On his official website is more about him, and some of the notes and handouts that he generously gave his students. One of them is a nice plane analysis of a head. If you wanted to sculpt a little 3D reference maquette of this head, it would be a good one to use for reference.
Fred Fixler
Thanks, Steve Kloepfer
Previously on GurneyJourney: Plane Heads, Character Maquettes, Reilly and Beyond
9 comments:
I am definitely going to give this to my students and pass on the knowledge. I love when teachers share withe everyone. Most of my colleagues are loving and we all pass our knowledge back and forth. We have 1 who is proprietary about everything and we try to explain that he got his knowledge through sharing. Professors like Mr. Fixler are amazing and that is what I always hold myself up to for standards when I teach.
He has some great wisdom in the Cave 22 section. Thanks for sharing it.
Thanks for sharing this, James. I never knew Mr. Fixler but after looking at his website, I knew some of his illustrations.
I really could have used the information under Cave 22 when I was in a drawing class this past summer so I have passed it on my instructor.
Hah, that mustache of his only matches his generosity!
His resources up on his site are really something to behold - I think I might give that planar head a shot to sculpt...
Fixler has been a huge influence on illustrators here in the SoCal area. Many of the local superstars studied under him. He was no longer teaching during my college years but I took a sabbatical from work several years back specifically to study with some of his former students. I got to see original drawings of Fred's they had collected. Breathtaking.
I recently had an ongoing discussion with someone from a painting class about the Riley method. He felt it was too formulaic and encouraged a mechanical approach to drawing/painting rather then one based on constant observation.
John Asaro has created a plastic head model based on the planes of the head. I've found it quite helpful.
http://planesofthehead.com/index.php
There is probably no instructor more misunderstood by the uninformed that Reilly. James Bama is a Reilly student, uses the Reilly palette to this day, and there is no one better at close observation and sensitivity to nature.
Yes, Asaro created a planes of the head sculpture. John Asaro studied with Frank Reilly.
Other Reilly students included Robert Maguire, Ted Jacobs, Rudy Nappi, Jack Faragasso, Stan Borack, Leonard Starr, and Basil Gogos.
"Frank Reilly could teach a wooden Indian how to paint, provided the wooden Indian wanted to learn how to paint." - Harvey Dunn
http://www.americanartarchives.com/reilly.htm
Bryan you beat me to it, I love my John Asaro "Planes of the Head" it's what I first thought of when reading this post. Not badly priced either http://www.planesofthehead.com/order.php
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