DreamWorks Dream Team

DreamWorks Animation has an elite group of concept artists divided between its two campuses in California. I visited with the dream team at the Redwood City campus to share my presentation about color and light---and to show the panda a few kung fu moves.

 We then went upstairs to their very inspiring creative habitat. When they're not working on new character designs and environments for movies like Puss in Boots, The Croods, Kung Fu Panda: The Kaboom of Doom and Megamind, they have an art room for figure drawing classes.



Ruben Perez is holding a demo sketch I did of him using water-soluble colored pencils. And we're holding each others' one-of-a-kind advance copies of upcoming books: Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter, and Moonshine: DreamWorks Artists...After Dark.

That "Moonshine" book, which should arrive in stores soon, showcases the personal work, done after hours, by each member of DreamWorks's creative crew.
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DreamWorks Animation SKG
Moonshine at Amazon
Thanks, Angela, Katie, and the awesome DW Team!

Overlaid Wash Test

Here’s a chart of watercolor pigment combinations. The purpose of the exercise is to see how colors interact when they’re superimposed, rather than mixed wet. After one color swatch is painted and allowed to dry, a second color is laid over it.

The starting colors, on the diagonal from lower left to upper right, are: Winsor yellow, Winsor red, permanent alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, cerulean blue, and Winsor green. Each possible mixture sits at the intersection of a horizontal row and a vertical column.

The arrow, for example, shows a combination of permanent alizarin crimson and ultramarine blue. Farther to the right, the mixture of Winsor green and alizarin crimson makes a beautiful gray whose component colors are still visible.

Jahari the Lion

The lion house at the San Francisco Zoo opened at 1:00 yesterday, and I went in there to stare down a lion.

The lion's name is "Jahari," meaning "strong and brave." The seven-year-old weighs 550 pounds, one of the largest lions in captivity.

According to his trainer, Debbie Marrin-Towey, he likes the game of intimidating visitors. He was hand-raised, fed by a bottle as a cub, so he is particularly fascinated by humans.

Ms. Marrin-Towey told me it was time for Jahari's snack. She checked that all the doors were securely locked, and then sprayed some milk on a dead rabbit and placed it in his outdoor enclosure. Jahari's eyes stopped watching the nervous movements of my watercolor pencils, and followed her instead.

After what happened here three years ago, I'm glad the cage was well secured.
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2007 fatal tiger attack
San Franciso Zoo
Previously on GJ: Gorilla Portraits

Drawing Models

J. D. Harding wrote a book way back in 1854 that still has solid-gold advice for art and architecture students today.

He suggested making models of architecture to use as drawing subjects.

They teach you perspective and light and shade in a way that nothing else can. The geometric forms are a good supplement to the organic shapes of figure and cast drawing.

The book shows roof plans for various grand estates. If you’ve got a wood shop, you can cut all the various architectural pieces out of larger pieces of wood. The model pieces also make great blocks for kids to build with. Nowadays you could also use build them out of cardboard or foam core board, or cut them out of a dense foam.

His book, “Drawing Models and Their Uses” is available as a free download from Google Books.
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Drawing Models and Their Uses from Google Books (click the "Download PDF" button at the right side of the page)

Water by Three Masters

Here is a section of water as painted by three different artists. Can you name them?

(Addendum: "Florante" guessed it: Joaquin Sorolla, Anders Zorn, and John Singer Sargent)

The fact that many of you can identify them—even if you haven’t seen these specific paintings—is proof that we cannot escape our own handwriting. But it’s not just the “mark-making” at work here. Nor it it about style. It’s the seeing, the understanding, that separates each of these artists.

While each of these painters was a sensitive and close observer, each captured different qualities of water’s infinitely variable and elusive nature. The one on the left is interested in the upward-facing crescent shapes of the wavelets. The one in the middle features the soft transitions of the central ripples in contrast to the hard transitions and arabesques of the reflections. The one on the right is fascinated by the riot of color that shows up in illuminated shallow water, and the simultaneous transparency and reflectivity.

Even if these artists were standing side by side earnestly trying to accurately capture the same exact view, you’d still be able to pick out each individual. That’s why I believe it’s mistaken to believe that the pursuit of realism necessarily leads to sameness. Those who describe realism as slavish imitation miss this point. One artist’s paintings can be true to nature but emphasize different aspects of visual truth compared to another artist. The way you paint is a record of how you see.
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Related GJ post: Reflections of Masts on Rippled Water.
Color in Mountain Streams

Italian Exhibition

Journey into the World of Gurney: from Chandara to Ancient Egypt.

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Lucca, Italy at the Palazzo Ducale
Lucca Comics & Games, October 16, 2010 through November 1, 2010

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A few days ago, a truck came and took away two big crates of artwork bound for Italy. The artwork will be featured in an exhibition of approximately 40 of my paintings.

The show begins with Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara, showing both the private and public lives of humans and dinosaurs, and exploring the intersection of utopia, geography, history, science, and fantasy.

Visitors will also be treated to few paintings from Dinotopia: The World Beneath which have never before been exhibited. The exhibit concludes with additional original oil paintings from the world of science fiction and fantasy paperback covers, as well as historical paintings for National Geographic (Voyage of Jason, above, will be included).

For any further information:
Lucca Comics and Games 2010
Also includes image from previous post: Kushite King

Ionic Jeep

I think it’s really cool that the Jeep car company chose a Greek Ionic capital as the symbol printed on their spare tire cover.

It lends an air of dignity and refinement to the brand. I can’t help but think of Plato and Aristotle bouncing along in an off-road chariot.

Previously: “Stormtrooper Doughboy”

How Ink is Made

This eight-minute documentary shows how they make commercial printing ink. The colors and textures are so delicious that you’ll want to eat them.

Chromatic Shadows, Part 2

As we saw yesterday, adjacent colored light sources result in overlapping colored shadows.

Here’s another rule of thumb: If you have two light sources of different colors shining on the same form, the cast shadow from each light source will be the color of the other source.

That’s because each colored light shines into the shadow of the other. So when the amber light shines on the cylinder, it casts a shadow that is filled only by the blue light—hence the blue shadow.

Let’s make the scenario even more challenging: What happens to the shadows when you have three colored sources? Here’s the effect from blue, red, and green lights.

Note that the cast shadows behind my raised hand and my head are magenta, cyan, and yellow. The yellow shadow on the far right is cast by the blue light. It’s yellow because it is lit by a mixture of green and red. In the realm of light, as opposed to pigment, green and red mix to make yellow.

The bright cyan shadow is cast by the central red light. It’s cyan because it contains the blend of blue and green light. Blue and green light mix to make cyan.

If you’re intrigued by colored light interactions, I’d recommend going to the home improvement or theater lighting store and picking up red, green, and blue lightbulbs that you can put in three different light sockets. The best way to learn this stuff is to set them up and try all sorts of combinations. I took the photo in the New York Hall of Science, which has an interactive setup installed.
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Related GJ post:
Colored Light and Form

Chromatic Shadows, Part 1

The painting below shows a warrior standing on a ledge. He is lit by a slanting bar of light that shines from below.

Note that the cast shadow from his arm is red on the bottom and blue above.

The colored shadows suggest that the scene is lit by two adjacent spotlights, a red one below and a blue one above. This is typical of theater lighting, where two or more colored spotlights cast shadows with chromatic edges.

Tomorrow we’ll take a closer look at chromatic shadows.
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I painted the image for "Witches of Kregen," 1985, Daw Books. The painting will also appear in Color and Light.