Gurney Journey

Formation of reptilian head scales

2013-05-21T08:43:00.000-04:00

Designers of dragons and other mythological creatures might wonder how to draw the scale patterns on the head and body. How would the scales form on such an animal?

Above: Briton Riviere (1840-1920), "Saint George and the Dragon."

Dr. Michel Milinkovitch from the University of Geneva studied Nile crocodiles to understand the origin of their head scales. His study was published this year in Science magazine.

It turns out that reptilian scale patterns form in two different ways: genetic patterning and stress fractures. In the first system, the scales are developmental units that begin to form in embryonic stages and are usually symmetrical from one side of the head to another.

This is typical of snakes. The symmetrical pattern can be seen by overlaying the pattern from the right and left sides (the yellow and red line patterns at lower right).

By contrast, crocodile head scales form by randomized stress fracturing, like cracks in auto safety glass. The scales are non-overlapping polygonal shapes that are smaller in areas where there is more flexing. There's no symmetrical alignment from one side to another of a single individual, nor is there a consistent pattern from one individual to another.

(Video link) Here's a video that explains the idea.

Scales on the rest of the body of the croc, unlike the head scales, follow the snake-like genetic patterning model.

Science Magazine Crocodile Head Scales Are Not Developmental Units But Emerge from Physical Cracking

Previously: Briton Riviere's Studio

Anecdotal Portrait

2013-05-20T08:15:00.003-04:00

Many of Anders Zorn's early portraits are painted in watercolor. He was just 25 years old when he painted this one of Clarence Barker in 1885.

In a letter, Zorn explains the idea behind the portrait: Barker "reclines comfortably on the soft divan, having just spent time gazing at his sweetheart's portrait, and now he casts a tender glance at his dog who stands over him and looks him wonderingly in the eye. The painting could be called Rivals. I like to turn my portraits into paintings."

Zorn later abandoned the anecdotal angle in his portraits.
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Book: Anders Zorn: A European Artist Seduces America
A large Zorn exhibition will come to the Legion of Honor in San Francisco in November, followed by the National Academy in New York.
Anders Zorn complete works online
Anders Zorn (1860-1920) on Wikipedia

Samuel Gurney Cresswell

2013-05-19T07:27:00.003-04:00

Samuel Gurney Cresswell (1827-1867) was the official ship's artist and Second Lieutenant aboard the HMS Investigator, during an expedition in search of the Northwest Passage.

The Investigator was on a mission to find two other lost ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror from the ill-fated 1845-48 British Arctic Expedition commanded by Sir John Franklin.

In 1853, the Investigator also became locked in ice. The sixty-nine man crew had no choice but to abandon ship. Samuel Gurney Creswell documented the expedition in watercolor, showing life on deck, the ship trapped in ice, and the eventual rescue.

His watercolors from the Investigator expedition were interpreted in a lithographic portfolio called "A Series of Eight Sketches in Colour," published in London in 1854.

The HMS Investigator has recently been discovered in the shallows of Mercy Bay by underwater archaeologists.

Samuel Gurney Creswell's story, including his encounter with pirates while serving in the seas off China, is told in the book: War, Ice and Piracy: The Remarkable Career of a Victorian Sailor

Samuel Gurney Cresswell on Wikipedia

Slideshow in Archaeology magazine online

The full story of the rescue of the crew of the Investigator
Thanks, David Gauldin

Fialetti's figure drawing books

2013-05-18T07:24:00.000-04:00

For many centuries young artists have trained by drawing together from sculptures and diagrams. This etching by Odoardo Fialetti (1573-1638) shows apprentices copying casts in a painter's workshop.

In 1608 Fialetti produced a very early figure drawing manual called Tutte le parti del corpo hvmano diuiso in piu pezzi. (All parts of the human body divided into several pieces)

One diagram shows how to place the features on a foreshortened head.

He also includes diagrams of difficult-to-draw details such as feet, ears, and hands.

According to Alexandra Greist, who wrote her dissertation on the topic, these instructional manuals are known as "libri da disegnare." "Libri da disegnare are groups of printed images that instruct in drawing the human body through a progression, whether by means of line-by-line instructions, following steps from outline to shaded, or building up the body from its individual features. Intended for both professional and amateur audiences, these printed sources were soon copied throughout Europe where they influenced drawing education for the next 400 years."

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Download the whole book for free at Archive.org

Book: Learning to Draw: Studies in the Cultural History of a Polite and Useful Art

"Marvellous hairy about the face"

2013-05-17T10:49:00.002-04:00

This time of year the donkeys want to get rid of their winter coats, so they like a lot of scratching, especially Jezebel, the oldest donkey.

It's hard to concentrate when she leans her head on my shoulder. "I must to the barber's, monsieur; for methinks I am marvellous hairy about the face; and I am such a tender ass, if my hair do but tickle me, I must scratch."

--Act IV, Scene 1 A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare

Stone Age Cinema

2013-05-17T07:43:00.000-04:00

Observers have noticed before that paleolithic cave paintings often show animals in multiple poses, superimposed to suggest movement.

(Video link) Marc Azéma from the University of Toulouse Le Mirail in France has made animations by isolating and alternating the poses.
Thanks, Rob

Manikin in the Snow

2013-05-16T07:32:00.000-04:00

In the winter of 1892, two artistic comrades, John Singer Sargent and Edwin Austin Abbey, set up an artist's lay figure in the snow. They set about to paint it, each with a different mental approach. According to art critic Royal Cortissoz:

"They were together one day at Abbey's place in the country and despite the snow storm which was raging were resolved to paint, setting a manikin just where they could see it from the window and tricking it out with a cloak, hat, and lute. The result was two characteristic pictures.

"Sargent's was an unmistakable "actuality," the picture of a manikin provided with studio properties.

"Abbey's was the portrait of a living troubadour, wearing his cloak and feathered hat with an air and strumming his lute while he lustily sang.

"Sargent had made a record of exactly what he saw. Abbey had given free play to his imagination and endowed a senseless thing with life. The episode illustrates his [Abbey's] greatest gift, that of evocation."

Quoted from Paintings, Drawings and Pastels by Edwin Austin Abbey, Gallery of Fine Arts, Yale University, 1939, p. 3
Both images appear in the book: John Singer Sargent: Figures and Landscapes, 1883-1899: The Complete Paintings, Volume V
Previously on GJ: Artist's Lay Figures

A Good Bookstore is...

2013-05-15T19:10:00.004-04:00

Here's my definition of a good local independent bookstore.

Donkey and horse mini-paintings

2013-05-15T02:38:00.001-04:00

Yesterday on my morning walk I did these tiny sketches of a donkey and a white horse with an old sable watercolor round brush and casein paint. Casein is an opaque water-based paint.

Instead of starting with a pencil, I jumped straight in with the brush, massing the big shapes and cutting foreground over background and then background over foreground.

Corrections and refinements were easy with an opaque paint. Note that the plane of the scapula in both sketches was placed as a single stroke.

I used just four colors: titanium white, ivory black, raw sienna, and raw umber. That was all I really needed for such a subject under such conditions.
It is a good super-basic palette for exploring simple relationships of light and dark, warm and cool.

The donkeys were fascinated by the smell of casein. Maybe they liked the milk-based binder. I was afraid they might try to eat the paint, but they didn't. Lee just nibbled my fingers with her lips, and Peanut kept sniffing the paint rag.
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Here's what I used:
Jack Richeson / Shiva casein colors
Moleskine watercolor notebook
Winsor and Newton Series 7 round watercolor brush
I'm using a watercolor palette for a mixing surface, but I didn't use any of the watercolors for this sketch.

Article on Urban Sketching

2013-05-14T09:30:00.001-04:00

The new issue of International Artist has an article I wrote about painting in urban areas.

The article includes the paintings that my friend Garin Baker, my wife Jeanette, and I did last March in Newburgh, New York.

(Above: Plein air watercolor painting laid over photo after the fact.)

I also list my "10 Tips for Sketching in Rough Neighborhoods." The first five tips are sensible precautions, but the second five are a little more unexpected:

6. I travel with traffic cones on which I’ve stenciled “DEPT. OF ART” and I often wear a garbage collector or gas station uniform shirt when I’m painting, so I look like I’m doing something official.
7. Street sketching is a great opportunity for impromptu portraits. In my experience, guys with tattoos and elaborate outfits love to pose and be noticed by artists.
8. Bring a pad of paper and pencils for the kids to let them draw.
9. It’s good to paint near a fast food place, because there’s always a bathroom handy.
10. Check out the website Urban Sketchers, which has members all around the globe.

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LINKS

Garin Baker is currently teaching a workshop called: New York At Night—Plein Air on Location in NYC

International Artist magazine

Book: The Art of Urban Sketching

Previously on the blog:

Urban Plein Air Painting

17th Street Locos

Traffic Cones

Waltham Steampunk Festival

2013-05-13T12:22:00.002-04:00

The Watch City Steampunk Festival is a retro-Victorian extravaganza, with goggles, corsets, tophats, gears, and steam engines.

(Video link) The weekend event is held near the Charles River Museum of Industry in Waltham, Massachusetts. Scattered throughout the town center are vendors, workshops, films, authors, musicians, and dancers.

I was there (wearing Arthur Denison's coat) to give a lecture on Dinotopia. In this video, a calliope plays John Philip Sousa's The Liberty Bell March, also used by Monty Python.

Watch City Festival

Amazing photographs

2013-05-12T06:22:00.000-04:00

Above: "Waterfall Island at Iguazu Falls"

Above: "First Contact." There is a mind-bending and soul-stirring collection of photographs posted by Reddit user StoopidTrooper. (Same photos at Huffington Post)

This one is by CMGW Photography
Thanks, Kay

Anders Zorn's Omnibus Paintings

2013-05-11T07:12:00.000-04:00

The exhibition of Anders Zorn at the Gardner Museum in Boston ends in just two days, on May 13. The show includes twenty-four paintings and twenty-two drawings, in addition to photographs and letters.

I went to see the show with a group of artist friends last week, and we were intrigued with several variations on a theme of passengers riding an omnibus.

In one version, a young woman sits with her left hand clutching the string of a box as her fellow passengers doze or gaze out the windows. Outside it's a blur of action. Two contrasting light sources flood into the interior from the left and right.

In another, larger version, a wealthier woman hooks her fingers through a red strap in a hatbox. This time a man's arm and hand fills the lower left. The same two side lights prevail as in the previous version. But now he adds a third light source, a bar of light from the viewer's position cutting boldly across the main figure.

A smaller study shows a female omnibus rider peering out toward the light with a hand on the window.

A 'bus interior is an interesting subject for a painter, one that we can relate to now. It's an environment that mixes social classes, forcing strangers to sit together in the same space, while each is miles apart in his or her own thoughts.

Evidently all these paintings were based on visual impressions that Zorn experienced on location. Of course he couldn't have painted these fairly large canvases on the spot. My guess is that he sketched some small rapid notations in pencil or charcoal on location, committed details to memory, and then reconstructed the scene with models in the studio.

The challenge would have been to hold to the fleeting impression, and not be seduced by detail in the static posed model. The attention to soft edges and rapid paint handling in all three versions gives the effect of jostling movement and the fleeting effect of a moment glimpsed and recollected.

Book: ANDERS ZORN: A European Artist Seduces America
Anders Zorn Exhibition

Steampunk Festival in Massachusetts

2013-05-10T09:22:00.000-04:00

If you live near Massachusetts and you like steampunk-styled Victorian science fiction, I hope you can come to the Watch City Festival, where I'll be giving a lecture on worldbuilding on Saturday at 2:00pm, followed by a book signing.

Watch City Festival

Richard in a Restaurant

2013-05-10T02:20:00.001-04:00

A couple nights ago I was in Boston having supper with some artist friends. While we waited for the food to be served, I painted a portrait of Richard, who sat across from me under a down-facing spotlight.

The light hit his forehead and nose, leaving the rest in shadow. Within the shadow, the bottom half of his face was lit from the light bouncing off the table. This lighting gave him a film noir look. He has chiseled features, with well defined planes, which makes him fun to draw.

It was a fancy restaurant, and I had to be careful not to get my paint on the cloth napkins. To keep things simple, I limited the colors to black and white casein paints. Even though my transparent watercolors were open and available, I didn't use them.

Two steps in the process.
1) I quickly sketched the main shapes with a red-brown watercolor pencil. Then I quickly massed in the shadow as a single tone.
2) I used darker values for the up-facing planes and the side planes within the shadow.

This detail of the final sketch is about an inch square. You can see how I was trying to group the values within the shadows according to planes. So for example, the side planes of the mouth barrel, the jaw, and the forehead received a darker tone. A little of that red-brown pencil shows through the shadow.

Right before the meal arrived, I went to the rest room to wash out my brush and palette.

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Paints: Jack Richeson / Shiva casein colors
Moleskine watercolor notebook

Winsor & Newton Series 7 round watercolor brush

Ray Harryhausen, 1920-2013

2013-05-09T07:40:00.002-04:00

Visual effects pioneer and stop motion animator Ray Harryhausen died Tuesday at age 92.

In 1993, I visited Ray, who invited me to his London home. On the top floor was his studio, which he jokingly called his “den of iniquty.” He showed me many of the original models from his classic films, which were gathered together like aging actors waiting to be called back onstage.

I was thrilled to see the Medusa from the 1981 picture Clash of the Titans. I remembered her menacing gaze, with the twelve snakes writhing on her head—each with a head and a tail, each one moving independently—and that’s not including her arms and her tail and the flickering firelight, all of which had to be controlled one frame at a time.

I asked Ray how he remembered where each snake was heading, how he kept track of all those separate elements. “How did you do it?” I asked.

He thought for a moment, closed his eyes, and smiled: “I just did it,” he said.

From my introduction to his book "A Century of Model Animation."

New York Times Obituary

Bubble Yum Ballistic Berry

2013-05-08T03:34:00.000-04:00

Here's a sketch I did of my son when he was 11.

He was reading a book called Rip Foster: Assignment in Space while chewing Bubble Yum Ballistic Berry gum.

As I look back at this sketch, what strikes me is this thought: I suppose we all have a tendency to assume that everything in our life at a given moment will stay the same forever.

But of course everything and everyone changes from year to year. My son grew up, went to college, and is making his way in life. I treasure my sketchbooks because they usher me back to previous states of life and thought.

Walt Disney and The Art Spirit

2013-05-07T04:00:00.001-04:00

In this vintage 1958 video, Walt Disney reads from Robert Henri's The Art Spirit as he introduces some of the artists who worked on the Sleeping Beauty production.

(Video link) Disney explains the importance of an artist's individual style, but also how each member of the team must set aside his personal vision to match the style of the studio production.

Later in the video, Marc Davis, Eyvind Earle, Walter Peregoy, and Joshua Meador, go outdoors to paint a live oak, each one in a different style, each one explaining his intentions. Some paint squatting on the ground with their canvases propped awkwardly on rocks. At 9:29, Eyvind Earle shows how he mixes his caseins in cups. Meador uses highly flammable lighter fluid with his oil paint. Glad he's not smoking!

Book: The Art Spirit
The Art Disney's Snow White
Sleeping Beauty background art online gallery
Thanks, Andrew Sides

Casein Portrait of Shapenote Singer

2013-05-06T09:32:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I tried out my new casein paints at my wife's singing group.

(Video link) I'm painting a friend of mine named Alan Neumann, who sings bass in the shapenote singing society at Bard College in New York.

I'm using an improvised easel to hold my sketchbook on a camera tripod. I start by painting over a not-so-hot sketch done in the Atlanta subway. I'm starting to get the hang of caseins--they're like oils on adrenaline. The whole portrait takes about two hours.
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More info:
Paints: Jack Richeson / Shiva casein colors
Moleskine watercolor notebook
Richeson's informative FAQ about casein.
Sacred Harp Singing at Bard College
Sacred Harp Singing in New York State
The tune is White #288 ("Long Time Traveling")
Subscribe to the James Gurney YouTube channel to see videos before anyone else

Steampunk festival next week

2013-05-05T18:13:00.002-04:00

Attention Boston: I'll be a guest of the Watch City Steampunk Spectacular a week from now.

I'll give a lecture on Dinotopia this coming Saturday at 2:00 p.m. and I'll be doing a lot of sketch-reporting all day Saturday.

I would love to meet you, sign your book, or generally blow off a little steam.
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Watch City Festival, Waltham Massachusetts, May 11, 2013.
Watch City Festival on Facebook

The Sketch Artist

2013-05-05T08:01:00.000-04:00

"The realist who studies movement. There is the future impressionist." —Swedish reviewer, discussing Anders Zorn.

Illustration above from "The Sketch Artist" by Edouard Cucuel.

IllumiRoom extends the game screen to the whole wall.

2013-05-04T10:32:00.002-04:00

(Video link) IllumiRoom is a home entertainment projection device that extends the action of a game beyond the screen and onto your living room wall. It even scans and learns the furniture in the room and distorts it to enhance the game.

Dinotopia map in 4,000 wood dowels

2013-05-03T07:30:00.003-04:00

Warren Woodson recreated the map of Dinotopia as a wood sculpture.

It is 24" x 24" and is entirely hand-made, including the roughly 4,000 hand-made wooden dowels.

Warren Woodson's Creations

Walking with Dinosaurs trailer

2013-05-03T07:22:00.002-04:00

(Video link) If you can ignore the rather conventional voiceover, this is a well animated trailer for the Walking with Dinosaurs 3D movie, coming out this Christmas.

Jersey Boys Interview

2013-05-03T07:16:00.001-04:00

The blog "Jersey Boys Hunt Dinosaurs" has just posted an interview they did with me, focusing on dinosaur art.