Quick Draw

Frank Costantino, one of the organizers of the North Bennington Plein Air Competition, explained the rules for the Quick-Draw event to approximately 40 participating artists.

Paint anywhere in the grounds of the historic Park-McCullough House, start when you hear the bell at 1:30, and stop two hours later.

I was attracted to a 1938 Dodge Pickup. Besides being a gorgeous old truck, I liked the chiaroscuro: light-on-dark on the front end, and dark-on-light on the rear end to the right. I also wanted to feature the reflection of the illuminated grass on the shadow side of the vehicle.

In preparation for the bell, I premixed batches of color with the palette knife to save time later (that was legal).

One half hour into the painting, I drew in the big shapes with a bristle brush and blocked in the grass and background.

Halfway through, I knocked in the basic shadow color of the truck and the building. I was really sweating it at this point, thinking “I’ll never finish!”

I tried to look for similar planes, muttering to myself such things as “upfacing planes in the shadow of the truck.” The goal is to hit all of those similar tones at the same time when I had that color on the brush, rather than wasting time going back with the same thought.

Only a half hour left, I softened some edges, such as along the hood and the top of the cab.

Here is how it looked as the bell rang, with final details: highlights, headlights and hubcaps. Two hours went by in a flash; it’s hard to believe that’s the same amount of time as watching a movie.

Breathing a sigh of relief, we all put our results on easels. Here is Vcevy Strekalovsky, who did a gorgeous painting of the house. I was really inspired by everyone else’s work, and would love to come back again and paint the gardens or the carriage house.

North Bennington Plein Air Competition Quick Draw
Frank Costantino
Vcevy Strekalovsky
More about the 1938 Dodge
Park McCullough House and Estate
Many more pictures of the Quick Draw at Mary Byrom's blog

Powers Market

The North Bennington Plein Air Competition began with a motif tour for the artists. We rode around town on a wagon pulled by draft horses.

The horses were a rare breed called American Cream, with amber eyes and pink skin.

About two dozen invited artists fanned out through the small town of North Bennington, Vermont. They set up on grassy hillsides, beside ponds, and in back streets.

Jeanette and I looked across to Powers Market, a Greek Revival building that served coffee and sandwiches, and conveniently had wi-fi and a bathroom.

My foot is on the C-stand to keep the white umbrella from blowing over (because I forgot the weight bags to hold it down). I'm using the umbrella not for rain but to cut glare and to diffuse light into the work surface.

I laid in the painting with a bristle filbert using burnt sienna oil paint. It was forecast to be cloudy, and I expected to be working with a lot of gray tonalities, so I wanted those warm colors to peek through in a few places in the finished painting. After stage 2, I drove into Bennington to buy the tube of white, which was missing from my kit yesterday.

That building in the back is a lawn mower repair shop, and the wood structure is leaning wildly, a fun contrast with the straight regularity of the market.

The owner of the lawn mower shop, Ron Nadeau, came over to tell us the history of his building, which used to be a blacksmith shop. He described what the town was like in his father's day, when there were working factories here that made hand mirrors, shoes, and rocking chairs.

EVENTS TODAY!
Come today (Saturday) to the Park McCullough House in North Bennington, Vermont, for the Quick-Draw event between 1:30 and 3:30. Anyone can join, and there are over $500 in prizes. Also, there will be an exhibition of works tonight and tomorrow at the Taraden Guest House.
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North Bennington Plein Air Competition
Quick-Draw Event
Wikipedia on American Cream Draft
Taraden Guest House
C-Stand on Wikipedia
Previously: White Umbrella, Traffic Cones

Uh-Oh! Forgot Something!

I opened my paintbox yesterday, ready to start out in the North Bennington Plein Air Competition, when I had a horrible sinking feeling.

Something was missing! It was a "gamestopper." Can you guess?
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Addendum: The answer was white paint! (I had the turps, medium, and rag in another part of the kit).

Leyendecker’s Method

In December of 1950, Saturday Evening Post cover artist J.C. Leyendecker outlined his basic method in a letter to a student.

“My first step is to fill a sketch pad with a number of small rough sketches about two by three inches, keeping them on one sheet so you can compare them at a glance.

“Select the one that seems to tell the story most clearly and has an interesting design. Enlarge this by square to the size of the magazine cover, adding more detail and color as needed.

“You are now ready for the model. First make a number of pencil or charcoal studies. Select the most promising and on a sketch canvas do these in full color, oil or water with plenty of detail. Keep an open mind and be alert to capture any movement or pose that may improve your original idea.

“You may now dismiss your model, but be sure you have all the material needed with separate studies of parts to choose from, for you are now on your own and must work entirely from your studies.

“This canvas will somewhat resemble a picture puzzle, and it is up to you to assemble it and fit it into your design at the same time simplify wherever possible by eliminating all unessentials. All this is done on tracing paper and retraced on the final canvas.

“Your finished painting may be any size to suit you, but is usually about twice the size of the reproduction.

“As a rule, I start work with a round or flat sable using a thin wash, with turps as a medium. Keep shadows very transparent, and as the work progresses, apply the paint more thickly on lighted areas, adding some poppy oil or linseed oil if necessary, and using a larger flat bristle brush for the heavier paint, but still keeping the shadows thin and vibrant.

“When the work is dry, apply a quick drying retouching varnish either with a brush or an atomizer.

“Sometimes because of prohibitive model rates or other reasons, one is forced to use photography, but try and avoid it if possible.
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Thanks, Keita!
Lots more Leyendecker Lore at Lines and Colors
Bio and more samples at BPIP
Many originals on display at the Haggin Museum in Stockton, California

Frazetta Women

A montage of women’s heads by Frank Frazetta, reveals the pattern of his idealized type.

They all tend to have long hair, bare shoulders, a rounded forehead, thin eyebrows, big cheekbones, a small nose, shadows around the eyes, eyeliner extended outward, up-slanted eye corners, and a pout.

If they’re feeling dressy, they have a choice of hammered bronze headdresses.

The result: A strong-but-vulnerable, exotic, baby-doll type.
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Images montage by Walt Morton. Thanks, Walt!
Is the Frazetta female based on his wife Ellie? (see post on “Illustration Art” blog).

Leaping Warrior

Here's a preliminary sketch by Yoshitoshi Tsukioka (1839-1892) of a warrior leaping from a rooftop.

He used exploratory colored lines just as modern animators and comic artists do. The jagged lines of the figure contrast with the rounded lines of the landscape.

Thanks, John
Wikipedia on Yoshitoshi
Image from Aleyma

The El Dorado Page

Many artists who got their start in the 1930s and ‘40s remember the chisel pencil technique of Ernest Watson.

Watson’s drawing methods were showcased not only in his instructional books, but also in a series of pencil ads in the art magazines called the “El Dorado Page.”

(Click to enlarge.) Watson used between four and eight different grades of El Dorado graphite pencils, which he held in his left hand. Each pencil was sharpened and then worn down to a flat tip.

He advocated using firm and definite strokes, always bearing down fairly hard. To get lighter tones you would still press hard, but use harder pencils. He was also conscious of leaving a few white spaces and crisp dark accents to add sparkle.

Here is a door done with four different types of rendering. His notes about the drawing are below.

The El Dorado pages showed various combinations of techniques, including smudging with a tortillon stump, a flat gray wash for shadows, and softer scumbled technique.

Watson worked on a surface called “cameo paper,” which is no longer available. Apparently it was clay-coated, for it was difficult to erase. Ed Ahlstrom, an art professor from Montgomery College told me that you can simulate cameo paper by spraying a thin coat of Krylon gesso on a smooth, stiff drawing paper.

Many pencil artists were influenced by Watson’s approach. Ted Kautzky, James Perry Wilson, and Arthur Guptill are just a few.

Thanks, Ed Ahstrom
Previously on GJ: Montgomery College
Amazon: The Art of Pencil Drawing by Ernest Watson

Casting Long Shadows

Cast shadows can help show the surface changes in a landscape. In this small plein-air sketch, the tree shadows define the curve of the hills by wrapping around them.

The three shadows get progressively narrower as they go back, which helps suggest depth. Sunlit figures are arranged to stand out in front of the darker tones.

Watch for these long cast shadows late in the afternoon or early in the morning. The shadows cast by trees and utility poles can really help you define the contours of roads, sidewalks, and buildings.

Landmark Hotel Implosion

In November of 1980, I did this plein-air gouache painting of the Landmark Hotel in Las Vegas.

At the time, I never would have guessed that less than 15 years later, it would be demolished. The event happened at night and was featured in Tim Burton’s 1995 movie “Mars Attacks.”


In this 3:40 minute video, you can see the hotel and its collapse (no sound).
Another video of the collapse on YouTube

Detective Storytelling

German troops are billeted in a French chateau during the Franco-Prussian war in this scene by Anton von Werner (1843-1915).

Rather than looting and desecrating the occupied mansion, the soldiers have paused to enjoy a song by Schubert.

We can see from his spurs that the singer is a cavalry officer. He has “Bildung”—education and breeding. He might be the younger brother of an estate whose eldest son inherited the title and the land, leaving him little choice but to become an officer in the military.

Another soldier lights the lamps as the evening approaches. Valuables such as the clock remain on the mantle remain undisturbed. In the background, a soldier chats with the concierge of the house as the daughter watches with wide eyes.

The men have spent the day slogging through deep mud. Their ruddy complexions show they’ve become accustomed to outdoor living.

Rather than burning the furniture, as billeted soldiers often do, one of them was sent on a detail to gather sticks and pine cones to start a fire in the hearth. His pants and boot soles have been inexpertly patched, indicating that he has been away from his home town for a long time.

Paintings that tell stories, such as this one, are often called “narrative” or “illustrative.” But neither term adequately describes the kind of storytelling that a picture can do. A painting like this does not illustrate a text—it stands entirely on its own, just as a play or a movie would do.

The word “narrative” is also inadequate, because unlike literature or drama, events are not presented or narrated sequentially. All the events of the story are telescoped into a single moment, and previous moments are implied by clues. We might better describe this kind of art as a “detective storytelling.”

It demands effort from the viewer to find all the clues, and care from the artist to make sure not to clutter the scene with extraneous detail.
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Anton von Werner, A Billet outside Paris [Im Etappenquartier vor Paris], 1894. Scene set October 24, 1870. Original: Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

More about this image, with thoughts on the changing sense of chauvinism in Prussian culture at German History Docs.
Wikipedia on Anton von Werner
Related GJ post: “Stillness, Action, and the Supreme Moment”
Thanks, Tim Callister!

Marc Hanson's Nocturnes

Last night plein-air painter Marc Hanson began a project of painting a month of nocturnes. His goal is to paint two paintings from observation every night in September. He'll post each day following and share his experiences.

Last night he went through a lot of bug spray, and gave a lot of thought to how much light to use on his work.
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Marc Hanson's Nocturne Experiment
Thanks, Dan Root

Bennington Banner article on next week's plein-air event in Vermont, with cash prizes, horse drawn carriage rides, lectures, and a vintage car show. Anyone can register to enter the Quick-Draw event!

Wood Engravings

Until the 1880s, pictures in magazines had to be reproduced by means of carved wooden blocks.

The best kind of wood was an end-grain boxwood from Syria. The boxwood trees were fairly small, so even the best chunks of wood weren’t much larger than a few inches in any dimension. To make a large reproduction of, say, 16 x 20 inches, you had to clamp together as many as 20 smaller blocks into a seamless whole.

The sample above was engraved by Henry Wolf from a painting by Homer Dodge Martin, a Hudson River School painter.

If you had a short deadline, you had to get a team of artists, each working on a separate block. A 4x5 inch block could take 12 hours or more to cut. A full page illustration could take a whole week to engrave.

Pieces of wood were prepared by sanding them smooth, and painting them white. Then the artist drew the image in India ink directly on the block, or transferred it from a separate drawing.

The engraver, sitting at a high table under bright light, took the artist’s drawing, and cut away all the areas between the lines.

A good engraver made all the difference in the final printed result. Their role was so important that engravers signed the printed piece on the opposite corner from the original artist. Relations between artists and engravers were often strained.

Engravers could use arrays of small dots and dashes to suggest textures like hair or foliage. The detail above created by Timothy Cole, who did a whole series of interpretations of French painters. This one is based on Jules Delaunay.

Note the soft tonal transitions around the eyes and the mouth, the sensitive changes in line direction, and the delicate white specks even in the darkest darks.

The samples in this post were published in Century magazine in 1909, well after the photographic halftone process had become established.
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Some of this information is based on the book “Great American Illustrators” by Susan Meyer.

Norton’s Last Week / Poster Offer

This is the last week of the Dinotopia exhibition at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach Florida. This coming Sunday, September 5 is the last day.

U.S.A. customers can order a signed, official museum poster for $20.00 plus $3.50 for postage/handling. Payment should be by check payable to “The Dinotopia Store” PO Box 693, Rhinebeck, NY 12572. If you like, download an order form here.
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Norton Museum: "The Fantastical Art of James Gurney" Through September 5

Al Williamson Archives

Flesk Publishing has just brought out a new book on the rough drawings and unfinished works of comic artist Al Williamson (1931-2010). The 64-page softcover volume gives a look at the development process of a recent master of adventure comics.


The sketchbook pages and tissue paper overlays are reproduced in color, bringing out every nuance of texture and tone. Subjects in this first volume of a series shows science fiction themes: dinosaurs, warriors, maidens, spacemen, monsters, and ornate cities and jungles.

Many of the samples are rough explorations an pose or an idea. Others are comic pages that are penciled and partially inked, which gives a good sense of the process Williamson used.
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Al Williamson book at Flesk Publishing
Bud's Art Books
Al Williamson on Wikipedia

Caprine Culprit

Who took a bite out of my sketch of Billy yesterday?

It was Lucky, caught in the act!

Walter Foster Books

It’s easy to overlook the Walter Foster series of art instruction books. They showed up everywhere, and a lot of them were pretty hokey and formulaic.

But there were some gems among them. For example: "Animation" (#26) and “How to Animate Film Cartoons” (#190) by Disney veteran Preston Blair, who gave millions of budding animators the basics of walk cycles, squash and stretch, and overlapping action. As a kid I was spellbound by the series of drawings of the dancing alligator from Fantasia.

Other recommended titles:

“Frederick Waugh’s Paintings of the Sea” (#153) was recently mentioned by Armand Cabrera on his blog. It is a gallery of the great seascape painter.

“How to Paint from Your Color Slides” (#64) had a fine ship painting by Carl Evers, along with the sketches that led up to it.

“Perspective Drawing” by Ernest Norling (#29). The one I learned from as a kid. Very clear introduction to one-, two-, and three point perspective.

“Heads & Figures in Charcoal” by Charles LaSalle (#51). LaSalle was a magazine illustrator who studied under Harvey Dunn.

“Figures in Action” (#191) and “Heads/2” (#197) by Andrew Loomis. Many of the best plates from his hard-to-find books.

Walter Foster Books
Preston Blair on Wiki
Waugh at Armand Cabrera’s Art and Influence.
Carl Evers discussed in "Today's Inspiration."

Chunky Handling

“Chunky” or planar handling was especially popular with the classic illustrators when portraying men.

Note the squarish planes around the cheekbone and the forehead in this detail by Tom Lovell. The treatment gives the feeling of a roughly carved wood sculpture.

Also, note the alternation of edges: HARD-SOFT-HARD-SOFT as you go around the outside of the head.

Greenscreen Compositing

Epic historical scenes in movies or TV specials are made up of lots of elements.



Things like buildings, ships, wagons, or crowds of extras can’t be photographed together so they must be must be shot separately against greenscreen or created digitally. Then they’re composited into a (hopefully) seamless whole.

This wordless video about the John Adams TV special shows the all the elements that make up each scene. The setups turn sideways so you can see the pieces dropping into place like pieces of a diorama.
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More about Paul Graff and Christina Graff of Crazy Horse Effects

Road to Exile

Like many of his compatriots, Russian landscape painter Isaac Levitan was interested in the aesthetic movements of western Europe, but he was never completely won over by the notion of ‘art for art’s sake.”

This painting, called “Vladimirka Road” has plenty of abstract beauty. We can appreciate the close values of the clouds in the sky, the rough texture of the road in the foreground, the thin tendrils of the trails, and the small accents of the man-made objects.

But to see this painting only in abstract terms is to miss its deeper resonance. The Vladimirka Road was the route by which exiles and convicts were marched to Siberia.

The title suggests the human suffering without showing it directly. The road is empty, except for a distant figure praying at a roadside shrine.

Levitan said he hoped “to discover in the simplest and most everyday things the intimate, deeply moving characteristics that invoke a mood of melancholy. The spectators should be touched to the very depth of their souls.”
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More about the painting and Levitan's own exile.
Wikipedia on Levitan

Parrish and Pyle

Maxfield Parrish is sometimes said to have been a student of Howard Pyle, but recollections by Frank Schoonover, in a 1966 interview, seem to indicate otherwise. Below: Parrish's Knave of Hearts.

The association between the two artists wasn’t exactly master and pupil. The two masters met briefly at the Drexel Institute, where Pyle was teaching an illustration course.

One afternoon, said Schoonover, “Maxfield Parrish was in the class, and I thought Mr. Pyle was so generous. He looked down and he said speaking to us young neophytes on the high stools in the back row, he said, ‘We have a new member of this group or I might say a visitor to the class, Maxfield Parrish, the painter. You’re all acquainted with this work, especially with his achievement of color.’ His Parrish blue, you know, it was known as ‘Maxfield Parrish Blue.’ So he said ‘Mr. Parrish, I’m deeply honored by your being here but I want to say this to you and to the others. In some ways I think our positions should be reversed. You should be here talking and I should be there listening to you.’”

Parrish didn’t stay in the class. According to Schoonover, he only appeared once.


Pyle image above and further discussion at the Howard Pyle blog:
“Master Jacob Proto Parrish”, where Ian Schoenherr explores the question of how Pyle influenced Parrish.

Molybdomancy

If you pour molten lead into cold water, the liquid shapes instantly freeze into forms with gently curving tendrils or veils trailing behind round blobs.
These shapes provide the springboard for a method of fortune telling called molybdomancy, a common New Year’s tradition in Nordic countries.

The shapes are often studied by candlelight, where they may appear as fish, birds, angels or demons. Such images spring to mind by means of a shape-conjuring process known as pareidolia.

If you want to try it, you can use lead from discarded wheel weights from a tire store. Because of the toxicity, do the melting over a well-ventilated camp stove outside, and be sure to use a frying pan that you will never use again for food. Also be sure to wash your hands after you handle the lead.

After melting a half a cup or so, pour a dash of it boldly into cold water in a bucket. In the sample above, I fused a half dozen separate pourings into a floret by welding them together at their bases with molten lead.
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Previously: Pareidolia.
"Casting of the Tin" tradition in Finland. Thanks, Mervi!

Salvador Dalí on “What’s My Line.”

Salvador Dalí was the universal artist.


In his own mind at least, he was performer, sports figure, leading man, humorist, comic artist, published author, and, oh yes, painter. This made him a tricky candidate for the old TV game show “What’s My Line?” where contestants tried to guess a person’s profession.

Notice how he shrewdly sizes up the room at the outset, and then maintains a deadpan sprezzatura afterward.
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Via Best of YouTube
Previously: Sprezzatura
Dali on Wikipedia

North Bennington Plein Air Festival

The North Bennington Plein Air Competition will be held September 8-12 in North Bennington, Vermont. This first-annual event brings together an invited list of on-location painters in a lovely setting.

There will be a quick draw, a wagon ride for artists to scout motifs, an auction, cash prizes, and various social events. Art buyers will be able to acquire some fine works in various media. I’ll be there as a judge, but I’ll be painting as well.

I’ll also be giving two lectures:

Thursday, September 9 at 4:00. Imaginative Realism. Behind-the-scenes view of the creation of Dinotopia and other realistic fantasies. Location: Historic Park McCullough. Geared for both artists and family audiences (bring the kids!). Book signing to follow. 802-442-5441.

Thursday evening, September 9 at 8:00 Plein-Air Pioneers. History and modern practice of outdoor painting. Location: Deane Carriage Barn on the campus of Bennington College. Book signing to follow.

Note: Quick-draw artists should register ASAP. Go to website for details and registration form. 

North Bennington Plein Air Competition

Mystery Artist

Can you guess which well-known artist created this image?

ADDENDUM. The answer is James M. Whistler, who attended West Point and did this drawing that appeared in Century magazine. Winner is Dave Lebow--way to go, Dave!


The prize for the first correct answer is a signed “Color and Light” poster. It’s a useful studio tool which shows 10 ways of lighting the head, classic form theory, color wheels, and optical illusions.

Art instructors in the USA only can request a FREE Color and Light poster for your classroom by sending $3.00 for postage/handling OR by enclosing a stamped, self-addressed 9x12 envelope with $1.22 postage affixed.

The postage/handling fee can be cash or check payable to “The Dinotopia Store,” PO Box 693, Rhinebeck, NY 12572.

Also, a free copy of the poster will be enclosed in the next issue of ImagineFX magazine (American subscribers only).

Gravestones as Chess Pieces

Painting is easy. Thinking is hard.

As we’ve seen in a couple of recent posts, the thought process always comes before the painting. Everything depends on your initial thought or feeling. You may decide to go for photographic accuracy, or you may want to caricature the form, as we saw yesterday.


One guiding thought is to rearrange the elements to convey an idea. I showed you this painting of an Irish graveyard a while ago, but now I want you to see what the actual view looks like.

I returned to the same churchyard on our recent trip to Ireland.

For the painting I was inspired to express something deeper emotionally (which I can’t put into words) and I had to move the gravestones around like chess pieces until they stirred up those feelings.
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The painting will be in the upcoming book “Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter,” (November, 2010), which is now at the printer.

The graves belong to the Corry family of Kilnaboy, County Clare: Michael (d. 1965) and Delia (d. 1970), Regina (d. 1980) and Tom (d. 2005); Patrick (d 1915) and Ann (d. 1961) Corry and their niece Nanette O’Regan (d. 1950).

Menagerie Exhibit

Today the "Menagerie" exhibit of animal art opens to the public at the Forest Lawn Museum in Glendale, California.

"This exhibit features artwork from an eclectic array of talented artists, both human and non-human, including paintings and drawings, as well as bronze, synthetic, and paper sculpture.

Among the artists represented in the exhibit are painter William Stout, the exhibit’s guest co-curator, whose accurate reconstructions of prehistoric creatures inspired the novel Jurassic Park; noted sculptor and painter Charles Marion Russell, whose esteemed body of work helped define the American West, Steven R. Kutcher, an “insect wrangler” for motion pictures who will exhibit his collection of insect footprint art, and Rosie, a Bornean Orangutan and long time resident of the Los Angeles Zoo.

Additional artists include Drew Struzan, Peter Brooke, Iain McCaig, Andreas Deja, Antoine Louis Barye, Paul Bransom, Charles Livingston Bull, Marc Davis, Henri Deluermoz, Edward Detmold, Pete Graziano, Doris Hardoon, Louis Paul Jonas, Leon Joosen, Paul Jouve, Charles R. Knight, Harry Rountree, John Sibbick, Tyrus Wong and Sirio Tofanari."

The exhibit continues until January 2, 2011.
Forest Lawn website.

Rock Face

In the recent post on Scart Road, we compared notes about the challenge of producing a topographically accurate drawing on location.

But you may wish to start with a very different objective—changing what you see to match a mental impression. That’s what I did here with a sketch of a rock formation drawn while sitting high on a cliff at Mohonk Preserve in New York.

What struck me about the formation was that it looked like an old man’s craggy face. In this case, I wasn’t interested in a literal interpretation. I wanted to exaggerate the forms just a bit to make my idea come across. Note the changes:

1. Make face area larger, forehead area smaller.
2. Bring out chin.
3. Downplay peripheral areas of the scene and focus the strongest accents on eyes, nose and mouth.
4. Emphasize the the brow wrinkles and the creases on the bottom lip.

You could do the same idea with craggy roots or robot-like mechanical forms.