Swimming in a Fish Tank

To a fish, the tank is the universe.

Kalie's Questions

James Gurney. Photo by Doug Baz

Kalie R., an art student, interviewed me for a school project. Here are some of her questions and my answers:

What aspect of your job do you like the most? The least?
I like it all, truly. If you want to run an independent freelancer / self-publishing business, you have to be interested in all aspects of painting, teaching, social media, writing, marketing, and even mailing out orders.

What are 3-5 practical skills that you find most useful?
In addition to the art skills, it really helps to know how to write clearly, how to use a digital camera, and how to shoot and edit video.

What are some of the difficulties you've had working in this field?
If you're self-employed, as I've been for almost 40 years, the sources of income change from decade to decade. Art directors move on, publishers go out of business, and technologies change. That's OK, because new opportunities are always emerging, but we have to jump from one horse to another without dismounting. And we have to decide what what to embrace and what to discard.

What advice can you give on setting professional goals?
• Set achievable short-term goals, such as daily or weekly "Do Lists."
• Write down the long-range goals and start working toward them.
• If something seems intimidatingly difficult, break it down into smaller, achievable steps.
• Once you start something that you know is important, finish it.

What advice do you have on handling rejection and failure?
If you've been rejected, and the goal is important, keep trying. But you should always ask yourself if getting through someone else's gate is the best path. You may want to make your own gate.

If you failed, you probably didn't do enough research or testing. Learn from your mistake and try again smarter next time.

Do you have anything to add?
Do you remember that feeling you had when you were 17 years old, making art for the sheer joy and mystery of it? Try to arrange your life so you can continue living in that feeling, even with all the hassles that a professional life will toss at you. Make sure you have fun doing art. We're lucky to be artists.

Who else could I speak with to gain information? Could you give me their name?
It depends what information you want. You can contact people who work at museums or libraries if you want to know more about science-based art. Do your research first online before you contact an expert so you know what to ask.

Creating Sculptures from 2D Videos

Animators, athletes, and dancers need to study and understand complex motions. But even when you review video footage, it can be hard to see exactly what's going on with all the moving parts traveling in three dimensions.



MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has developed an algorithm called MoSculpt that creates a detailed 3D model of a broad movement.

The input can be a simple 2D video of a person in motion. The subject doesn't have to be fitted with mo-cap markers and they don't have to be shot in front of blank backgrounds. (Link to YouTube)

The software lets you choose various input and output parameters. You can either rotate the 3D form virtually on the computer or print them out as an actual sculpture. 

The results resemble the 19th century stroboscopic photos and sculptures by Étienne-Jules Marey, which I discussed recently in the post on Chronophography.

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Read more:
MoSculp: MIT CSAIL uses AI to create 3D printed 'motion sculptures' from 2D videos
Creating 3-D-printed “motion sculptures” from 2-D videos
Previously: Chronophography

Meet 'Snow White'

(Link to video on Facebook)
This is Snow White, a mixed-breed female hoping for a loving home in New York's Hudson Valley area. I sketched her in gouache at the Dutchess County SPCA.

The idea was to practice some animal sketching and hopefully help a dog find a home. 

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Link to Snow White's page at the DCSPCA

Previously: Donald Colley's Dog Sketches

Video Download: Painting Animals from Life

Hokusai's Wrestlers

Hokusai's sketches of Sumo wrestlers are full of life and action. They date from the early 19th century and were created as block prints, part of a large collection of informal drawings known as Hokusai Manga.
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Hokusai Manga on Amazon

Previous post: Magicians from the Hokusai Manga

Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, 1760 – 1849) on Wikipedia

Hokusai Manga on Wikipedia

Art is a record of selective attention

Painting in Rawlins, Wyoming Watch the video on YouTube

Every painting is a window to another world. More than that, it’s a record of the artist’s awareness of that world. It’s a document of reality as filtered through one person's consciousness.

This way of looking at drawing or painting is based on the "filtering" or "gating" models of perception that have arisen in neurobiology in recent years. You might think of it as a modern way of expressing Emile Zola's 1866 idea that "art is a corner of nature seen through a temperament."

Sensory gating theory proposes that we screen out the majority of information that surrounds us at any given time. The classic case is a cocktail party, where you focus on the conversation, while your brain discards the bulk of other sensory information. That other information is mere noise that might otherwise distract you from the signal.

Another famous example of perceptual gating is the "Gorilla Experiment." In this demonstration, the observer is asked to count the number of times a ball is passed back and forth. While you concentrate on that task, other things happen that you might not even notice.

In our normal daily life this gating is achieved for the most part automatically. But attention can be distributed consciously and selectively, especially with practice. As artists, we learn to control the perceptual filters that we use, and we deploy them at will. Essentially, this is exactly what we're trained to do whenever we paint or draw.

For example, at the beginning of making a picture, we gate our perception to notice only the perspective, the proportions, the relative measurements, and the slopes of the lines. During these early stages, we ignore such things as colors or edges or textures. As the painting progresses, we shift our attention to notice other aspects of the scene, shifting back and forth between noticing big shapes and small details. A classic beginner's mistake is to paint the eyelashes or buttons at the very start.

Ernest Meissonier, An Artist Showing His Work

In the midst of this process of filtering attention, we also enlist our emotions, because art-making isn't just a technical trick. We may have some personal connection to the subject. We might be looking for what pose is characteristic. Something might strike us as funny about it. Or the subject might impress us as scary or unsettling. Consciously or not, those emotions will drive choices of what elements we allow to pass through the filter, and what elements get filtered out.

Whether the results are realistic or distorted, they strike viewers as "artistic" because we identify with the very human filters that the art has passed through. Art engages us in a kinship with each other because it allows us to pass through the doors of perception from one human soul to another. 

Nature Drawing with John Muir Laws

When you're drawing plants or animals, there are two major issues you have deal with: the mechanics of how to draw, and the understanding of what you're drawing.

It's rare for an instructional book to offer a thoughtful approach to both of these areas, but The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling does it.

Artist and naturalist John Muir Laws breaks down the subject with a different sub-topic on each page, taking a fresh, comprehensive look at sketching and journaling from nature.

He discusses how to focus your attention, how to think visually, and techniques you can use with pens, graphite, watercolor and gouache.

Whether you're an artist who wants to understand nature better or a naturalist who wants to draw, you can benefit from the structural insights into flowers, birds, and mammals that Laws offers.

For example, he analyzes the symmetry of flowers and identifies the parts of mushrooms. It's all well illustrated with diagrams and step-by-step stages.  

After you read the book, you'll have a much deeper appreciation of the skeleton, the muscle groups, and the fur / feather patterns on a variety of species. 

Laws has a special awareness of body posture and attitude, and how to sequence your drawing to capture it accurately. For the field observer, he is practical about what you can reasonably observe with your eyes and record from memory. 

The emphasis of the book is on drawing from direct observation. If there's a shortcoming of the book, it's that he doesn't really adequately cover the pros, cons, and practical benefits that photography can provide.  

The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling is 300 pages, softcover, with illustrations on every page. It lists for $35, but you can get a copy for $24.00 on Amazon. If you're specifically interested in birds, I'd also recommend The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds, which is a shorter volume that stays with just that subject. 

Painting an Alley in Rawlins, Wyoming

In Rawlins, Wyoming, I paint a view of the alley. The wind is pretty strong, so I have a few tips on how to deal with it. (Video on YouTube) (Location Google Streetview)

Note the pattern of parallel light and dark patches in the dirt road. I carried that pattern from the light into the shadow. Carrying a parallel color relationship like that from light to shadow makes the shadows more convincing.
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PDF of Gouache Materials List
Pentalic watercolor sketchbook
Travel brush set
Water-soluble colored pencil
Water cup
CAMERAS
Canon PowerShot Elph (point-and-shoot)
Canon M6
BOOKS
Color and Light: A Guide for Realist Painters
Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn’t Exist
Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time

The Floral Art of Raymond Booth

Raymond Booth (1929-2015) was a botanical artist who created meticulously realistic images of flowers.

He grew up in England, studying at the Leeds College of Art. His technique documents the shapes, textures and structures of the individual leaves and petals.

Booth's images typically show layers of detail, not only the foreground flowers, but the textures and details of the ground beyond. Most botanical paintings show the specimen against a simple white background. 

Booth was also an expert horticulturalist, raising exotic and unusual flowers in his own garden. 

He was an intensely private man. Not even his wife or his parents were allowed into his painting room.

His magnum opus was the elephant-folio sized hardback book about the flowers of Japan called Japonica Magnifica, which includes 85 paintings, plus graphite drawings.

Another gorgeous production is the oversize book Raymond Booth: An Artist's Garden.

Learn more about Booth's art and life at:
Fine Arts Society
Botanical Arts

Book on Zorn's Etchings Arrives in a Month

A month from now, Dover Publishing will release a book on the etchings of Anders Zorn (1860-1920), for which I wrote an introductory essay. 

It's 128 pages, softcover, 8.2 x 10.9 inches. You can pre-order now on Amazon: Anders Zorn: 101 Etchings, edited by James Gurney