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!

Studying Composition from Old Masters

Around Thanksgiving, I began a series of warmup exercises with the purpose of improving my compositions. Illustrators almost always start a painting with small, rough thumbnail sketches to quickly think through the composition of a piece. These can range from the simplest abstract lines, to basic value sketches of big shapes. 

I decided to take a tried & true concept of learning, the master study, and simplify it. In a formal master study, a student paints a copy of an old master's painting, trying to discern their color palette, painting techniques, and composition. But in order to focus on just composition, I began to do abstract linear thumbnails & value thumbnails as studies of compositions I admire. With this simple exercise, after only a few days I saw results creeping into my own work.

Every aspect of composition can be broken down into a value problem. Framing, movement, balance, all of it, comes down to values. N.C. Wyeth is one of my favorite illustrators, and his compositions are always simple and powerful.

N.C. Wyeth, Robin Hood

N.C. Wyeth

On the left, Wyeth shifts the value of the sky & water as needed to keep the viewer's attention on the main ship. The values in the clouds also shift as needed to serve as a frame for the ships. The angles of the sails & light areas of the main cloud forms create a dynamic movement.

In the Robin Hood illustration, the figures are only small silhouettes, but read crystal clear because they are surrounded by the brightest brights of the entire painting. The bright shape exists as a sort of kidney bean, and accentuate the curved diagonal separating the foreground and background. This piece also is a great example of how throwing the top and bottom of a piece in shadow serves to frame the main event, and keeps our eyes from escaping the piece.

N.C. Wyeth

Here Wyeth gives us a complex scene, but by throwing most of it into mid tone and shadow, leaving the focal point as a silhouette surrounded by a bright cloud, we know exactly where to look. What struck me about this painting was the dynamic movements throughout his cloud formations. I tackled these movements in my abstract linear sketches. We can see "S" curves stacked on "S" curves, perpendicular angles, and large ellipses.

N.C. Wyeth, Robin Hood

Again we see Wyeth employing some similar techniques. He frames his focal point by making it the brightest area of the illustration, while keeping our eyes within the image with dark & middle values along the sides of the piece. In this particular instance, his "frame" creates a wonderful "S" curve in the negative space that he left bright.

N.C. Wyeth, "The Opium Smoker"

Our last Wyeth for today, and a powerful image. Wyeth is doing a few things here. He is creating a triangle with his light values against a mid/dark background, the lights being the figure on the left, the dragon decor on the wall, and the head & hand of the figure on the right. Of course, the dragon is subdued compared to our main characters. Wyeth is also letting the smoker's suit disappear into the shadow, simplifying the shapes and allowing the bright skin tone really stand out here. A very simple, strong composition.

Edward Robert Hughes

Here is a painting by Edward Robert Hughes which features a single figure as the main event. Here, body language is the key to creating emotion and movement. Hughes is leaving his lights for only the skin on the woman's arm and face, with everything else in the painting significantly darker (save for an accent along the horizon). He is framing her face with her garments, and the shape it creates is mimicked by the trees in the background. The far trees and our figure are creating dynamic angles, as denoted by the red lines in my abstract, and the piece is stabilized by the level horizon and tree closest to us. Hughes is using the tree on the right as a framing device to keep us within the painting, as well as darkening the bottom third of the piece. It is similar to some of what we saw with N.C. Wyeth.

William Adolphe Bouguereau

My favorite figure painter of all time has to be Bouguereau. He is doing something similar to Hughes here, by framing his figure with her garments. He creates a striking contrast by keeping her such a light element and her drapery the darkest element of the painting. The movement of her drapery echoes and accentuates the twists of her torso, and the throw of her hip. She creates an "S" curve, and it looks more organic thanks to the perpendicular angles formed by the large shapes of the drapery.
Bouguereau also throws in the stones on the bottom left, which stop us from exiting the image, and also serves as a dark accent to her garments. The negative space between the stone and the figure create yet another "S" curve to mimic the figure. He is also creating movement in the background, by dividing it into quarters that bounce between light and dark.

Maxfield Parrish

Here we have an example by Maxfield Parrish. Another simple image, yet a wonderful composition that we can learn a lot from. The shape of the tree is an extension of the shape of the figure, creating an arch that cuts the painting in half. The rest of the piece is a play of perpendicular angles echoing the various angles within the figure, which we can see in the rocks she's seated on as well as in the mountains behind her. The value composition is a fairly simple one here and can be stated in three pieces from left to right. Dark (tree & rocks), light (figure), and middle values (background mountains).

Norman Rockwell

Finally, another one of my favorites, Norman Rockwell. From this richly detailed and busy painting, Rockwell teaches us the art of balance. When I first broke the piece down into values, it quickly became convoluted. But by looking at the abstract shapes, we see that Rockwell is creating an ellipse with the heads of his figures, surrounded by straight angles that keep our attention within the ellipse. He is balancing the composition with a few select brights; the white of the police officer's shirt, the highlight on the soldier's arm, and the two windows in the back. These key brights allow our eye to bounce around within a fairly stable shape (see the red shape over my value thumbnail). Furthermore, beyond values, Rockwell has arranged all his figures to be looking at the soldier, and he has also painted the flag in his hands as the highest chroma color in the entire piece. Both of these elements establish a clear focal point in an otherwise busy piece.

“Composition is the mortar of the wall, as drawing and color are its rocks of defense. Without it the stones are of little value, and are but separate integrals having no unity.” -Henry Rankin Poore

The quote above is from Henry Rankin Poore in Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures. This is one of the better books on composition out there, and luckily it's in public domain. You can grab a free PDF copy here. However, composition is a complex concept, and a "good" composition can take on many forms. Of course, there are certain optical tendencies that are universal, different techniques to direct a viewer to a painting's focal point, and considerations for balance and movement. James Gurney's books, Imaginative Realism and Color & Light, are authorities on composition (among all things illustration), and are must haves for any artist's library. But in the end, composition often comes down to a personal preference, so study & practice from compositions that you enjoy!

The best way to learn composition, is to just do it, just as the best way to improve draftsmanship is to simply draw. Studying the compositions of our forebears is like drawing from life, there is simple no substitute for the knowledge you gain from that experience.