Watercolor Video 10% Off Today

(Link to video) Spontaneous portrait of a Civil War re-enactor, an excerpt from my video tutorial "Watercolor in the Wild." It's 10% off today at this link. The DVD is also on sale for 10% off today.

Modification to Southco Hinges

Blog reader Paul Savoie of Ontario Canada says:

"After viewing your latest video on "How to Make a Sketch Easel" I promptly ordered the friction hinges . They arrived a couple of days ago. After a bit of head scratching I figured out how to modify the hinges so that they can fully close for a standard installation. (No need to create a wedged hinge recess in order for the easel to close properly).



"First, the dome of the round head bolt needs to be filed flat. Use a standard mill file, and elbow grease, with the bolt fully seated into the nut and held in a vice. Once the dome has been removed place the nut and bolt assembly in a drill chuck and file a new dome as the bolt spins. Use a fine sandpaper (240 grit or finer) to give the head a satin finish. This still leaves plenty of the Phillips recess to provide sufficient purchase for the screw driver. The thinner bolt head is more than strong enough in this application since, as you know, VERY LITTLE torque and pressure needs to be applied to stiffen these friction hinges. The bolt modification alone is not quite enough to allow the hinge to close slightly past parallel.

"Second, a countersunk hole needs to be drilled into the cross brace of the hinge flap opposite the bolt. Remove the nut and bolt. Fully close the hinge. Use the hole where the bolt sits as your guide for drilling a SMALL hole through the opposite flap cross brace. You don’t want to weaken the cross brace too much by drilling a large hole. Countersink the new hole as shown in the attached photos. The shallower bolt head can now nestle into the new countersunk recess and VOILA!…the hinge can be fully closed!!!



"TIP: After the easel is finished, and just BEFORE you make the final tension adjustment on the hinges, add a tiny dab of clear nail polish to the bolt threads. This will “lock” the bolts in place but still allow for future adjustments if needed. Commercially available “Loctite" thread sealant will serve the same purpose if you have any."

Thanks, Paul, for sharing this valuable tip! If any of you would like to share a tip or a build idea from your easel, please send me a couple photos and captions. I'll do a round-up soon. Thanks to those of you who have been sending them in.
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Southco Adjustable Torque friction hinges
Loctite  Heavy Duty Threadlocker
Video tutorial: "How to Make a Sketch Easel"

Arcimboldosaurs

Chris Rodley set up his computer up with a deep-learning algorithm to combine 19th century fruit art with dinosaurs. 

The resulting Arcimboldo-esque 'fruitosaurs' have pears and plums rounding out their rib sections. Berry textures stand in for pebbly scales.

Mr. Rodley's software also crossed dinosaurs with an old book of flowers, creating a botanical mashup that's different from what a human collage artist would invent. 

There's an overall color and value logic to each dinosaur, and a clever solution for each of their eyes. The background texture is fragmentary, not quite identifiable as specific plants. And the "writing" along the bottom is mumbo-jumbo.

While it's all delightful fun, it raises some serious questions for working illustrators. Is this truly creative or artistic? How will illustrators—or art directors—use these tools? Should illustration competitions such as the Society of Illustrators or Spectrum permit entries created with artificial intelligence? How could they ever stop it?
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Here is Chris Rodley's website and Twitter feed. Thanks, Kevin Cheng

Watercolor Streetscapes of Irwin Greenberg

St. Germaine Nocturne by I. Greenberg

Irwin Greenberg (1922-2009) was an American artist and teacher whose watercolor street scenes were beloved by his students and fellow painters. Mr. Greenberg—or "Greeny," as he was known to his friends and students—taught at the Art Students League in New York. One of his former students, Ricky Mujica, told me more about those watercolors.

James: What got me thinking about Greeny was that I was looking at a book called "How to Discover Your Personal Painting Style" and there were a few examples of his watercolors, including this one "St. Germaine Nocturne." It's a gorgeous little mood piece. 

Ricky: That's awesome! I want a copy of that book!

James: I was curious about what surface he was working on. It looks like a plate finish — but I could be wrong.

Ricky: Yes you are correct, most of these are painted on thick, super-smooth plate finish Bristol paper. For a while, back in the '80's he also painted with watercolors over gessoed paper. He made charcoal paintings on the gessoed paper too.

James: What brushes was he using? It looks like some giant brushes (at first), and with maybe some lifting.

Ricky: He used a very big mop brush to lay in the biggest shapes and then wiped out the lights and mid tones. He avoided colors that stain during the block-in stage, ie, ultramarine blue and alizarin. But he wasn't afraid to use them in the later stages of the painting. During the block-in stage, he preferred to use colors with pigments that stay on the surface and are easy to lift. He would also sometimes add a little Chinese white into his block-in colors because that also makes the colors stay on the surface and therefore easy to lift. The drawback with this is that it becomes hard to get dark because the upper layers become difficult to put down without lifting the floating under layers. His way around this was to use very soft red sable and let the dark colors puddle which made great effects.

James: Wow, that technique gives you a lot of flexibility.

Ricky: He really wanted to be able to keep the painting as malleable as clay throughout the whole process. He didn't want to get locked down at any stage of the painting (until he had to). Very often he would start with a big brush and layout the massive shapes first, and then he would come in with a pencil, or if he was working on a monochromatic watercolor, a fountain or homemade bamboo pen. Sometimes he might put down a very minimal pencil line first, but only for placement. As I said, he wanted to stay as flexible as possible for as long as possible, and pencil has a way of locking you in. Very often, he would avoid putting any pencil lines down until he was sure that an area was going to stay the way it was. But switching between brush and pencil was an organic process. It wasn't a question of one and then the other, but more as if the pencil was just another brush. It's a very effective way of working. You should try it. I think you would get a kick out of the flexibility it affords. When I see Sargent's watercolors, especially the later ones, I can't imagine that he didn't do the same thing. 

James: This one of under the elevated train is such a great value design. I get the feeling he was not painting stuff literally, but was simplifying and grouping values.

Ricky: Greeny was adamant about organizing a painting into its big shapes. His biggest influence was Rembrandt's etchings and very often his most important motif was the "Discovered Light" composition device that you see a lot in Rembrandt and in Vermeer. A dark interesting foreground, then the main action in the brightest light, then a dark behind that and often a mid-light behind that. The silhouette of the dark foreground should be as interesting as you can make it. The paintings above are both built around this motif. What is important to know is that the paintings look like they are organized into flat shapes, but a more accurate description is that they are shapes in space. They are overlapping shapes and he thinks of composition in 3D not 2D. The shapes are laid out kind of like train tracks receding into space along the "Z: axis of the painting as opposed to simply 2D shapes on the picture plane (X and Y axis). Hope that makes sense.

James: Yeah, I love the idea of thinking of composition with the Z dimension, like the Dutch term 'houding.'

Ricky: One important aspect that he always related to me was to not throw away any part of the painting. Even a vignette. To make everything as interesting as possible, even vignetted brush stokes. Even a flat area should be interesting. One shouldn't waste an opportunity to make something more interesting. The objects in the scene should be interesting. If you put a lamp in an interior painting, make that lamp the most interesting lamp. Make it the best lamp. Not just a generic lamp. Even negative shapes should be interesting. Details should be interesting and judiciously placed and not trivial. He was very against dotting every "i" and crossing every "t". Windows are suggested on a building or bricks suggested on a brick wall rather than putting everyone in. More important to selectively put in windows or bricks in an interesting way that goes with the composition and enhances the composition, than to put in every window and possibly ruin the unity of the art.

James: Were these paintings from life or memory or photography? Did he do sketches first and synthesize the design?

Ricky: Greeny worked primarily from life, though when the demand for his watercolors went up and he got older, he wasn't averse to working from a snapshot here and there. Most often he would make dozens of sketches from life in his sketchbooks and then go home and use them as reference for studio watercolors. Not much different than many of the Hudson River painters. People in his landscapes would be thought of as groups instead of individuals and very often he worked from memory or just made them up. He has sketchbooks full of little plein air studies of people and groups of people. (I wish I had been able to get one of those! Those are the most valuable to students who knew his work!!!!) They were carefully observed gesture drawings that he made with a fountain pen filled with brown ink and spit and a finger, or sometimes a little portable watercolor brush. He would have loved the watercolor pencils you sometimes use.

He would fill a sketchbook in two weeks and would draw everywhere. In trains, in meetings, on the street, on line at the bank. And these quick gestural sketches would be fodder for figures in the finished watercolors he did in his studio. It was like reference gathering. While you use your sketchbook in a journalistic way, like a journalistic photographer, he used his sketch like a reference gathering device.

He didn't plot out perspective, but rather eyeballed the perspective. No construction. But he was a master at perspective.

Ricky: Greeny often encouraged us to do little block-ins from memory. He encouraged us to do little landscapes or figure groupings from our heads. It was amazing to see how well and how effectively he could make a cityscape or a drawing of a group of people from his head as a practice exercise! He would start by making a random squiggly line, and then turn that into a beautiful little cityscape sketch! Or make something like an upside down potato sack and turn that into a very believable group of people! And in literally a minute! Lol, he would have given Bob Ross a run for his money with those! Amazing to watch.

James: You were so lucky to have him as a teacher and to watch him paint those things.

Ricky: You have to understand that he lost an eye in World War II and had poor sight in his one good eye! But he could put down a figure like nobody's business. He could get the life and the gesture so quickly, it would singe your eyebrows!

James: Didn't you end up with one of his sketchbooks after he died?

Ricky: When Max (Ginsburg) and I cleaned out his studio, I found a sketchpad behind a radiator. It's great, it is a full sketchpad that he made on a small vacation he took in Norway. It's full of monochromatic landscape studies from life while on vacation many of which became reference for finished paintings that I remember from his one man show in the late '80's! It's one of my most prized possessions! I feel very lucky to have it and there is so much to learn from it. I can't wait to show you. I also managed to rescue a few of his more finished watercolors that were still left. I got a bunch that he made before he started to use the smooth paper, and a couple of watercolors in the smooth paper style.

James: Thanks, Ricky. Greeny may be gone, but he's still alive thanks to his artwork and your memories.

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Book with a few Irwin Greenberg paintings: How to Discover Your Personal Painting Style
Book that talks about the plate finish technique: Breaking the Rules of Watercolor by Burt Silverman

Previously: Houding
Ricky Mujica's website

Fade Test for Gouache

A little more than nine months ago, the Shinhan company of Korea sent me a set of their Pass Design watercolor/gouache hybrid paints to try out. 

I gave a preliminary review of the brand's working properties after a painting a pharmacy using a limited palette of colors. 

I also painted a set of test swatches. The top half of each swatch is pure paint from the tube. The bottom half is tinted with some titanium white. 

I then cut each set of swatches in half. The left half of the swatches went into an envelope in the basement, where they remained dark and cool for more than ten months. 

I put the other half of the strips into a south-facing window, where they received full sunlight. I re-united the two halves, with the exposed half on the right. If there's a color change from the left side of the swatches to the right, it's because of the difference in exposure.

The overall impression is how stable and lightfast most of the colors are, such as 880 (Raw Umber) and 885 (Burnt Sienna) below. With those lightfast colors, you would be safe framing and displaying your gouache painting even near a sunny window inside your house.

Pigment, lightfastness, chemical descr., and pigment (CI) identification

808 Bright Red ** Rhodamine 6G, Monoazo, BR1, PR48:1

810 Vermilion Hue * Rhodamine 6G, Monoazo, PO16, PR48:3

811 Orange ** Diazopyrazolone Arylide Yellow G, PO13, PY1

861 Red Violet * Zanthine Rhodamine 6G Lake, PR81, BV11

868 Shell Pink ** Diazopyrazolone Naphthol AS, Titanium Dioxide, PR 48:3, PO16, PW6

865 Opera * Tetrachlorozincate, Rhodamine 6G Lake, BV11:1, BR1

880 Raw Umber *** Synthetic Iron Oxide, PR101

882 Light Red *** Synthetic Iron Oxide, Disazo Pyrazolone, PR101, PR60:1

885 Burnt Sienna *** Synthetic Iron Oxide, PR 101

However, there are some colors, particularly those in the pink and red range, that suffered significantly from light exposure. I was surprised that the fading was worse in the bottom half, where the pigments were tinted with white. Even some famously stable pigments, such as Light Red (882 above), faded when tinted with white. 

Fortunately, the manufacturer gives detailed information about every pigment, and the pigments that suffered the worst light damage for the most part had low lightfastness ratings ( one star * in a range up to ****).

There are only 8 one-star rated pigments in the set of 48 colors. Those fugitive pigments would be better used in design applications or sketchbooks where they won't be exposed to light. 

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On Amazon: Shinhan Pass Design watercolor/gouache hybrid

Lightfastness tests of watercolors by Bruce MacEvoy

70k on Instagram

This "un-drawing" is a thank-you to my 70k followers on Instagram. (Link to video on FB)
Check out my feed: @jgurneyart on Instagram

Chihuly vs. the Paparazzi

Gouache study of Dale Chihuly's "Sol del Citrón" by James Gurney

Last weekend at the New York Botanical Garden I sat near a gigantic glass sculpture, trying to figure out how to translate it into my sketchbook. Fortunately I had my gouache with me, and I captured the whole experience for you on this video. (Link to video on YouTube).



I needed a few figures for scale, so I showed some people holding up their cellphones. One of the breakthroughs was ignoring the actual color of the background and bringing in a red-violet color to set off the yellows of the piece.
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Book: Chihuly Garden Installations
My bestselling tutorial is called Gouache in the Wild

Review of "Sketch Easel" Video

Charley Parker of the art blog "Lines and Colors" took a look at my new sketch easel video. Check out what he has to say:  James Gurney’s How to Make a Sketch Easel.

He also did a post yesterday about DIY cigar-box-easel conversions, and he has more to come on homemade easels.

For those of you already building your own versions, please send me 2 or 3 photos of the finished easel in the workshop or in use, with a one-sentence caption for each picture. I'll feature my favorites on a future blog post and send "Department of Art" patches to the ones I include in the post. (If I featured yours in the previous post, send me your address and I'll mail you a patch.)

Vintage Paper Toy "Fairy City"

Toy collector Mel Birnkrant has many rare treasures. But one of the most ephemeral is a paper construction set called the "Fairy City."



It presents a view of American city life 100 years ago. Mel carefully built it, and then we "unbuilt it" in time lapse and reversed the film, adding in a little stop-motion animation at the end just for fun. (Watch the video on YouTube)

Baker's Fairy City, 1916

James: Baker's Fairy City seems like a rare and fragile item that would not have survived with very many copies intact. A cat or a young sibling could have trashed it so easily. Do you have the only copies of it?

Mel: Yes, Jim, I believe that's true. I do! It’s not like I have asked my collector friends, as no one has ever seen this here but you. I have the bits and pieces of two and a half copies, maybe three, every one I ever saw, or I dare say, I will ever see.

James: What would have been involved in the manufacturing of all the parts? It seems even more complex than the ambitious pop-up books from 20 years ago.

Mel: Well, in some respects, that’s true. Its complexity borders on a miracle. First of all, the whole thing comes in a mailing envelope that didn’t make it to your video. On the cover is a dismal looking photograph of the whole city set up. Inside that is a full color box. The floor plan is much more immense in person than the video shows, and on the back is a rather complex cardboard stand that folds out to hold the background upright.

Jim: How do you build it?

Mel: Each building is die-cut and glued, with small die-cut pieces that need to be carefully removed. The tabs on the bottom of each building need to be cut off, as they contain additional figures, trees, and vehicles.

Speaking of complex die-cutting, every fold on every element that folds is scored. The characters are curious as tiny details are die cut, while all the rest are meant to be cut out with scissors. Perhaps the most remarkable element of all, is the fact that someone did just that 100 years ago. Could it have been a child? They are impeccably cut with incredible precision and skill. It boggles the mind to think that these were cut out with a pair of scissors, let alone by a child!. I could hardly do as well today with a #11 X-Acto blade, frequently replaced.

James: It would have taken patience, focus, and dexterity for a child to build such a paper city. What challenges did you face in putting it together now, and what does the set tell us about the child of 100 years ago?

Mel: Interesting question; perhaps I should have read it, before I answered the one above. The most difficult aspect of assembling this recently was the fact that the paper has become so brittle. To fold it vigorously is to break it. I set one city up, once, when I first got it, over 50 years ago. Back then, it was no problem, as the paper was still fresh and new, even though it was 50 years old then. But I used some of the buildings in the showcase with Little Nemo, Many of the characters there are standing atop of buildings from the village I assembled so many years ago. Therefore to film your video I had to fold and set up several more. That is how I discovered that the paper has become so fragile.

To reply to the second part of the question, I’d venture to say that there must be few children with the skill, patience, and appetite to undertake a project like this alive today.



James: Did the Baker Company make other sets in this series? Did other companies make similar paper town sets?

Mel: I have never seen or heard of another set quite like this, but I would like to think that such marvelous things were at one time commonplace. There were other toy paper villages, even older than this one. I have a few of them, one was called the Pretty Village. I have one of the only sets of that, in which some of the figures are intact. It too came with a floor plan, and was in a much larger scale than The Fairy City. It is quite pretty, well I guess that’s why it’s called the Pretty Village. I much prefer the nitty gritty reality of industrial USA that is portrayed by the city of your video.



James: The town seems to reflect a magical period in American history, when the city's streets were shared by cars, trolleys, pedestrians, bicycles, early automobiles, and even circus parades. Do you believe in the concept of a Golden Age of American city life, or do you think that we just romanticize the life of previous generations?

Mel: Jim, I like the way you summed that up, and I do believe I understand the answer to your question. You are seeing this as some sort of Magic Fantasy, and so it is to you and me. But I truly believe that when this plaything was created, with the sole exception of the elements of fairy tale fantasy, the Giants and the Lilliputanians, it is an accurate representation of Turn of the Last Century Reality.

In fact, it was an attempt to accurately represent an up-to-date reality. The copy on the mailing package says it far better than I can. It makes special mention of the fact that Wright brother’s plane is included in the set. The flight at Kitty Hawk had taken place just two years before this toy was made. What could be more up to date than that?

Little Nemo case with a few Fairy City buildings as props

Visit Mel Birnkrant's website for more about vintage toys
Book recommended by blog reader Pierre Fontaine: Paper Toys of the World

I made a friend in Bryant Park

I painted this guy in New York City on Saturday evening. He was talking into his earbud mic for a long time, holding pretty still. He didn't notice me sketching him.

Bryant Park, 4 x 4 inches, gouache

When I was done, I showed him the picture so that he could put it on his Facebook. He was a super nice guy, and was pleased to be my impromptu model. (Link to video)