Mister Kooks 2002-2013

 
I'm sad to report that our parakeet Mr. Kooks has died. At more than 11 years of age, he was rather old for a budgie, but still as cheerful as ever until the end.


He was always glad to leave his cage to sit on my shoulder as I painted, or to hang out on his perch-playground. He starred in my video Parakeet Artist, and often posed for an impromptu portrait, such as the one in oil above.

Upcoming movie about rescuing art stolen during WWII

Here's a trailer for an star-studded Hollywood movie about the people who rescued stolen art during World War II. (link to video)

Drawing a potato chip bag

Using colored pencils and markers, Marcello Barenghi draws a super-realistic potato chip bag. (Link to video) Here's his list of the art materials he uses for these videos.

Painting an orientalist figure

On his newly-launched blog, contemporary painter Ken Laager describes a private commission that gave him an opportunity to paint a 'Moorish Man-at-Arms.' 

Ken Laager, Moorish Man-At-Arms

He rented or fabricated weapons, costumes, and props, scoured photo collections, found a willing model, and used a carpet of his own that came from a market in Kabul.


Here's his preliminary pencil study, based on all his sketches and reference studies.

Read the rest at his blog: Ken Laager "A Moorish Man-At-Arms"
Ken Laager's website

Answers for Kristen

Kristen M. asked:

I was wondering what advice you could give on pursuing a greater education past earning a BFA. I'm attending an [undergraduate degree program now], and I plan on completing it, but I'm not certain where to go next! Would you mind terribly reviewing what you think the benefits of either pursuing an MFA or not pursuing one is? If you do support MFA's do you have any suggestions for representational schools?

Also, when you paint, do you find it better to paint large or small? I see a benefit in both, but generally I like to draw small and transfer it onto a larger canvas. 

Hi, Kristen,
Where an advanced degree would serve you directly is in certain specialized illustration fields, such as medical illustration, where you really need to go through the program of one of the handful of specialized accredited university programs. It also helps if you want to get a job working on the staff of a museum or a top-notch gallery. And the degree is very helpful if you want to teach art or art history at the university level, where you need the degree credentials to pass beyond the gatekeepers. 

But an advanced degree is generally not necessary for a practicing artist wanting to get illustration, gallery, or design commissions. Art buyers don’t care about your degree; they care about your portfolio.

You might wish to commit to such an advanced degree program if you have the time and money and if you are sure that the study program will really improve your art. Whether there is such a study program that will help you toward your goal is something I can’t answer for you, but some art schools do have some excellent advanced study programs for realist painters. If I were you, I would interview previous graduates and professors pretty closely and take a careful look at their work and see if that’s the kind of thing you want to be doing.

There are many other ways to get practical experience. I believe the best way to learn to paint is by painting as much from nature as possible, with a critical and open mind, and a sense of daring. If you supplement that by periodically visiting museums, reading books, watching videos, going to workshops, and hanging out with other artists who are also intense about learning, you can’t miss.

Although there certainly are a few exceptions, most advanced degrees in the visual art field in university settings are preoccupied with art theory and art history. Here again, you would be wise to closely interview the members of the faculty and read their writing to see if their style of thinking and writing is what you want to emulate. Personally, I feel the best way to learn history and theory is to dig for primary sources on your own and to trust your own independent thinking, unfettered by the constraints of contemporary academic dogma.

Working large or small is a matter of convenience in the field. I love to work small, as did Frederic Church and William Trost Richards, and that lets me paint any time and in any setting. Size is a marketing factor in a gallery. Bigger pieces usually (but not always) have larger price tags. In illustration, the size of the original doesn't matter. It's all about how tight your module is.

Sheep studies by Anton Braith

Sheep studies from life in oil by Anton Braith (German, 1836-1905), 40x58cm, about 16x23 inches. Compare to sheep studies in previous posts by Rosa Bonheur and Heinrich von Zügel.

How McKim, Mead, and White celebrated a big commission

When the architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White won the competition to design the Rhode Island State House in 1892, they made paper hats and costumes and conducted an "architectural mass" to celebrate the commission.

They marched around swinging a Venetian lamp like a censer and singing the following words to the tune of "Onward Christian Soldiers":

"Onward, All ye Draughtsmen,

Marching as to War,
With our office T. Square
Going on before.

We are not divided
All our office, we,
In all competitions,
Ours the Victory . . .

Foes may struggle vainly,
We will Vanquish all,
For they are not in it,
They will have to crawl.

Providence is with us
Thro' the darkest night;
In our blest profession
We're simply out of sight."

From "Architecture Here and There."

Society of Animal Artists Exhibition

Last weekend I had the privilege and responsibility of being a prize juror for the Society of Animal Artists' annual exhibition in Bennington, Vermont.

Cindy House, "Flight Over the Dunes in Autumn," 16x20 inches, pastel 

In the prizewinning pastel above, the birds were set within a sumptuously textured landscape rendered in pastel.

Guy Coheleach, "Cooling Off," 24x36, oil

The exhibit included animals of all shapes and sizes, from familiar large mammals such as lions, tigers, giraffes, and elephants, to less familiar subjects, such as diving gannets, a bronze octopus, and a flying fish. 

Tucker Bailey, "Rocket Man," Bronze

The organization encourages the portrayal not only of wild animals, but also of domesticated ones, such as this exuberant life-size bronze titled "Rocket Man," which won the hearts of everyone. Caught in joyous mid-leap, it portrays "Rocky," the mixed-breed offspring of a female dog who arrived pregnant on the artist's doorstep. Rocky sat in Tucker's lap as she sculpted him, and her knowledge of her subject really shines through.

The exhibit will continue at the Bennington Center for the Arts in Vermont through October 31, and then will tour to New Jersey, Arizona, and Georgia through 2014.
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Society of Animal Artists
Tucker Bailey
Cindy House 
Guy Coheleach
List of participating artists

Painting into the Soup

Here's a sketch that I did yesterday on a rainy day in Bennington, Vermont. I'm here as a judge for the exhibition of the Society of Animal Artists—more on that tomorrow. 

This picture is painted in gouache, which is the best water medium for detail and value control, and I want to tell you about an unusual technique called "painting into the soup" that works well for conveying this kind of misty weather.


Because of the rain, Jeanette and I had to find a painting spot that was under cover, so we drove around Bennington until we found this public building that wasn't in use on the weekend.

Working on watercolor paper, I did a very quick pencil layin, and then applied the "soup"—a thin layer of opaque titanium white, lowered just a little bit from pure white with a little blue, yellow, and red.

The soup went across the whole sky and the far end of the street, and then tapered off down past the treetops and toward the foreground. With 100% humidity, the soup took a while to dry so it influenced some of the mixtures as I laid on subsequent areas.

Here's what the palette looked like, with a mixed Schmincke and Rublev pan set of transparent watercolors, and gouache on the flanking areas in white, cad red, yellow, and ultra blue.

 When the soup dries, it takes the colored pencil a bit like gesso would, allowing very sensitive small touches. Instead of black, I used two values of gray Caran d'Ache Supracolor for the delicate telephone wires and fine branches.

This idea of painting into a soup of gouache was used by William Trost Richards, and it's also a method you can use in oil using colored soup to influence your color schemes. Norman Rockwell and Andrew Loomis talk about this as an oil method. Just be careful to keep the soup thin, and only in areas where you want it to influence later mixtures.

Art Supplies
Winsor & Newton Designers' Gouache Introductory Set each
Moleskine watercolor notebook
Caran D'Ache watercolor pencils
Amazon: Schmincke Watercolor Pocket Set,
and a larger Schmincke set for a better price that Steve suggested.
Super magnet for holding down the cup

Galloping robot "WildCat"

Boston Dynamics has introduced its latest animal-like robot called WildCat, a galloping, bounding robot that looks a bit like an organic quadriped, but has a terrifying energy and geometry all its own.

Mech artists, note how the design conserves most of the mass toward the center of the form, with no heavy forms at the periphery. (link to video)