Mother and Daughter Reading

Although she never had children of her own, American illustrator Jessie Wilcox Smith (1863-1935) painted some of the most enduring images of motherhood. 

She would invite her friends to bring their children over to visit, and she'd sketch them while they played. She preferred to look for authentic moments from unprofessional models, rather than posing professional actors.

Book: The Red Rose Girls: An Uncommon Story of Art and Love

The Subject Was Children: The Art of Jessie Willcox Smith

Why Cell Towers Keep Getting More Complex

This cell tower looms over our village hall and it keeps getting more complex as more carrier companies add their antennae to the central lattice-type tower.

The first company to set up there received the highest space, and newer carriers have added their equipment on triangular arrays farther down the structure. The antennas are the vertical segments. They both transmit and receive signals from your cell phone.

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I liked the way the hot sun flare burned through the wires and antennas and set them on fire, coloristically speaking. 

See how the same cell tower looked 11 years ago in a previous post.

Two Paintings in Upcoming Exhibit in Massachusetts

Two of my paintings will be part of a big fantasy exhibition this summer at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

 

"Skeleton Pirate" and "Garden of Hope" will be featured among works by Arthur Rackham, Maxfield Parrish, Jessie Willcox Smith, Joseph Clement Coll, N.C. Wyeth, and many contemporary illustrators.

The name of the exhibition is "Enchanted: A History of Fantasy Illustration.

"Fictional worlds of magic and adventure come to life through fantasy illustration. Myths, legends, fables, romance, and epic battles involving swords and sorcery occur in a world unfamiliar to us. Unlike science fiction, which is based on fact, fantasy presents an imaginative reality built on universal themes—heroes defeating fire-breathing dragons, angels and demons engaging in combat, and mythological tales of love and loss."

The exhibition opens to the public on June 12, 2021 and will be on view through October 31.

Look Development in "Mitchells Vs. Machines"

The new Netflix movie "The Mitchells vs The Machines" uses innovative techniques to create the contrast between humanistic world and the machine world. (Link to YouTube)

The team at Sony, which won the Oscar for the Spiderverse movie, developed new tools for this film, creating a look that was a notable departure from the unified style of a typical Pixar / Disney outing. 

This behind the scenes video features interviews with visual effects supervisor Michael Lasker, character designer Lindsey Olivares, director Mike Rianda, and producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller. 

Fun With a Weird Gamut

That color scheme on the right is just flame red, brilliant purple and raw sienna, plus white. The purple serves as the blue. It pushes everything into a magical realm, especially if you put it next to a sketch made from other gamuts that contain blue-green or bright yellow.

Lebedev's Oil Study

Klavdy Lebedev (1852-1916) did this oil study from a costumed model as a preparation for a larger painting. 

I'm just guessing, but he probably did study on an oil-primed surface, and that he must have done a preliminary pencil drawing and laid in the tones fairly thinly. 

Lebedev was a member of the Itinerants, and a student of Perov. 

Martha the Mayoress. Destruction of Novgorod by Ivan

by Klavdy Lebedev. 1889. Tretyakov Gallery.

The Destruction of Novgorod was "an act of vengeance against the perceived treason of the local Orthodox church, the massacre quickly became possibly the most vicious in the brutal legacy of the oprichnina, with casualties in the tens of thousands and innumerable acts of extreme violent cruelty."

The Air Scorpion

The air scorpion is one of the biggest of the fleet of enforcer ships from Dinotopia's ancient Poseidos. 

The design is based on eurypterids, with mechanized prosomal appendages, skid plates, and podomeres that were equally dangerous while in flight or walking on land.

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From Dinotopia: First Flight

Chicken People in Poughkeepsie

Two weeks ago there was a DNA leak from the Agricultural Biotech Lab at Varist College. They tell me that the janitorial team in Building 14 was the first to grow the comb and wattles. Everyone thought it was an IG face filter at first. They tried to cover it up, then they tried surgery, but it made it worse. Now everyone in the CheapRight Market in Poughkeepsie has got the beak and wattles, and I'm starting to grow them, too.

Is There Too Much Art?

Think Reset asks: "I have a difficult question to ask. As I sometimes wonder [about] the meaning of life and so on. The question is; Is there already enough Art? Referring to how many amazing artists have come before, and how many there are alive now. Open Instagram and you’ll find an infinite amount of talented artist[s] of all types."

Daumier, An Artist in Front of His Canvas

You're right: there are a lot of talented artists out there now, and there always have been. Many of them are doing art that's skillfully executed and new and exciting and original, art that speaks to our times. 

Artists will always emerge to produce the art that people hunger for. It might appear in the form of a comic book, a movie, a painting, or an animated meme. The revolutions in social media and digital tools have lowered the barriers to creating art and have facilitated distribution to whatever group wants to consume it. Those forces have increased the volume of work. I don't know if the average quality is any better than in a world of gatekeepers but it's much easier for an artist to develop a following. 

Societies are energized by art. Art makes a big claim on our attention and it's a big part of our economy. In capitalist societies there will always be powerful marketing forces pushing art products that may or may not be very relevant or creative. Sometimes the great art of our time will come from these mainstream businesses, and sometimes it will come from the margins.

Is there too much art? Well, there's probably too much of the same art, art that is dull, unoriginal, or poorly executed. That stuff will fall away and be forgotten. But the world will always be hungry for the work of a person of vision. If you have something to express, learn your craft, aim high, and do your best.

More Etruscan Sketches

The sketches you saw yesterday are just the tip of the iceberg. 

Most National Geographic illustration assignments go through a months-long exploratory process, going back and forth with the art director, editor, writer, and scientific consultants.

My job is to digest all the information and to explore lots of variations in visual terms. 

How can we incorporate the caption and text in the design? What tells the story most effectively? How can we communicate what's known and unknown? 

Many archaeologists don't want to veer too far into speculation. But on the other hand, we want the reader to be fully transported back to the heyday of this mysterious ancient culture.

In the case of this tomb, big sections of the wall mural were lost or damaged, and the contents of the tomb were missing, so we studied evidence from other tombs to guess what the full picture must have looked like.

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Yesterday's Post: Reconstructing an Etruscan Tomb