Korpus and other small L.A. art schools

In addition to LAAFA, which I mentioned yesterday, another dynamic young art school in southern California is Korpus School of Art, founded last July by Rebecca Kimmel. I gave two lectures there last week.


The Korpus School of Art is a small traditional atelier, occupying a single room on the third floor of a beautifully refurbished industrial building in the arts district of downtown LA.

Rebecca admires the Russian and Chinese academic figure artists, and she has a special appreciation for the old master draftsmen, especially Rubens and Pontormo.


Her school is a great place to learn how to draw the figure, either with uninstructed figure sessions or with regular classes, where you can learn the skeleton, the muscles, and the rich tradition of figurative work.

I’ve had the privilege of visiting other small ateliers that have popped up in southern California in recent years to meet the demand for training in traditional skills of drawing and painting.


One is 3Kicks Studios in Pasadena, led by Charles Hu, himself a master of figure drawing and anatomy. 3Kicks hosts a variety of instructors and classes, including Gary Meyer, Glenn Orbik, and Richard Morris.


Another is the Watts Atelier in Encinitas, California (between LA and San Diego). Jeff Watts has a small space but a big reputation for training some of today’s top painters. He has created a friendly but disciplined atmosphere, and he brings a painterly approach to figure work inspired by Fechin, Sorolla, and Frazetta.

Though I haven’t visited them all, and can’t hope to review any of them comprehensively, there are several other excellent small schools in the Los Angeles area, such as Atelier Marchant, Concept Design Academy, Gnomon School of Visual Effects, and Red Engine School.

A student deciding which way to go with their art education, should consider whether you want an accredited degree program (often necessary if you want to teach at a university later) or whether you want to select only the classes you need to build your skills. Most art jobs look at the portfolio more than the transcript.

LINKS
Korpus School of Art website
Korpus on Facebook
3Kicks Studio Blog
Atelier Marchant
Previously on GJ:
Jeffrey Watts
LAAFA
Traditional larger schools:
Laguna College of Art and Design (LCAD),
Otis,
Art Center,
Cal State Fullerton, 
CalArts.

Upstart Art Schools

Southern California boasts a variety of well established art schools that I’ve profiled on this blog, including Laguna College of Art and Design (LCAD), Otis, Art Center, Cal State Fullerton, and CalArts. (Links take you to previous GJ posts)


Laguna, for example, has a faculty that includes veteran illustration and painting instructors Michael Savas (left) and Jason Dowd (right) who teach as part of an accredited program that will soon include entertainment design as a major concentration.


The Los Angeles Area is also home to a few dynamic smaller schools, such as the Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art (LAAFA). LAAFA occupies a repurposed bank in the San Fernando Valley.


They’re one of the rare schools that blends academically rigorous figure work from observation with imaginative work geared to the entertainment industry, taught by top instructors like Nathan Fowkes.

Continued tomorrow.
Links:
Laguna College of Art and Design
Otis College of art and Design
Art Center College of Design
The CalArts Story (vintage video)
LAAFA
Cal State Fullerton

Happy Buddha

During the weekend of the Baby Tattooville event in Riverside, California, all thirty guest artists contributed to the art jam.


The 4x8 foot acrylic painting was a surrealistic compilation of floating pink clouds, boys with ray guns, cow ladies, and green-haired girls. What could I possibly add to such a potpourri?


It seemed to require a happy Buddha, floating serenely in the midst of all the wackiness. I worked next to Travis Louie, who was putting the final touches on a one-eyed potato man.


The golden orb picks up on the cool light from the background and a warm glow from below. I love painting gold objects. The trick is to try not to make them too yellow. I saved the brightest yellows for the areas just around the highlights. As the planes turned away, they get quite dull and dark in color.

Watch the Baby Tattooville Sketch Jam in time lapse video

Bladesmith

Here's a portrait sketch of Jacques Louis David, a bladesmith who works with Tony Swatton of The Sword and the Stone. 

 

Swatton makes swords, weapons and armor for movies, pop stars, and re-enactors. He made the steampunk goggles that I borrowed for the new profile picture.

Tonight he's going to rework my pencil box (formerly the Mac iBox) to make it look Dinotopian.

We're at the Mission Inn in Riverside, California, where about thirty artists are gathering for the Baby Tattooville Fifth anniversary celebration.

Previously: The new Mac iBox

Dali interviewed by Mike Wallace

(Video Link)  I’d have to score Mike Wallace with the win here. Dali tries to be audacious, but ends up sounding incoherent. He came off much better on “What’s My Line.”

Unusual Artist’s Names

In this age of googling artist names, it's a real advantage to have an unique name. But it's hard to beat some of the really cool and memorable artists' names in history.

First off, there's the great Disney animator T. Hee. 


And here's a portrait of Illarion Pryanishnikov.

And let's not forget Hercules Brabazon Brabazon.

Would you like to nominate some artists for the most interesting or unusual names? Out of your suggestions in the comments, I’ll pick my top ten favorites, and then we’ll put it to a poll.

Wikipedia on T.  (Thornton) Hee

Portrait Noir

“I’ve never seen an October rain like this in all my years in LA,” says my friend David Starrett as we arrive for lunch yesterday at Gus’s Barbecue in South Pasadena. At the back door we drop our umbrella in a bucket full of other half-dead umbrellas.

David was one of my art teachers when I was a student out here. Later he was the model for Lee Crabb in Dinotopia. He’s the nicest 82-year-old gentleman you’ll ever meet. His ear is the model for “subsurface scattering” on page 155 of the book “Color and Light.” He’s also a natural actor, and he obliges me by being a character actor while I sketch him.



He orders barbecued ribs and I order coffee. I unholster my colored pencils. Robert Johnson’s blues pour out of the speakers. Rain gushes out of the gutters outside. David turns up his collar. I squeeze the handle of my black Niji brush pen. A drop of Higgins Eternal bleeds out of the tip.



Somehow he starts to look like a hard-boiled film noir detective, the kind of guy who works best after hours on rainy nights when the rest of the guys have gone home. “That’s when they dump the evidence,” he mutters, as he saws loose a rib.

Berkey’s Painting in Perspective

John Berkey is best known for his paintings of spacecraft in the 1970s and 1980s. His approach to painting was both loose and precise. He used water-based opaque paints, usually casein or gouache, which he kept in cups near his workstation and stirred with a dental drill. He lived in Minnesota. I visited him there in 1983.


This painting of Henry Ford’s auto assembly line was an impressive feat of execution. Each square inch of the painting is a masterpiece of abstraction. It shows him at the height of his powers. All the strokes are in proper perspective.

Although he probably had prepared a careful drawing to establish the main forms of the room, the car, and figures, based on whatever existing photos he could find, he didn’t pre-draw all the smaller wires and widgets. Those details he found in the paint.

To paint in this way requires the willingness to cover up your underdrawing in the early stages and “find it in the paint.” It helps to think of painting as a form of drawing, of discovery. The brush is really a drawing tool, and you can rig up straightedges to pins placed at vanishing points to get all the painted lines in perspective. 


This was painted in 1976, around the same time he was illustrating the Death Star for marketing the first Star Wars. This kind of painting requires both accuracy and improvization, like playing a cadenza on a Mozart piano concerto.

Have a look at a huge collection of Berkey’s work at the website of collector Jim Pinkowski. Thanks, Jim.

Bill Watterson’s College Comics

Online College Courses has assembled a list of top ten college comic strips:

 “What did Bill Watterson do before creating the beloved Calvin and Hobbes? He drew cartoons for his college newspaper, of course. As a student at Kenyon College, his work appeared in The Kenyon Collegian, revealing a well defined style even in his early years as a comic. Be sure to check out the collection of his college work and enjoy a slice of 70′s American college life.”

More samples of Watterson’s college work at Comics Alliance
Online College’s list of Top Ten College Comics

How to turn a girl into Abe Lincoln

Instead of using the Gallery Flambeau to get rid of a sub-par oil study, I painted over it.


I started with a fairly thin, dry scumble to partially cover the old paint. Then I drew the new subject with a brush. Then shadows, halftones, reflected light, and background.

Painting a new study of an old one is an old tradition. Sargent did it often with his oil landscapes. One reason for doing this (apart from being a cheapskate and reusing old panels) is that the old painting suggests random colors and textures that are fun to build over.

One caution. For finished work, it’s not really conservationally sound because of the risks of pentimenti, but it’s OK for studies.

This was a sample demo for my recent workshop on painting in colored light.
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Previously: Painting in Colored Light
Gallery Flambeau