How to get squirrels to dance

I figured out a way to get the squirrels in my backyard to dance, and I'll show you how. They climb up on a platform painted like a disco dance floor, and reach inside a stuffed animal head to get some delicious organic peanut butter.



While they're reaching for the treat, they do some incredible breakdancing moves. Here's the link to a video showing some highlights.

I shot the clips from inside my house about four feet away. I didn't speed up the moves at the end. They just kept getting more and more excited about the peanut butter.

The head is a "Happy Bee" plush (4-inch diameter) from a dollar store. I used a glue gun to add the pompom nose, the google eyes, the smiley mouth, and the buck teeth. I made a stiff lining for the head using a plastic ball that I also found at the dollar store. I cut a 3-inch opening in the ball, big enough for the squirrels to move in and out with plenty of clearance.

The bottom of the head is suspended 8.5 inches above the platform from two metal picture-frame wires that keep it facing the camera.

I learned to use metal wire the hard way, because first I used monofilament fishline, and the little thieves nipped off my first head and ran away with it.

Walt Reed (1917-2015), Historian of Illustration

I'm sad to hear that Walt Reed, renowned historian of American illustration, died early this morning.

Walt Reed, painted by James Gurney in 2009

An artist himself, Walt studied at Pratt Institute and worked for a time as a freelance illustrator. Walt served on the faculty of the correspondence course called the Famous Artists School, working closely with mid-20th century masters such as Norman Rockwell, Robert Fawcett, and Al Dorne. 

Genial, good natured, and enthusiastic, he almost singlehandedly pioneered illustration history as a field of research, and he legitimized original illustration artwork as a category for collectors. 

He cultivated relationships with working professionals, and he helped to revive the reputations of nearly forgotten illustrators such as J.C. Coll. He wrote the classic survey of illustration history The Illustrator in America, 1900-1960's. 

I discovered The Illustrator in America when I was just nine years old, and it awakened my interest in illustration as a profession. In 2009 I had the privilege of painting his portrait from life at the Society of Illustrators.

In 1974 he founded the Illustration House, one of the first galleries in America to specialize in original illustration art. If you were lucky enough to visit Illustration House, he would let you hold an original J. C. Leyendecker or Tom Lovell in your hands.

Walt Reed advised the New Britain Museum in Connecticut as they built the Sanford Low collection, one of the finest museum collections of illustration art. He wrote two later editions of his illustration history book, including Illustrator in America, 1860-2000, which still stands as the best illustrated survey of the history of the field.

He also wrote The Figure: The Classic Approach to Drawing and Construction, Harold von Schmidt Draws and Paints the Old West, The Magic Pen of Joseph Clement Coll, and Harvey Dunn: Illustrator and Painter of the Pioneer West.

Dan Zimmer has posted a biography that was recently published in Illustration Magazine, based on interviews by David Saunders.

The Dandy: Count Robert de Montesquiou

Count Robert de Montesquiou (1855-1921) was a French aesthete, poet, and art collector. 

He was spiffy dresser. At a concert of music by von Weber, he showed up with a mauve suit and a cluster of pale violets held at his neck in place of a necktie, saying, "One should always listen to von Weber in mauve.”

Giovanni Boldini, Portrait of Robert de Montesquiou

He was at the center of a group of artists and actors that included  Sarah Bernhardt, Gustave Moreau, Gabriel Fauré and James McNeill Whistler. 

Montesquiou as caricatured by Sem aka Georges Goursat

If you wanted to be successful in the art world of Paris in the 1890s, you had to know him. If he didn't like you or your art, he could destroy your reputation.

Carolus-Duran, Portrait of de Montesquiou as a traveler

According to Cornelia Otis Skinner on Dandyism.net, he "had a constantly shifting set of mannerisms. At the beginning of any conversation, he’d remove one glove and start a series of gesticulations, now raising his hands towards the sky, now lowering them to touch the tip of one perfectly shod toe, now waving them as though conducting an orchestra. His conversation was hardly conversation at all but long monologues filled with exotic anecdotes, mysterious allusions and obscure classical quotations, all told with a rich vocabulary 'at the end of which,' according to Léon Daudet, 'the count would burst into the shrill laughter of an hysterical woman, then suddenly, as though seized with remorse, he’d clap his hand over his mouth and bark until his inexplicable glee was controlled… as though he were coming out of laughing gas.'"

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Page on Robert de Montesquiou on Dandyism website

Other portraits, and Why isn't there a Sargent portrait of him? Thoughts at at JSS.Gallery.com

Count Robert de Montesquiou on Wikipedia

Book: Prince of Aesthetes: Count Robert de Montesquiou, 1855-1921

Dinotopia: World Beneath Podcast #7

This week we aired Episode 7 of the serialized audio dramatization of Dinotopia: The World Beneath, but we're sorry, the episode was only available for a week.

While explorer Arthur Denison is leading an expedition to the ancient caverns beneath the island of Dinotopia, while his son Will is above ground learning to fly on a skybax.

Will's adventures take place in the pod village of Bonabba.

In this flying scene, note the speed blur effect in the clouds in the lower right.

The acting troupe presents a puppet show called "Little Simon and the Tyrannosaur."

The Podcast Series
This acoustic adventure was produced by Tom Lopez, mastermind of the ZBS Foundation, with an original music track by composer Tim Clark.

The Christian Science Monitor called this production "A dazzling soundscape that does full justice to Gurney’s wondrous lost world… perfect family listening.”

Episode 8 arrives in a week. Each short episode will only be live online for one week, and then it will disappear.

If you'd like to purchase the full two-hour World Beneath podcast right now and hear all fifteen episodes back to back in a feature-length production, check out The World Beneath at ZBS Foundation website for the MP3 download. It's also available as a CD.

The Book
You can also order the original printed book from my web store and I'll sign it for you. (It ships via Media Mail within 24 hours of your order. US orders only for the book, please). The book is also available from Amazon in a 20th Anniversary Edition with lots of extras.

The Museum Exhibition is now on view
Many of these paintings are now on view at the Dinotopia exhibition at the Stamford Art Museum and Nature Center through May 25.

Interactive Sketchbook Results

Edit: Here are the results of the poll. Thanks for voting. Congratulations to the three top vote-getters—Neeraj, Emmanuel, and Leigh Ann, who will each receive a "Department of Art" embroidered patch.
Neeraj Menon 126 (34%)

Emmanuel Laverde 121 (33%)

Leigh Ann Gagnon 117 (32%)

Keenan Gaybba 111 (30%)

Elena Pavlova 76 (20%)

Tobias Gemalski 73 (20%)

Phil Lohmeyer 70 (19%)

Samantha Pancer 65 (17%)
Melissa Sisk 44 (12%)

Alicia Goode 19 (5%)
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A few weeks ago, I announced the Interactive Sketchbook Contest here on GurneyJourney, and we received dozens of entries. The challenge was to show a drawing interacting with the real world, either using a drawing on paper or transparent film, but it all had to be done without digital manipulation. 

It was really hard to narrow the list down to 10 semifinalists, but here they are.

Tobias Gembalski (behind the scenes here)

Keenan Gaybba

Leigh Ann Gagnon

Samantha Pancer

Alicia Goode

Neeraj Menon

Elena Pavlova

Emmanuel Laverde

Phil Lohmeyer

Melissa Sisk

Please vote for your three favorites in the poll at left (you can vote for more than one). The top three vote-getters will receive official "Department of Art" embroidered patches. 

Thanks to all who entered. See the full bunch of entries, including all the Honorable Mentions on my Facebook page.

A House on Main Street

Houses that have survived northern winters are like old sailing ships that have crossed the ocean. They're leaky and battered, with the paint barely holding on.

Saugerties Main Street, gouache, 5 x 8 inches

I painted this Victorian house while sitting in my car in a parking lot behind a diner. It was too cold and windy to set up my gouache easel outside. 

The eye level is just beneath the picture so that I could focus on the roofline. The palette is limited to white, black, burnt sienna, cadmium yellow deep, and ultramarine in order to emphasize contrasts in color temperature. I used the warmest colors for the down-facing planes, such as the corbel brackets and the arched window tops.

When I arrived, the sunlight was still illuminating the front planes of the structure, but I knew the light effect would change as the front surface fell entirely into shadow within 15 minutes. So I had to hurry to capture the lighting, especially that sliver of light on the arched gable.

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Art Supplies

Watercolor sketchbook
Gouache
Travel brush set

Inattentional Blindness

This car ad (visible here on YouTube) is less about the car than it is about visual perception. The ad shows four buildings on a street in West London. Over the course of a minute, the screen momentarily blinks to black 13 times. After each blink, elements of the scene change.

Here's what the scene looks like at the beginning of the ad....

....and here's what it looks like at the end. 

Every single window, awning, and roofline has transformed, and even the building colors alter from the start to the finish. There's even a chimp on the roof in the upper left. About the only things that remain the same are the blue car and the bit of foliage in the upper right.

How do they get away with so many major alterations without most people noticing? They use the magician's art of misdirection as the announcer talks about the car. Then, when the voiceover suggests we look for changes, we naturally look for things that we expect to change, such as parked cars. But we aren't expecting the windows to switch. 

Even when we watch it the second time knowing what's going to happen, the differences are difficult to notice, because those short black-frame transitions are just long enough to interfere with the persistence of vision. It's hard to remember how things looked just a second ago when we don't know what we're supposed to focus on. 

This phenomenon, called "inattentional blindness," or "perceptual blindness" was made famous by a video showing people in white and black shirts passing a basketball. As the viewer is distracted by the task of counting how many times the white-shirted players pass the ball, a person in a gorilla suit walks through the scene unnoticed by more than 50 percent of the viewers. 

The problem of inattentional blindness affects the performance of police officers looking for one suspected crime and missing another crime happening in plain sight. It also affects the awareness of drivers distracted by their cellphones. 

What we see—and what we don't see—has a lot to do with what our minds are focused on, and what we're looking for. 

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Inattentional blindness on Wikipedia

"Clown on a Unicycle" video

The Ice is Breaking Up

The ice is breaking up on the Hudson River.

Hudson Ice, Gouache, 5 x 8 inches, 1.5 hours 

Blocks of ice the size of houses drift slowly in the current. They grind against each other or pull apart. 

Something below the surface groans and shudders. A huge slab rises from beneath and breaks the surface like the back of a whale.

 

Rhinecliff, New York, March 11, 2015. 50 degrees Fahrenheit

Submerged ice is a deep green color that cameras can't capture. In my painting I place the horizon above the top of the page. I want to fill the entire field of view with this alien, abstract world of elemental forces. It's as strange and new to me as a view of another planet.

Sketching the 1956 Protests in Montgomery, Alabama

In March of 1956, Harvey Dinnerstein and his friend Burton Silverman traveled to Montgomery, Alabama to sketch the civil rights movement that was happening in the African-American community.

Rev. M.L. King, by Burton Silverman, 1956

The two 28-year-old artists were witnesses to the protest events in which Dr. Martin Luther King rose to national prominence. 

Drawings from the Montgomery Protests by Harvey Dinnerstein and Burton Silverman, 1956

They produced over 90 drawings directly from life, in bus stations, courtrooms, churches and people's homes. 

They were fully aware they were covering pivotal historical events, but they tried to capture universal human emotions, rather than making political statements.  

Drawing by Harvey Dinnerstein

Silverman says, "We were incredibly moved by black gentleness and humanity. And our drawing skill was put to a rigorous test: to convey the dignity and strength of the blacks and get it all down in the rush of ongoing events. This meant trying to remain 'distant' enough to make an effective piece of art without losing contact with the intense feelings being generated at the moment of creation."

Monroe Street Market by Harvey Dinnerstein

They acted both as participants and observers. Silverman drew furiously in the midst of the most intense church rallies, while "swaying and chanting to the marvelous Gospel music."

The drawings were published in newspapers, magazines, and print portfolios. Some were given to museums. In 2004 the Delaware Art Museum presented 38 of the drawings in the exhibition "Glorious Dignity: 45 Drawings of the Montgomery Bus Boycott," followed by a 50th anniversary exhibition at the Montgomery Museum of Art.
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The quotes are from Painting Peopleby Burt Silverman.
Burton Silverman's website
Harvey Dinnerstein on Wikipedia

Hopeful Corgi

At my friend James Warhola's house, I sketched his Welsh corgi named Maya. 

She wondered why I was giving her so much attention, and whether I might feed her a bit of spaghetti or garlic bread. 

She only held this pose for about 30 seconds. After she moved on, I tried to remember the initial position. I continued the sketch for about 15 minutes as she moved around the kitchen.

The drawing is in a Pentalic watercolor sketchbook. I used Caran D'ache Supracolor water-soluble colored pencils, blended with a Niji water brush. I always carry a tube of white gouache with me, and used it for highlights in the eyes and touch-ups along the muzzle.