Posters by Adolfo Hohenstein

 

Adolfo Hohenstein (1852-1928) was a European poster artist known as the father of "Stile Liberty," or the Italian Art Nouveau. 

He was born in Saint Petersburg, studied in Vienna, and traveled to India, where he decorated the homes of the nobility. He spent most of his career in Milan.

His designs combine flowing, abstract shapes and evocative color relationships, sometimes a pale blue and orange scheme (above) or indigo blue and olive green (below).

This opera poster shows the death of Scarpia in Puccini's Tosca. The red and yellow colors suggest the passion and drama.

In his later years he alternated between Italy and Germany, and he spent time not only designing posters, but also painting murals and designing sets and costumes for the stage.

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Adolfo Hohenstein on Wikipedia

Liberty Style

Shishkin: Plussing the Sketch to Make a Better Finish

Ivan Shishkin (Russian, 1832-1898) painted "Midday in the Environs of Moscow" (right) in the studio based on a great many plein-air studies, such as the one at left. While the study is colorful, it doesn't convey a very strong feeling or concept. 

The final composition (right, above, 1869, 111.2 cm. × 80 cm) increases the focus on the workers returning from the field. Their heads are closer to the horizon. The standing water in the ruts of the cart tracks of the rutted road hint at the potential of rain in the towering clouds above.

Other versions of the composition exist, such as the one below, showing how Shishkin developed the concept. 

He must have realized the masses of trees in the middle ground weren't necessary. 

Would a long horizontal version convey more effective sense of space? This version, called "In the Rye" is from 1866. He later explored the power of a horizontal view of rye fields ten years later. 

Improving the sketch gets you to a final that's more powerful than what you can accomplish on location. It often requires removing some elements and simplifying the design.

It also means elaborating or "plussing" the things that are working. Plussing —adding to a good idea to make it better—is a word that Walt Disney liked to use, and they still use it at Pixar. 

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Previous posts: Shishkin's Painting Methods • Shishkin and Photography • Best Shishkin Books • Chernyshevsky's Philosophy of Art

Books: Shishkin (Great Painters) • Shishkin Album •  Ivan Shishkin

Fusion Crawlers

Fusion crawlers explore ice cliffs on the frozen landscape. They deploy forward feelers, grinding heads, and autonomous robots. Communication arrays transmit discoveries back to Earth. 
 

How do you decide what to paint?

Artists Magazine, Jan 2021

Sarah asks: "How do you decide what you're going to paint?"

This is such an important question, and it's so rarely discussed. It's something I struggle with a lot.

I don’t usually get inspired by the familiar “artistic” motifs such as fishing boats, Italian villas, red barns, crashing waves on rocky coasts, or majestic peaks. My artistic juices often go dry in places like that, which is why I don't lead workshops in Tuscany or the south of France.

Just try googling the term "plein-air painting" and you won't find a single car or fast-food restaurant or telephone pole. But look around. Aren't cars and telephone poles everywhere? Isn't that what our world looks like? 

I'm more interested in the commonplace subjects that we screen out of our visual awareness, such as parking lots, supermarket interiors, gas stations and back alleys. They're not mundane for me. They have a weird luminous power over my imagination. 

Blockbuster, 10 x 18 inches, oil, 2000

About twenty years ago I painted a commercial strip with a Blockbuster sign. Back then, when I showed that painting to art students, I would say, 'One day this world will pass away like the dinosaurs.' They just laughed because they didn't believe me. Sure enough, that has happened, and the wheel of time keeps turning.

So does the awareness of time figure into your decision to paint something? 

Yes. I like any subject that hints at the passage of time. I tend to prefer old houses to new ones, and worn-out shoes to polished ones. I loved the movie Blade Runner because of the way it nested layers of time from a science-fiction viewpoint. 

But I'm not just attracted to concepts like time or change. Painting ideas are more visceral and visual. A picture is first and foremost a purely visual thing. Sometimes you know it when you see it, but you don't know why and you can't explain it.

Does color influence which images speak to you?

Yes, color has a big effect on whether something speaks to me, and that’s true of light effects, too. I can look at something that comes alive on a rainy day and it may not inspire me on a sunny day. Sometimes when I paint a subject I record the colors as I see them, but other times I change the lighting for a theatrical, weird, or magical effect.

The thing is that you can't just aim a camera at random and find a transcendent image. Light and color are a big part of what speaks to me. If I’m looking for a subject to paint from observation, I'm often interested in a particular lighting situation or a color combination. The same scene that did nothing for me at 11 AM suddenly looks weirdly fantastic at sunset or on a rainy day.

Detailed Image of Cell

Here's a detailed image of a human cell, created by Evan Ingersoll & Gael McGill.

It's not really a "photo," but it's not exactly "art" either. The accurate 3D model was made using data sets from X-ray, cryoelectron microscopy, and nuclear magnetic resonance. 

Parts of the cell include: nucleus (blue stranded area at bottom), mitochondria (purple football), actin filaments (green pipe cleaners), microtubules (gray pipes), endoplasmic reticulum (confetti blob)

Tools used include: "Digizyme’s Molecular Maya custom software, Autodesk Maya, and Foundry Modo used to import, model, rig, populate, and render all structural datasets."

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Via Reddit and ArtStation

Why Dogs Don't Like TV

Dog vision is different from human vision in several ways. They can't distinguish red and green.

And they don't have sharp focus in a central area of the retina. Instead of concentrating photoreceptors in the fovea centralis, which gives us humans very detailed and color-sensitive vision in the pinpoint center of our attention, they have a broader area of focus.

Dog vision may not be as sharp or as colorful as ours, but it's better at tracking fast-moving objects, because their eyes are optimized to respond quickly. 

Our photoreceptors have to recharge at a rate of about 60 times per second. This "flicker fusion" threshold is the recharge rate that allows us to perceive a steady image on a flickering source like a TV screen.

Watching video that refreshes at 30 or 25 frames per second will pass for stable reality for us—but not for a dog. As dog expert Alexandra Horowitz says, "Dogs have a higher flicker-fusion rate than humans do: seventy or even eighty cycles per second. This provides an indication why dogs have not taken up a particular foible of persons: our constant gawking at the television screen," which is not fast enough for dog vision. "They see the individual frames and the dark space between them too, as though stroboscopically. This—and the lack of concurrent odors wafting out of the television to engage them. It doesn't look real."

Their fast flicker-fusion rate and reaction time also explains why dogs are so good at catching flying frisbees or tossed chunks of cheese.

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From the book: Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know by Alexandra Horowitz

Segrelles Exhibition Extended

José Segrelles was a Valencian painter and illustrator who lived from 1885-1969. 

There's an exhibition "José Segrelles, Master of Fantasy," currently on view at the Maricel Museum in Sitges (Barcelona). It was curated by his grand-nephew José Enrique Segrelles Cortina.

 

The artist Segrelles said: "Reality does not appeal to me. It overwhelms me, it weighs me down. I prefer mystical, mythological figures, unreal beings from the oriental fantasy. I am filled with pride to be called an artist, not for what I paint, but for what I feel."

Segrelles also did travel posters and sports images, which were dynamic and imaginative. "When there are no models for whatever I’ve dreamed, I create them specifically for this purpose. I do it with plasticine. I create a stage, but as what I see is not what I saw, I have to paint with the imagination."

Because of the success of the show, the closing date will be extended to January 31, 2021.

Learn more:

José Segrelles, Mestre de la Fantasia, through 31 January 2021 at the Maricel Museum in Sitges (Barcelona)

Books

José Segrelles Albert: His life and his work (Spanish Edition) 

Segrelles: José Gabriel Segrelles Albert, 1885-1969 : biography (Spanish Edition)

What happens when you shine blue light on an orange object?

Petr Macháně asks:
"What happens if there is orange object [seen in] blue light? What color should I paint part of the object that's in the light? Blue and orange are opposites on color wheel. I am just looking for advice on how to think about this."

Petr, the color you need to mix is the apparent color you see. The word "apparent" is important here, because a given color must be seen in context. Those context cues tell you what color of light seems to be shining in the scene. If the light is white, the color you see will match the color of the object, but in colored light, everything changes.

In the diagram above, for example, we see see a checkerboard with a multicolored bar hovering over it. In the left sub-rectangle, it appears to be lit by yellow light because our visual system is tricked by the yellow shift of all the colors inside the rectangle. On the right we believe it's lit by blue light. The actual color note of the intersection piece is the same on both sides: It's a neutral gray.

So the color you paint is the color of the light plus the local color of the object. Sometimes this results in a color canceled out to neutral gray. But this effect can enhance a color, too. If you put green light on a green surface the result will be even brighter green. You see this in folds of flesh, where the reflected light shines back into a fold of skin and makes it a brighter orange." 

"To answer your question, if you put an orange object in blue light, the color you mix may be a rather dull gray, but if you do it right, it will look orange. Try it and see if it works for you."

Previously: Color Constancy

Questions from Nicholas

Nicholas, an art student, asks:
"You spend a lot of time doing demos and tutorials on your blog and other platforms such as Instagram and YouTube. I greatly admire how you are willing to give away so many techniques for free. What made you decide to share all this information with the world rather than teaching at a university?"

Around 2007 I started sharing online by downloading info about painting onto this blog. I was recording those art thoughts down in notebooks and on cassette tapes before the Internet happened, and I realized I could do a digital version of it that other artists could discover. The comments and questions stimulated further thought. 

When I was an art student, this stuff was like secret knowledge because they weren't teaching it in the art schools. You had to dig in old, obscure books and libraries to find it. To an extent I still feel that a lot of the information we're talking about on the blog and other socials is not generally taught. 

I lectured at about 40 different art schools between 2007 and 2013. It was exciting to meet kindred spirits among art teachers and students during those visits. It was also interesting to see how art training in many places has really gotten better. However, I didn't want to teach in a university setting, because getting a particular curriculum approved in an actual art department is a very political process with a lot of battles that I wouldn't want to waste my time fighting. Before the pandemic, students had a lot of good choices in real art schools. Now I don't know what the options are for prospective students. You tell me! 

Once I figured out how to produce video for YouTube and Instagram, I realized that there was a real opportunity. The tools and methods are easily accessible. I could share the experience of painting as the adventure that it really is. Most of my content is free, but I enjoy producing the in-depth videos for Gumroad downloads. 

Lately I'm focusing on filming not only the demos but also the theory behind them and practical exercises that learners can actually do and then share with each other in online communities. I'm grateful to my followers for supporting my work and learning along with me.  

One of my private sketchbooks -- mostly unpublished -- is called "Art by Committee."

When I was painting paperback covers for fantasy novels in the 1980s, there were stacks of paper manuscripts cluttering up my studio. I would snip out an excerpt from a random manuscript, tape it into my big sketchbook and bring it to a cheap restaurant where my art buddies and I would sit around and use those prompts as sketching inspiration.

Nicholas continues: 

"The biggest lesson I have learned studying illustration is the importance of drawing everything around us, all the time. I try to draw in my free time as much as I can, but I know that for myself and many of my peers it can be difficult to juggle school projects with personal projects. How do you manage to not get burned out with all the work that you do?"

Sounds like there are two issues here: time management and motivation. You can structure your time by carving your day into chunks and making room for your own projects. I built an animation stand in my apartment in art school, and when I was in university before that, I made cast latex masks in my spare time.

Ideally you should be able to weave your personal projects and school assignments together. When your teacher gives you an assignment that you're not too thrilled about, talk to them and see if you can bend the terms of the assignment to include challenges that you wanted to do for yourself.  

Being burned out has never been an issue for me. I always had my own sketchbook going when I was in art school or when I was working in an animation studio, and I've always been happiest when I've been doing art. I think the best thing about my art school days was that I was always in the company of other art students my age who liked to goof off by drawing crazy cartoons and painting. 

I recommend hanging around all kinds of artists, both imaginative artists like animators and cartoonists, and observational artists, like atelier people, plein air painters, and urban sketchers. Be sure to have sketchbooks that are crazy and unhinged and politically incorrect, where you don't have to worry about how people will react to what you do. 

The blessing of our current era is that any artist or writer can publish for free and develop an audience with no filter. But the curse is that we must do our creative work with the awareness of an unseen and unseeable audience watching over our shoulders all the time and judging everything we do. 

Take me to Dinotopia

Image from Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time

My bags are packed. Are you coming too?