Tonal Study in Pencil

It doesn't take very long to do a preliminary tonal study, but the time spent pays big dividends. Here's a small pencil sketch that I did in preparation for a painting in Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara. 

For example, the tonal study helped me plan the dark area behind the light feathered dinosaur in the lower right, and it helped me work out the chiaroscuro of the bearded farmer.

Once I get into the details of the painting, I'm making decisions at a more micro level. Without that tonal study, it's hard to see the big picture. 

The original pencil tonal study appears in The Art of James Gurney exhibit at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia through November 16.

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More about various kinds of preliminary drawings in my book Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist

Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara on Amazon

U.S. customers can get signed copies of both books from my website store.

Organist

When he was about seven, my son did a sketch of me as human on the top half, fused to a drawing table on the bottom half, as if the table and I were joined into one larger organism.

I took that as a cue to break out of the studio once in a while and play with the kids.

I'm thinking about my son's sketch when I do this little painting of an organist. I want to dissolve the boundaries between the figure and the organ until they blend together. 

The parts of the scene I want to keep crisp and sharp are the forehead, the necktie and the sheet music. Everything else is sacrificed to be darker and softer.

Since this is water media, and since I'm painting during a church service, these wet-into-wet washes are a little tricky. Can't be shuffling through the metal pencil box. I have to hold the clear and the black water brushes in the left hand, along with a three watercolor pencils: russet, bright red, and black, and switch them back and forth quickly while the page stays wet.

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19th Century Art Theory of Sacrifices

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Spectrum 22: Contemporary Fantastic Art

Spectrum 22 has just arrived in the mailbox and in the bookstores. Each year, Spectrum gathers together a broad array of imaginative realism—or "contemporary fantastic art"—into a large hardbound book.

The artwork includes fantasy, science fiction, comics, paleo-art, concept art, and sculpture. A professional jury selects the work. There's a healthy balance between digital and hand-made artwork. I'm thrilled that a couple of my dinosaur-science paintings are part of this edition.

The Call for Entries has just been announced for the next one, Spectrum 23. The deadline is January 25, 2016. Even though the competition is challenging, I recommend entering because the visibility is good, the entry costs are reasonable, and it's good company to be in.

The judges for Spectrum 23 will include some of the top imaginative creators in the field, including David Palumbo, Cynthia Sheppard, Kirk Thatcher, Charlie Wen, and Terryl Whitlatch.

EVENT NOTICE. There will be a Spectrum 22 book signing in San Francisco on November 13th with over twenty artists at the Academy of Art University at 79 New Montgomery in San Francisco, California from 7:00 to 9:00 P.M.
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Spectrum 22: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art (Amazon link) is hardbound, 9 x 12 inches, 304 pages.
Spectrum website
Call for Entries info

Six-Word Story Challenge

According to legend, Ernest Hemingway once accepted a challenge to tell a story using just six words. He wrote: "For sale: baby shoes. Never worn." 

For the next GurneyJourney challenge, I invite you to invent a six word story and combine it with a drawing or painting. 

Chance meeting. Awkward silence. The weather.

In just six carefully-chosen words, you can introduce characters and add the hint of backstory, foreshadowing, surprise, mystery, revelation, or resolution. The illustration can give context to your story or expand it in a new direction. You'll know if it works if fireworks go off in your head.

Here are a few more six-word stories that Jeanette and I came up with:

He dug until he fell through.

"Let's see what we ran over."

"Why are they selling my stuff?"

"Oops. It was a bearing wall."

"One gallon and a can, please."

Guidelines:
1. Free to enter. Deadline is midnight, December 31.
2. The story must be original and the words must be hand-lettered within the image.
3. The image may be created with any handmade medium, such as pencil, pen, marker, watercolor, oil or gouache.
4. The image can be created either from observation or imagination.
5. You can collaborate with a writer, but enter it under one of your names.
6. Upload your entry to this special Facebook event page. If you don't have a Facebook account, ask a friend to use theirs.
7. If you want, you can also also upload to Instagram and Twitter with the hashtag #sixwordstorychallenge
8. You can write your story in a language other than English, but please give the best translation you can (the translation doesn't have to be exactly six words).
9. Submit only one example. If you have submitted one and then come up with a better one later, delete all but your best.
10. I'll pick my five favorites. Each of the five winners gets a free video download, a Department of Art patch, and the work posted on GurneyJourney.
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Inspiration:
There's a book of examples called Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure
There's also a website SixWordStories.net 
The urban legend of the Hemingway story.

Painting Mermaids at MICA

Patrick O'Brien, a professor of Illustration at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), has redesigned his “Oil Painting for Illustrators” class to appeal to the new generation of illustration students, calling it “Creature Creation Workshop.”

 

They started by painting from dinosaur maquettes to get used to visualizing a creature in a setting with believable light. 

Then they moved on to mermaids. The students looked at how mermaids have been portrayed in art history, and then did lots of sketches from their imagination.

They brought in a female model to hold a mermaid-like pose (for the upper half at least).

Patrick O'Brien bought some fish at the market so the students could do empirical research on the mermaid's lower half.

They put it all together, with lots of drawings and studies to fit the mermaid into the environment they imagined.

They did their final paintings in oil. Not many students get a such a rare chance to paint fantasy creatures based on real-life inspiration. 

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Imaginative Realism on Amazon

Previously: Satyr Sketching in China

Related story on NPR: Should we create human-animal genetic hybrids?

Why Limit Your Palette?

The new issue of International Artist magazine (#106, December/January) has a four-page feature that I wrote on extreme limited palettes—palettes that have four or fewer colors plus white.

One rhetorical question I pose is: Why limit your palette?

1. Paintings from limited palettes are automatically harmonious, but they’re very often eye-catching and memorable too. 

2. Old masters used limited palettes by default because they just couldn’t get the range of pigments we have now. Using older, quieter colors can give a much wanted mellowness. 

3. A limited palette forces you out of color-mixing habits. If you don’t have that standard “grass green” color, you’ll have to mix it from scratch, and you’re more likely to get the right green that way. 

4. Limited palettes are compact, portable, and sufficient for almost any subject. In fact you can paint almost anything in nature with just four or five colors.

In case you missed it, here's a recent video showing a painting made with just two colors plus white (Link to YouTube video):

International Artist magazine has been successfully using the cross-media strategy of printing QR codes next to paintings for which there is an accompanying YouTube video.

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Previously on GJ: Limited Palettes 

Grayed CMY Experiment

The Zorn Palette 

Water Tower with a Limited Palette

Gamut Masking Method

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"Gouache in the Wild"
• HD MP4 Download at Gumroad $14.95
• or HD MP4 Download at Sellfy (for Paypal customers) $14.95
• DVD at Purchase at Kunaki.com (Region 1 encoded NTSC video) $24.50

Boyhood Home

My newest sketchbook is called "Boyhood Home" taken from a phrase that appears on page 1: "Marceline, Missouri, boyhood home of Walt Disney."

Previously: Titles on Sketchbook Covers

Links for: Enamel markers

One-Shot sign painters' paint

Watercolor sketchbook

Yoda Toyota

I found a picture of Yoda on a cereal box yesterday (upper right). I wondered: is he different from the way he first appeared in Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back? Have other things changed, too?
What do you think?

Edit: Nenko Genov added this comparison. Thanks, Nenko

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Related posts:
Stormtrooper Doughboy
Automotive Zeitgeist
Car Names

Illustrated Capital

Illustrated initial capital, brush and ink.

I drew this illustrated capital to begin one of the chapters of The Hand of Dinotopia by Alan Dean Foster.

Trusting the universe I created to someone else's imagination takes a leap of faith, but this was a leap I made with a lot of confidence, knowing that Alan was accustomed to writing within established intellectual properties. Among many other projects, he ghost-wrote the original novelization of Star Wars.

James Gurney and Alan Dean Foster in Tunisia, 2008

He is also a friend of mine, and we traveled together to Malta, Tunisia, and Morocco in 2008.

Teaching Imaginative Realism in High School

Mr. Seifert from Information Technology
at Athens Area High School helps out as a model.

Dr. Andrew Wales, art teacher at the Athens Area High School in Pennsylvania, says:

"In Art 3 and Art 4, we are learning how artists portray the costumed figure. As a guide, we're using a selection from Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist by James Gurney. In this way, we're learning what real artists do when they want to portray a fictional scene."

Imagine a train track here

He continues: "We're using models and makeshift costumes to set up imaginary scenarios. Students will use these as sources for drawings. They'll use other sources for background imagery."

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Teachers: If you want to use Imaginative Realism as a text, why not order a classroom copy from me (USA only, please) that I can sign to you or your school? If you remind me that you're a teacher, I'll send a free signed poster, too.

Amazon: Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist.

Read more: "The Art Room" blog by Andrew Wales