for example, he would add blue to the other side as well to keep balance.

"(Congo) soon began painting; the patterns he made were never distinguished, pictorial images, but usually of a vague "radiating fan pattern" in the abstract impressionism style. Between the ages of two and four, he produced about 400 drawings and paintings.

"Through that time, Congo developed a familiarity with his routine painting sessions with Morris. When a picture was taken away that he didn't consider complete, Congo would reportedly begin to scream and 'throw fits'. Also, if the ape considered one of his drawings to be finished, he would refuse to continue painting even if someone tried to persuade him to do so. 

(Video link)  "In the late 1950s, Congo made appearances on the British television show Zootime, which was presented live from the London Zoo by Desmond Morris. He died at ten years of age in 1964 of tuberculosis.” 

(Video link) Other zookeepers since have worked with orangutans and elephants in addition to chimpanzees. In this video, one keeper says that  “different species are encouraged to paint in different ways.”


With elephants, the handler holds onto the ear and uses it like a joystick to steer the trunk remotely for painting a pot of flowers. Above is a painting by a "guided" elephant named Boon Mee. 

Congo the Chimpanzee (Wikipedia)
Previously on GurneyJourney:
"Gorilla Portraits"
"Animals are not Fauvists"

Ginsburg and Gurney next Wednesday

If you live in the mid-Atlantic area of the USA, there will be two free presentations this coming Wednesday, September 12, in two different places at more or less the same time—so you'll have to choose!

The first is a portrait painting demonstration by Max Ginsburg at the Baum School of Art in Allentown, Pennsylvania. I've painted with Max, and it's a treat to watch him work, and to listen to him talk about his decisions at each stage.


I hung out with Max last night at Garin Baker's studio in Newburgh, New York, where Max is teaching a three day workshop on figure painting. Max showed us his portrait painting video, which documents one of his portrait demos in three hours of real time.

The other event this Wednesday is a talk that I'll be giving at the Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland, starting at 2:30. I'll be talking about creating realistic paintings of imaginary worlds, and my presentation will be followed by a book signing.

If you live in Savannah, Georgia, I'll be speaking at SCAD, Savannah on the 17th.
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Max Ginsburg Demo
Ginsburg video website
Gurney talk at Montgomery College

End of the Song

Here is a classic love story, painted by E. Blair Leighton, called "The End of the Song." 

A handsome harpist woos a fair young princess on the balcony of a palace. She has set aside her embroidery and listens shyly to his songs and overtures. A coil of honeysuckle, symbolizing love, happiness, and new opportunities, ascends the column at left. 

Unseen to them, a crowned figure returns from a walk in the forest. Evidently her father, he strokes his beard as he considers what to do about this turn of events. 

But that's not how E. Blair Leighton originally painted the picture in 1902.

An earlier version shows the girl's father with a more stern countenance. His hand is ready to unsheathe his sword. Will he slay the young man, or at least to chase him off by threat of violence?

When E. Blair Leighton was still a student, a piece of advice he took to heart was, “In art it is never too late to alter your work if it is wrong.” The change of the king's face and hand makes a huge difference. But is it an improvement? Which version do you prefer? (Assuming both were in full color)
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ADDENDUM Sept. 10: The poll closed with 190 votes in favor of the artist's first conception (hand on sword) versus 200 votes in favor of the revised version, seen in color with the man stroking his beard.

Several blog readers noted that the scene is unmistakably from Tristan and Iseult. As Matthew Mattin pointed out, the Wikipedia article "mentions several elements of the legend that appear in the painting, most notably an episode in which King Mark attacks Tristan while he is playing the harp for Iseult. But it is also part of the story that King Mark and Tristan, his nephew, love and revere each other, and that the love between T and I was induced by a love potion, resolving them responsibility to some extent and complicating Mark's options in response. So both the violent episode and the ambiguous context are true to the story. "

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Biography on ArtMagick
Thanks, Barry Klugerman