For those who live near the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the Museum was kind enough to invite me to come present my views on illustration.
The museum is one of the premier resources for promoting "the rich visual legacy of American illustration art," so you can imagine how surprised I was to receive the invitation.
My talk is scheduled for next weekend, on September 24th, from 1:30 to 2:30. Later in the same day, illustrator David Macaulay (the Museum's 2011 Artist Laureate) will speak about his work.
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Minggu, 18 September 2011
Rabu, 14 September 2011
CHRIS PAYNE
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| Detail |
Payne's tight, crisp images are certainly eye-catching, and his technical skill stands out among contemporary illustrators.
However, if you get too distracted by the skill you'll miss the larger artistry of these pictures (which is the most important part).
There are plenty of illustrators who do highly detailed, photorealistic work. Artists such as Rowena, Boris and Elaine Duillo are meticulous technicians, but for me their results are usually leaden and uninspiring (unless you count the inspiration that comes from watching honest manual labor). Adobe Illustrator is helping a younger generation of obsessive illustrators take pointless detail to a whole other level.
But Payne brings something more to his pictures. His skill is exercised in the service of a larger artistic vision, which is why his pictures positively glow in comparison.
Note for example his dramatic compositions for these excellent portraits:
Or look at the following portrait of Yogi Berra. Payne must have labored over the details of that car, and the expressions on those faces, and making those figures interact, and creating the jaunty angle with the car hovering mid-bounce, yet all of these complex elements come together like a snap of the fingers.
The picture has a cohesion and liveliness that makes the hard work look easy.
To understand what distinguishes Payne's work, it might help to focus on a few details from this picture of a man floating away (a la Renee Magritte) :
At first it appears he is wearing a conventional gray flannel suit, but a closer look reveals that Payne used a purple(!) watercolor wash, with flowing striations deliberately left exposed:
A less confident artist would have painted the suit gray, and painstakingly drawn in the pin stripes.
Those trees and bushes in the background may look realistic but up close we see they are painted very free and abstract. Rather than make everything in the picture uniformly detailed, Payne understands how to prioritize a picture. He understands design:
As realistic as Payne's figures may sometimes seem, he frequently elongates and distorts them for the sake of the picture. Heads are stretched and extruded (see below) and ears are pulled out asymmetrically (see portrait of Vladmir Putin, above):
It takes a strong center of gravity to work like this. It's a far tougher job than merely capturing a likeness, and it's one of the reasons why Payne's work is so admired.
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Rabu, 07 September 2011
WorkshopSF
Hey guys, it's workshop time!
Massive Black, SixMoreVodka, Safehouse Atelier, and SteamBot Studios along with a bunch of other artists are having an art workshop in San Francisco in November. The workshop is geared at both beginner and professional artists in the entertainment, film, game, comics, illustration, and fine art industries.
Some of the projects that these individuals have worked on off of the top of my head include X-Men, Tron, Assassin's Creed, Skyrim, Guild Wars 1 & 2, Magic the Gathering, Transformers 1 2 3, Left 4 Dead 2, DOTA 2, Red Dead Redemption, StarCraft 2, Diablo 3, and much more.
I will be doing live demos, lecturing, and doing portfolio reviews at the workshop. Availability is limited, and there is also an Early Bird Special, so if you are interested, you should grab a ticket while they are still available - November is just around the corner. Hopefully I will see some of you guys there!
Here's the official page for more info:
WORKSHOPSF
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Coke Super Bowl Commercial
Here is an update on some of the entertainment art I did a while back for Coke's Super Bowl commercial featuring orcs and dragons. I did some key art showing the horde of orcs and their dragon, but I didn't design the "good guy" creatures. This was a pretty fun project :)
You can check out the commercial HERE
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You can check out the commercial HERE
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| This was an alternate payoff to the dragon drinking Coke |
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Magic: the Gathering - Update for 2011
I'm a bit behind on my Magic: The Gathering updates.
Here is some work from the last few expansions this year including Mirrodin Besieged, Magic 2012, New Phyrexia, and the MTG video game. Stay tuned in the future for Innistrad updates.
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Here is some work from the last few expansions this year including Mirrodin Besieged, Magic 2012, New Phyrexia, and the MTG video game. Stay tuned in the future for Innistrad updates.
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| Chandra Nalaar |
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| Maul Splicer |
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| Karn Liberated |
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| Hellkite Igniter |
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| New Phyrexia Fat Pack |
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| Massacre Wurm |
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| Puresteel Paladin |
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| Thrun the Last Troll |
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| Search for Karn |
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| Phyrexian Unlife |
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| Lord of the Unreal |
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Book Covers update
Looks like it's about time to post all of my recent book cover illustrations...
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| So Silver Bright by Lisa Mantchev |
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| The Humming Room by Ellen Potter |
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| Thief's Covenant by Ari Marmell |
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| Beyonders: Seeds of Rebellion by Brandon Mull |
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| The Princess Curse by Merrie Haskell |
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| The Resisters by Eric Nylund |
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| Sooner Dead by Mel Odom |
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| Red Sails in the Fallout by Paul Kidd |
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| Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed |
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Senin, 05 September 2011
ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 37
I love this drawing by Harrison Cady of a small house standing in the way of urban progress:
Cady was famous for simple cartoons of funny animals, but this large, complex drawing is a virtuoso feat of draftsmanship. Note how Cady maintains total control of the value scale, from those faint buildings in the distance to the dark edges of the building in the foreground.
Cady used tens of thousands of tiny hatched lines to create subtle gradations in value from the top to the bottom of that looming skyscraper:
From one point of view, the hatching on the skyscraper is mindless repetitive work. But it is also a marvelous tightrope walk.
Pen-and-ink is an unforgiving medium; Cady would be screwed if he progressed too quickly from light to dark, or drew the lines in one area too close together-- or too far apart apart; or if he failed to maintain consistent values from left to right. He had to keep up a steady rhythm, which is especially difficult with a drawing so large that Cady could not see the entire building as he drew.
The drudgery aspect of this kind of work was eliminated long ago by machines. 24 years after Cady's drawing, Prometheus brought Zipatone to earth. From that day on, a gradient tone could easily be peeled from a handy plastic backing:
The stains and cuts from aging zipatone are now viewed as part of the charm of original artwork from that era:
Today the world has moved even further away from old fashioned hatch marks. Zipatone has been replaced by Photoshop. Cady could've created the shading on that building simply by opening a grayscale screen and customizing it with the gradiant tool. This is a huge boon for efficiency. It saves artists from hours of mindless work; it makes them more productive, enables them to meet shorter deadlines (and enables clients to make more changes on shorter notice). These are commercially sensible, perhaps inevitable developments.
But let's not overlook what we lose with all this efficiency. Artists who spend hours making marks like this often let their minds wander free while their eyes and hand take over. The rhythm of the linework can put you in a trance-like state while you go to deep places. Those places may not help meet deadlines but they can be very valuable for an artist.
Fine artist Jasper Johns, who never had to worry about an art director's deadline, made a series of large paintings delving into the metaphysics of the common hatch mark:
Zipatone and Photoshop are wonderful inventions that help to set artists free. But as I look back at Harrison Cady's lovely drawing, I am reminded of the words of G.K. Chesterton: "You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes."
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| from the Kelly Collection of American Illustration (24" x 20") |
Cady was famous for simple cartoons of funny animals, but this large, complex drawing is a virtuoso feat of draftsmanship. Note how Cady maintains total control of the value scale, from those faint buildings in the distance to the dark edges of the building in the foreground.
Cady used tens of thousands of tiny hatched lines to create subtle gradations in value from the top to the bottom of that looming skyscraper:
From one point of view, the hatching on the skyscraper is mindless repetitive work. But it is also a marvelous tightrope walk.
Pen-and-ink is an unforgiving medium; Cady would be screwed if he progressed too quickly from light to dark, or drew the lines in one area too close together-- or too far apart apart; or if he failed to maintain consistent values from left to right. He had to keep up a steady rhythm, which is especially difficult with a drawing so large that Cady could not see the entire building as he drew.
The drudgery aspect of this kind of work was eliminated long ago by machines. 24 years after Cady's drawing, Prometheus brought Zipatone to earth. From that day on, a gradient tone could easily be peeled from a handy plastic backing:
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| Al Williamson |
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| Frank Godwin |
But let's not overlook what we lose with all this efficiency. Artists who spend hours making marks like this often let their minds wander free while their eyes and hand take over. The rhythm of the linework can put you in a trance-like state while you go to deep places. Those places may not help meet deadlines but they can be very valuable for an artist.
Fine artist Jasper Johns, who never had to worry about an art director's deadline, made a series of large paintings delving into the metaphysics of the common hatch mark:
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| Cady Johns |
Zipatone and Photoshop are wonderful inventions that help to set artists free. But as I look back at Harrison Cady's lovely drawing, I am reminded of the words of G.K. Chesterton: "You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes."
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