Review: Color and Light by James Gurney

I hate being sick. Some artists can draw and paint whilst little microscopic lifeforms devour their bodies, but I can't. It's too damned distracting. I just can't concentrate and I always make horrible color and light choices. So I looked around for a good book to read while I coughed and hacked and I cracked open my copy of Color and Light.

I know, I know, what was I waiting for? To be honest, I was afraid to find out how little I knew. I was afraid I wouldn't understand anything in the book. Well it turns out I know more than I thought and with Mr. Gurney's excellent explanations, I actually understood even the most complex principles in the book.

Mr. Gurney provides the best art instruction anyone will ever get in this book. He nails down everything an artist needs to know, from atmospheric perspective to what oil paints are lightfast. He instructs us on how to organize and harmonize our colors and gives us very simple ways to do it.

This book is far undervalued. For the meager price you get the best of a first-class art school. In fact, you get many concepts and tips that some art schools don't even provide. At the very least, you get the best artwork of James Gurney (Dinotopia) on every page; most of it never-before-seen landscapes that will blow your mind.

This book will not teach you how to draw. It's not that kind of book. This is an essential guide to illustrators and painters already working in the field or just knocking on the door of becoming professionals. The information in Color and Light will fill in the cracks of your artistic knowledge. Art-spackle for your flaws.

Train: Underpainting

Now the fun begins. I've taken the small photo of the train that I did my sketch from and projected it onto my gessoed board (masonite). I then applied a wash of acrylic Burnt Sienna and started laying in the dark areas first. When I paint, I'll be working in the mid-tones first, but for the underpainting I like to establish my darks and lights. This locks into my mind the darker and lighter parts of the painting right at the get-go. It also breaks up the monotony of painting the same thing twice as I'm working on different aspects of the painting in this stage and in the actual painting stage.

I work the underpainting in oils, using Burnt Sienna and Pthalo Blue. I do a two-color underpainting mostly to establish what is going to fade into the background (blue) and what is going to be my focus (brown). For this one, I did some of the blue areas in acrylic first but didn't like how that went so I switched back to oils. I find the underpainting stage is very flexible this way. Also, I may throw in different colors for the underpainting based on the colors I'll be using in the final. The theory here is that the underpainting will influence the final oils and if you use a bright or complimentary color under your final oil, the final oil will pick some of that up and really help the colors stand out (or fade back, as the case may be). It's all about establishing focus.

Going back to the topic of focus, I've detailed and darkened the areas that I want to be the focal point (very front of the train) and left the back areas very loose. This will give me a guide as I'm painting and will be a constant reminder of how and where I want the focus. This is essential because when you paint something with tons of detail, like this train, you tend to go overboard and render everything you can see on your reference photo. This is very bad because it produces a flat painting. I want depth and getting the focus right is one way to nail-down depth.

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I've seen artists post pics of their palette and they all look nice and orderly. Mine used to look that way, and sometimes it does, but mostly I use any white surface at hand to act as my palette. In this case I grabbed a paper plate! No matter what I use, I always place my colors around the edges with white in the middle. I'll post a pic of my final oil palette when I'm a bit further on the piece. I almost always use those cheap disposable paper palettes you can pick up at the local crafts store. I suppose I'm more concerned with the paints going on the canvas than arranging them on a nice wooden palette. Each to their own!

Train: Pencil Sketch

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I did a pencil sketch of the train before quoting a price. This is a good practice when you haven't drawn something before. It gives you a good idea of what will be involved because a thing often seems simpler in our heads than it does in reality. I discovered whilst doing this sketch that I don't like drawing trains, but I know from experience that you must be enthused about any piece of artwork you're doing. If you aren't enthused or happy about your artwork, it will show. Emotions come through. So I struggled to finde something to get excited about in this train (it wasn't until the underpainting that I really got excited).

 This sketch took me about an hour and a half to do and I was mostly concerned with getting the larger doo-dads down. This also gave me a good idea on what details I didn't need.

What's it worth?

My sister-in-law needs an artist. So one day whilst visiting her, she describes what she wants. A train. I'm sure that request sounded simple to her (and probably everyone else); A few wheels, a track, a round thingy in front and a smoke stack. Easy-peasy lemon-squeezy. Except that it isn't easy or peasy or even lemon-squeezy. It's all valves and piston push rods and railing and rivets and...ugh. Many do-dads to render. Many hours of work. Unfortunately, she imagined the cost would be a bit less than what I thought all that time was worth . So I struggled with doing a discount piece or simply telling her my price, knowing that it was higher than what she wanted to pay and leaving it at that. I was afraid she'd think I was ripping her off or something, so I went about demonstrating why the price was what I quoted it to be (I don't normally do this). I care about my sis and her opinion of me is important.

So I dig up some reference, do up a full pencil sketch. She heard my explanation about many hours worth of rendering for all the little details and proceeded to ask if I could delete the details. Some artists would agree to that and take the money. In my younger days I would have but I'm older now and I told her no. It was my name going on that piece of art and I don't skimp on quality. It's just not in anybody's best interest.

Money is spent and gone forever, but my art will remain. After I'm gone the artwork I do will still be around and I'll not have a shoddy piece representing me. As I said above, for most clients I simply state my price and let them decide, but I attempted to make my sister-in-law understand why I wouldn't produce a less-than-perfect picture. Since she's a teacher I put it to her this way, "What would you do if your principal asked you to grade only half the students' papers because grading all of them takes too long and the school didn't want to pay you for that?" She said that very same thing had actually happened and that some teachers did it and others, like her, refused (I applaud her for that!). I then pointed out that my art is like her job; some artists will skimp and some will not. I would not skimp just to save someone money. I think she took my point. Plus, to put a picture out there that's less than my standard of quality would decrease the worth of any other picture someone had bought from me.

So I may lose that job but it will be worth it. Anything a person does should be done to the highest quality possible and at the fairest price for that quality. It doesn't matter that there are artists better or worse than me out there and it doesn't matter what they charge. If a person wants your work, they deserve the best and sometimes the best isn't the cheapest.

Don't be afraid to lose money, be afraid to lose worth.

Strive to be wrong

If you look over at my 'Blogs you should be reading' section, you'll see an [e]. That's the blog of Eric Canete, a comic artist that isn't correct. He's wrong. Wonderfully wrong. Pleasingly wrong. All artists should wish we could be as wrong as he is. No, I'm not off my nut.....at least at the moment....

Too many artists spend too much time stressing over 'getting it right'. The proportions of the face must be 'right', the lighting on the tree must be 'right', etc to infinity. Well, you're all wrong, and it's not the good kind of wrong, either. Distill it down and art's only rule is that it should be pleasing. Sure, you have to know light, color, value, etc to make it look pleasing, but don't get hung up on all that overmuch. In the end, it has to look good and if you've fussed over the fundamentals too much, you can obscure the 'right' of a picture. Eric Canete stretches and distorts his figures and it all should look wrong, but it doesn't. It looks fantastically good. It looks 'right' even though it's almost totally wrong.

The two ways you can get your picture to look good are:

1) Composition. Study this. You need to know composition before you know anything else. Seek out books by Andrew Loomis, preferably 'Creative Illustration'. There's a wealth of composition information in there. All Loomis' books should be available at free online libraries or by searching for him and the term 'pdf' on Google.

2) Mood. Unfortunately, I don't think this can be easily taught. Subtle things like distorting a figure towards the camera to give it a sense of urgency or showing a character small on a large background to convey hopelessness come only when you stop thinking about it. You must detach your analytical self and let your emotions carry your pencil; you'll be surprised at how effective your emotions are at forming a picture!

Certainly there are other things an artist must know, like tone, value, form and light, but those are secondary. Those are the flesh and the clothes you put on your emotional, 'wrong' sketch. Don't be afraid to do what is wrong as long as it looks good.

One exercise is to do a small sketch, not worrying about getting the proportions down correctly. Go for the mood. When you've got that, transfer the sketch directly to your board and only then search out reference that roughly matches the pose and lighting of your sketch. Execute that to completion, letting  your colors be dictated by your mood.

One final caveat. I'm no professional. Art should take you and do with you what it will. If my thoughts here run counter to your style or experiences please ignore them and follow your own muse. That's really what it's all about anyway.

Going Back To the Well

I never took anatomy classes. I never drew from a nude model. I learned my anatomy at the tender age of seven by tracing over comic books. I was lucky, the comic books I had were drawn by artists that knew their anatomy dead-on. John Romita, John Buscema and Neil Adams. I highly recommend tracing as a tool for learning, but that's a subject for a different post. The key here is that I imprinted the lines and forms of the human figure very early, but even so I sometimes find that I run out of talent and forget how the forms work together.

Enter George B. Bridgman and his book 'Constructive Anatomy'.  I found this book after reading that Frank Frazetta would sit down with it and copy everything in one night. Amazing if true, but even if we all aren't that fast, it's worth following in his footsteps. So I picked up this book and copied every page.

Every now and again, when I just can't get the muscle structure right or I feel I need a refresher on some part of anatomy, I reach for this book and sketch from it.

I would recommend that everyone do the same. Further, I would suggest that you don't use pencil. Use a fine point, precise pen that lets you sketch freely. You want a pen that floats over the paper with as little resistance as possible. Pen makes it impossible to erase and will train you to lay a line down and forget it. It will develop a loose sketch style that will serve you well for years to come.



Here are some sketches I did to show you what I mean. A few were done in pen and a few in pencil.

Hope this helps! Happy sketching!

The importance of Blogs

For an artist, blogs are very important. As an illustrator you need one because art directors use them more and more these days to check the activity of their artists. If you're posting regularly, you're active and you're putting yourself out there and you generally look busy. Lets face it, after you get a job from an art director, you disappear for a few weeks while you work. A blog is a way to let the art director know you're still alive. These same reasons apply to fine artists as well. Gallery owners like to see what you're up to. It gives them a personal connection to you without all the bother of calling you daily or setting up lunches.

So how do you use a blog? Do you just ramble on about what your dog did today or how the kids are doing in math class? Do you wax political and philosophical? What work do you show here, if any?

First off, remember that a blog is an extension of your business. You're in the business to sell your art. You will not sell your art if you talk about politics. You will inevitably tick-off some art director or gallery buyer with your views.

Do talk a bit about your personal life but avoid negative comments. You want to keep it positive. It's OK to share your struggles with a model getting the right pose, but always put a positive spin on it. Superficial? Maybe, but our life is filled with turning negative into positive and your blog posts should be no different. Why depress when you could inspire?

I'm of the opinion that the perfect way for an artist to use a blog is to post personal art here. If you're allowed to by your client, you can even post process shots and works in progress pics here too. You should have a website for your portfolio and a blog for your personal artwork with a bit of personal posts to give it flavor.

So, as an artist just moving from private commissions to one working for clients, I'm following my own advice. This blog is now active and my portfolio is in progress. I'll share it all as I go.