Spending Time with Dinotopia

The weekend before I took a mini road trip to visit the Philadelphia museum, the Brandywine River museum, and the Smithsonian American Art museum, I went to see Dinotopia: The Fantastical Art of James Gurney at the Stamford Museum & Nature Center in Connecticut.

Waterfall City is breathtaking in person! The painting is very large, maybe 5 feet long? (Just a guess!)

I've been an enormous fan of James Gurney ever since I first saw his work in my sophomore year in college. His books, Color & Light and Imaginative Realism are the illustrator's bibles. When I first read through Dinotopia, I couldn't believe what I was seeing! Every page was alive! But I could have never imagined what those paintings would look like in person.

Up close, even in his more tightly rendered paintings, Gurney is somewhat painterly

There were over 50 paintings in the exhibit, each one begging for all of your attention. I had to tear myself away from each painting in order to make sure I got to see them all. The vivacity of the characters, the glow of the paint, the sheer size of them! I never expected so many of Gurney's paintings to be so large!

As I attempted to control my fanaticism and maintain a cool exterior, I was practically drooling over every brush stroke. I filled several pages of my notebook attempting to decipher how Gurney painted each illustration, analyzing as I went along. I filled in the gaps using what I already know about his methods from his videos and books, and from my own experience painting.

I took a couple hundred photos, and as I said there were over 50 paintings in the exhibit. Whittling them down for a few to show a few points for this blog is nearly impossible. But here's my best shot...

Thin, brushy darks glow when you get up close.

Pencil showing through

Gurney's colors are more saturated in person then they appear in print - hence the glow of his paintings in real life. He often paints very thin, to the point where sometimes pencil lines showing through can do some of the detail work for him. (Note: many of his Dinotopia paintings are done in a particular style using oil washes. I'm talking about his more finished, traditional looking oil paintings still retaining some of the thin application)



Gurney paints with a wide variety of edges, allowing soft subtleties here and crisp punches there. Perhaps I'm stating the obvious here, but edge work is something I'm particularly paying attention to lately in my own paintings, so I was really drawn to his use of edges to create depth and focal points. The more I study edges, the more I find that they are really the key to reproducing the way the human eye works, the way we actually see, in order to create a more convincing illusion (in terms of depth, focus, and the actual rendering of a variety of surfaces).

See how it all comes together from a distance? The girl below can be seen here on the bottom left.

Letting the paint do the work!

Particularly, I've been enamored with the ability of masters to leave such unresolved edges at times. I have the tendency to "smooth out"and blend edges in forms that I assume are soft, such as fabrics and skin. However, look at how Gurney leaves a single, hard brush stroke as the highlight on the face above. When you get up close to the painting it stands out, but when you step back (or see the reproductions) it blends in on it's own! Gurney is a master at painting just enough!

Once again, letting the paint do so much of the work & the eye can fill in the rest

Look how crystal clear the foreground elements are to the background crowd

Up close they're nothing more than suggestions of figures!

Gurney is a genius at painting just what needs to be painted, and letting the calligraphy of his brush and the eye of the viewer do the rest. He leaves so much of his illustrations unresolved, just hinting at a person or crowd in the background. A few brush strokes can represent an entire face, a single ambiguous stroke for a hand. He simply saves his crisp edges and values for the punch line of the painting - whatever is important.

One of my absolute favorites. Fell in love with this painting as a reproduction, and seeing it in person made me fall head over heels. What a composition - and the mood! It feels like a lived in world.

This is the tip of the iceberg here. I'm just going to share a few more photos for your own enjoyment and analysis. James Gurney is a living master, so I encourage you to check out his (very inexpensive) educational videos in addition to his books. I've learned a lot from watching him work, and he is a well spoken teacher.

This painting stood out to me because of how Gurney handled such a complex & dense scene. Looks like he almost painted the forest the way he might if he was doing a plein air painting!

You can tell here that he painted very thinly until he hit the opaques mixed with white. Look how simple the foliage behind the T-Rex is!

Spending Time with my Forefathers

Hello again!

It's been quite a while since my last post, longer than I thought. The month of April flew by as I worked tirelessly on the final illustrations for my senior show at the University of Hartford (which was a huge hit by the way!) And I officially have a BFA in Illustration with Magna cum Laude honors!

At the gallery opening with the best professors and mentors I could've asked for, from left to right: Doug Anderson, Dennis Nolan, myself, Bill Thomson

After graduation, I took some time to get my business affairs in order. My three month, six month, one year, year and a half and two year goals are outlined and a calendar has been written. My first wave of postcards and emails have been sent out to potential clients and art reps, and I'm now officially a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators (SCBWI). I moved back to Long Island, and set up my new art studio in the spare bedroom. All in all, a very exciting time for me!

First batch of postcards and tear sheets!

My new studio set up, with some decor that I picked up on my trip.

Of course in the interim I've continued to draw, paint, and look for inspiration, which is where the meat of this week's post lies. I visited a number of museums and exhibits over the past few weeks, and I've got so much to share!

I went on a camping-trip-art-museum-excursion two weekends ago with a number of friends and fellow illustrators. We camped two nights in Pennsylvania and visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Brandywine River Museum & Wyeth estates in Chadds Ford. The third day we drove down to D.C. to visit the Smithsonian American Art museum.

Sufficed to say in those three short days I was overloaded with information and inspiration, having seen some of the greatest painters from the Renaissance through the Impressionists at the Philadelphia Museum, gawked in the presence of N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, and Howard Pyle at the Brandywine River Museum, and sat in awe in front of the masterworks of the Hudson River painters at the Smithsonian.

Couldn't really keep it together seeing this Alma Tadema in person for the first time...I spent a good half hour with this masterpiece, and kept coming back to it whenever I wandered for too long.

My face the entire time at the N.C. Wyeth gallery at the Brandywine River Museum. Here I am with "Crystal Depths," such an incredible painting in person...

Of course a trip like this wouldn't be complete without doing plenty of sketching and painting along the way. We had to do something to let out all of the energy we were absorbing from these paintings!

Did this quick sketch (10 min) of a local at a diner, "Hank's Place," right near the Brandywine River Museum. 

We explored the surrounding fields and park along Brandywine Creek. I stopped to paint these very N.C. Wyeth-esque clouds in the late afternoon. 5x7" oil on canvas board.

Painted this warm sunset peeking over the Creek from the grounds right in front of the Museum. 6x6" oil on canvas board.

And the weekend came to an end! My friends and I sketching passersby from a Starbucks in Chinatown, Washington D.C. 

Last sketch of the trip. This was from our campground at Greenbelt State Park, MD. There was a magical glow in the woods after a rainstorm from the night before.

I'm going to go into more detail for each of the museums over the course of few posts, making a short blog series out of the trip. There is simply too much to share in one post. But for now, I'll leave you with my major takeaways from the trip.

Even the most richly realistic paintings are abstract suggestions - illusions - of what they represent, especially when you view them up close in person. I took almost 2,000 photos over the weekend, mostly detailed views I'd otherwise not find online or in print. Details maybe an inch from the canvas at times, to the point that out of context, that inch or two looks like nothing more than a few abstract strokes of paint - nonsense, really. This was really to remind me afterwards of what painting really is - strokes of pigment suspended in a medium lying flat on a surface.

It was quite eye-opening to see masters such as Coypel, Eakins, Church, Bierdstadt or Moran up close, to see how abstract and textural their paintings really are. Alma Tadema was especially surprising! There wasn't a single painter I saw all weekend whose work was an exception to this revelation. I realized that what realism and representational art boils down to is edge control. It doesn't matter if you hand-paint every crack and surface of stone, or strand of hair, but rather you can allow the qualities of the paint do so much of the work for you. It is really about edge control above all else. Edges allow the eye to read a certain texture, a variety of lost and found edges can bring so much depth to a painting, strengthen the focal point and retain the viewer's interest. And every painter, without fail and regardless of medium, allowed the qualities of the paint itself to do so much of the work.

Most incredible to me was seeing Howard Pyle & N.C. Wyeth's work in person. I was surprised to see how large the illustrations were - and they really came to life in person. They were both very, very loose in handling the paint, but less "stylized" than they appear in print. It looks largely alla prima, and perhaps the speed of painting alla prima was a necessity under the restraints of deadlines.

N.C. Wyeth was especially so rough and loose in unimportant places - just a couple of strokes indicating an entire form at times. I think working large lent itself to working this way as well, because when the paintings reduce down they tighten up. It's a similar affect to simply standing a few feet back from the painting. (I think I may try to work a bit larger on my next illustration, I'll just need to remind myself to step back often). Faces and body language were of the utmost importance in Howard Pyle's work - and as such the faces were the most carefully tended to. Other spots could literally be one stroke. One, carefully placed stroke!

Every masterpiece I saw this weekend was in their own way loose and abstract, but so completely controlled. It was perhaps most evident in Sargent's work in particular. In person, it almost looked like he didn't paint quickly at all, but he simply painted every stroke accurately.

As I said, these are some rather simple major themes from the trip. Over the next week or two I'll go into more depth with some of what I experienced, and post plenty of photos!