Note that the cast shadow from his arm is red on the bottom and blue above.
Here's an announcement for an upcoming lecture at the Art Institute in Phoenix, Arizona. It's open to all at no cost. Click on the image to enlarge.
The tea sank down into the cracks. I turned it upside down and let some of it drip out. Then I tried drying it out with a hair dryer. I shot hot air through a FedEx envelope to force hot air into the vents.
Then I stood it up in front of the fireplace—never mind that it was 80 degrees outside. After a day of drying it out, I powered it up. The screen flickered a few times and then lit up.
The reproduction of the various steps are shown larger and in more detail than what appears in Imaginative Realism, and I included some of the reference photos.
It's called "PanelRoo," and it's made of wood molding with four spring clips on each face, which hold each painting facing into the middle. They're available in most standard sizes on his website, but he can also make custom sizes.
At the Smooth-On sculpture products booth, I checked out a character made from “Dragon-Skin” silicon by Lone Wolf Effects.
If you sign the legal waiver, you can strap in and ride the Jet Ponies or Thundersteeds, a pulse-jet powered carousel. There was also a big-wheeled chariot and a motorcycle using the deafening fire-spitting jet technology.
There were bicycles dressed up as fish, as well as innovative recumbents and tricycles. One maker constructed giant beetle-like creatures using old inner tubes and used truck parts.
The book has over 300 color reproductions, with my plein air work more strongly represented than in Imaginative Realism.
It shows Bix walking alongside a Triceratops while Arthur Denison hitches a ride with a farmer named Ilya Shinshik. That last name is an anagram of “Shishkin,” one of the Russian painters who influenced the paintings published in Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara.
The painting also was reproduced in Imaginative Realism to illustrate the compositional device called “spokewheeling.”
They asked me for my Seven Secrets of Blogging:
Artist James Perry Wilson included both phases of a cloud’s life in this detail of a painted diorama backdrop at the Museum of Natural History in New York.
It’s a common mistake with beginning painters, who sometimes use pure tube colors for middle values and add white to lighten them and black to darken them.
But there’s good news: You can download a PDF copy of Creative Illustration and Loomis’s other books. They’re all well worth study.
The view looks east across the Zhengtao River. The emperor’s palace occupies a high and remote prominence in the center of the city. Morning sunlight illuminates the top of the gold dome and the flying buttresses, while thunderclouds assemble over Silver Bay.
My approach was inspired by several artists of the past who specialized in otherworldly moods in landscape: Frederic Church, Isaac Levitan, Andreas Achenbach, Hans Gude, and Jean Ferdinand Monchablon.
This Artistic License was made by Rick Allen of Duluth, a master wood engraver and hand printer. Each license has a unique number and makes three passes through the press, one for each color.
The folktale, called “The Legend of Steel Bashaw,” presents heroes, maidens, horses, and dragons—all fairly familiar stuff—but Meseldžija puts a new spin on it. He uses thick-paint impressionism, based on his plein air studies, to convey mossy forests and gnarly creatures.
The scene of the two giants hunched over the fire of their cave kitchen is worth the $19.95 price tag. In a “making-of” afterword section, the artist shows his development sketches for the grotesque monsters. He says he “searched for inspiration among old people, beggars, drunkards, and even the mentally handicapped.”
Artist Dalton Ghetti has done some amazingly detailed sculptures from the tips of pencil points.
It records the wonders and horrors of battle experienced by Lieutenant Kenneth Wootton.
Here is Collier’s take on Queen Guinevere going a Maying.
Two upcoming California workshops:
2. October 15, Encinitas (near Carlsbad) California
On October 16, the Tajan auction house in Paris will conduct their first-ever sale of bande dessinée, which includes comics and fantasy art. They have invited me to participate.
I posed a variety of models, including myself and my wife, and used a maquette to work out the pale, glowing silhouette of Chandara in the distance.
John Singer Sargent certainly didn’t copy appearances, as this photo/painting comparison attests. He exaggerated the character of his subject, Coventry Patmore. Sargent made the neck longer, the hair fuller, the face bonier, and the mustache more “twirly.”
From left to right, they are Hiu Lai Chong of Maryland, Jane Ramsey of Pennsylvania, and Andrew Orr of Vermont.
Ramsey’s first-place watercolor, “Storm Watch” depicts the roofline of the barn that formerly served as the studio of painter Kenneth Nolan. It’s now part of the Taraden Bed and Breakfast, one of the hosts and sponsors of the event. The artful cropping gives a fresh revelation of a familiar motif, with cool reds and rust colors contrasting with the blue-greens of the slate shingles.
Orr won second place with “Breaking Light,” one of four landscapes he exhibited showing the Vermont countryside near the town of North Bennington. In the painting, the clouds come and go across the far hills, with a variety of crisp and soft edges. His adept handling of chiaroscuro—light-on-dark and dark-on-light—dramatizes the scene.
Chong’s third place oil “Yard Work” captures the close color harmonies in the train depot, with strong compositional lines leading into the design. She simplified what must have been an immense amount of detail of white gravel and cross ties in the foreground.
Paint anywhere in the grounds of the historic Park-McCullough House, start when you hear the bell at 1:30, and stop two hours later.
I was attracted to a 1938 Dodge Pickup. Besides being a gorgeous old truck, I liked the chiaroscuro: light-on-dark on the front end, and dark-on-light on the rear end to the right. I also wanted to feature the reflection of the illuminated grass on the shadow side of the vehicle.
One half hour into the painting, I drew in the big shapes with a bristle brush and blocked in the grass and background.
Halfway through, I knocked in the basic shadow color of the truck and the building. I was really sweating it at this point, thinking “I’ll never finish!”
Only a half hour left, I softened some edges, such as along the hood and the top of the cab.
Here is how it looked as the bell rang, with final details: highlights, headlights and hubcaps. Two hours went by in a flash; it’s hard to believe that’s the same amount of time as watching a movie.
Breathing a sigh of relief, we all put our results on easels. Here is Vcevy Strekalovsky, who did a gorgeous painting of the house. I was really inspired by everyone else’s work, and would love to come back again and paint the gardens or the carriage house.
The horses were a rare breed called American Cream, with amber eyes and pink skin.
Jeanette and I looked across to Powers Market, a Greek Revival building that served coffee and sandwiches, and conveniently had wi-fi and a bathroom.
I laid in the painting with a bristle filbert using burnt sienna oil paint. It was forecast to be cloudy, and I expected to be working with a lot of gray tonalities, so I wanted those warm colors to peek through in a few places in the finished painting. After stage 2, I drove into Bennington to buy the tube of white, which was missing from my kit yesterday.
That building in the back is a lawn mower repair shop, and the wood structure is leaning wildly, a fun contrast with the straight regularity of the market.
The owner of the lawn mower shop, Ron Nadeau, came over to tell us the history of his building, which used to be a blacksmith shop. He described what the town was like in his father's day, when there were working factories here that made hand mirrors, shoes, and rocking chairs.
Something was missing! It was a "gamestopper." Can you guess?
“My first step is to fill a sketch pad with a number of small rough sketches about two by three inches, keeping them on one sheet so you can compare them at a glance.
“You are now ready for the model. First make a number of pencil or charcoal studies. Select the most promising and on a sketch canvas do these in full color, oil or water with plenty of detail. Keep an open mind and be alert to capture any movement or pose that may improve your original idea.
“This canvas will somewhat resemble a picture puzzle, and it is up to you to assemble it and fit it into your design at the same time simplify wherever possible by eliminating all unessentials. All this is done on tracing paper and retraced on the final canvas.
“As a rule, I start work with a round or flat sable using a thin wash, with turps as a medium. Keep shadows very transparent, and as the work progresses, apply the paint more thickly on lighted areas, adding some poppy oil or linseed oil if necessary, and using a larger flat bristle brush for the heavier paint, but still keeping the shadows thin and vibrant.
“When the work is dry, apply a quick drying retouching varnish either with a brush or an atomizer.
