Noela Young's "Wombat Tales"

In the early 60s Noela Young created numerous ink illustrations for a book series about a Wombat.  Some of her work is featured on Bibliodyssey.

Olga and Andrei Dugin

Olga and Andrei Dugin are a married illustration team who create mythical images in a Pre-Renaissance style. Lines and Colors features their work today.

Paper Folding

Complicated and intricate works of origami, many of these are from single sheets of paper.

Duane Keiser

Duane Keiser has been doing "a painting a day" project for several years now. Though, now he does take some breaks. He looks for interesting small images to paint daily in a single session. Afterward he takes  a picture and sells them on eBay. This is a recent great one that he did. The red kettle is quite striking.

Ideas for Creating Space in Pictures

Hillary Harkness blogs at the NYAA (New York Academy of Art) about simple, proven, and useful idea on creating space in paintings.  Starting with Overlapping.

Aron Wiesenfeld

Aron Wiesenfeld has posted a great new painting. Check out his work on his website.

Traditional Animal Portraits

Traditional animal photo portraits by Alex Castro.

Mr. Cylinder and Other Notes

Below are my notes that I used to explain to my BYU freshmen figure drawing students the basics of using cylinders to express volume and how they can learn to control their use of soft and sharp lines. We started out using an armature to learn the basics of triangulation and proportion when drawing the figure (see stick figure bottom right hand corner).  Learning to use the armature is a painful, but necessary, process to help them get a basic sense of proportions that then allows them to move much more quickly and with greater sensate accuracy through the rest of the semester's content. My cylinder is a one placement/four movement notation. You angle the conte crayon to the main axis of the form and push or pull up, then softly across then sharply down/up, and finally softly across.

I like to spend a portion of each class drawing, during the final drawing session I speed up the poses from a few minutes to a final set of ten second drawings. I try to use the process I want them to understand during that time period, so you will see a Line of Action, Volumetric Placements, and final anatomical details (time allowed details, that is) in each of the drawings.

 

Nelson Shanks' Class Demos

Nelson Shanks has decided to share some of his demos on his blog today.  Take a look.

Tony Ryder Workshop

Pt 1. of Innis' notes from a workshop with Tony Ryder.
Pt 2 - updated Jan 6
Pt. 3 - updated Jan 13
Pt. 4 The Poster - added Jan 16

From Frank Stockton, some interesting...

From Frank Stockton, some interesting thoughts, that I think may be especially valuable to my digital illustration students, but I think are generally important to any student of the arts whether they are pursuing commercial illustration markets or the fine arts.

 

While I may disagree about whether you may or may not need any digital experience in school (I do think it can be very helpful, though...I do TEACH digital illustration), I do agree that the most important thing you can study is design and composition (I would add drawing to that list as well). Any media is simply a tool in the hand of a visionary.

Those two elements Drawing and Composition/Design are the most important strengths I see lacking in the students that sign up for my class. And unfortunately, they're not ones that the curriculum can solve, especially the drawing part.  It is one of the reasons that I emphasize walking through the image making process of thumbnailing, generating and collecting reference, creating a comp and then doing the final.  This gives the student the experience of learning about the processes of composition, researching and developing design possibilities within a project of relatively limited subject matter. Plus it's a lot more fun than regurgitating rote projects. This also gives students the opportunity to see how their weaknesses impact their ability to generate work and then what they need to practice and learn to become proficient. 

If you'll dig through his blog, you will find many examples of how Mr. Stockton developed his imagery.

Having a profound understanding and a protracted development period of Drawing and Design is what makes the difference in a student who graduates with a professional portfolio ready to pursue their chosen career and a student who has to likely set themselves up for a future that they didn't think they were choosing (see megastore night stocker).

Jeffrey Hein

Jeffrey Hein has started posting again, or rather, one of his students has been assigned to post for him. It looks like there are a lot of exciting things going on there. I had the great fortune of studying under him a few years ago.

Copy Demonstration

I spent about the last 45 minutes of class demonstrating a black and white digital copy of a master painting in my Digital Painting course at UVU. I used the limited brush set that I gave them to demonstrate the variety you can get from a very limited number of brushes.

The Copy by Me

The Original by Thomas Moran

Huck Finn: First Edition Illustrations

Scans of the original Huck Finn Illustrations.

zBrush Quick Start Guide

Pixologic posted a new handy quickstart guide for zBrush today. I've flipped through it and it looks to be very helpful for those looking to start using the program.

Inspirational Drawings/Paintings

Francis Vallejo put up a bunch of drawings and paintings that inspire him, they also happen to inspire me.




And who is Lilian Westcott Hale???

Mike Yamada

Mike Yamada starts posting again.

Animal Skeleton Photos

Animal Skeleton photographs on LIFE's website.

Harvey Dunn

Student of Howard Pyle and later the teacher of Dean Cornwell, Harvey Dunn is one of the greats of the Brandywine line of illustrators, Lines and Colors profiles him and a new book on his work today.


Illustration Art's recent article on the same subject.

Nothing is Forgotten

Part 1 of Nothing is Forgotten by Ryan A.

It's pretty awesome

Charlotte's Web

High Resolution scans of original ink drawings for Charlotte's Web by Garth Williams.

Daniel Lieske's "WormSaga Ep. 1"

Daniel Lieske presents his first episode in the WormSaga on an "infinite" canvas. It's been beautifully painted and once I can get past that, I'll probably read it.

main site
blog

Hang Son Doong and The Crystal Cave

National Geographic article on Hang Son Doong, a mammoth cave in Vietnam. You can fit skyscraper in it.

Photo Gallery
Interactive Map


Also, this article on a Crystal Cave in Mexico is pretty amazing too, photo gallery to the left.

Three Main Light Sources

Nice discussion of three light sources from Art and Influence.

Chardin:Painter of Silence

Great Chardin article on Lines And Colors. The image below is a large jpg of a Chardin still life.

JC Leyendecker and the New Year's Baby

Every year, from 1908-1943, J.C. Leyendecker did the New Year's cover for the Saturday Evening Post featuring the New Year's Baby. You can see them all here.