Nomad Brush for the iPad

Matthew Innis presents info on the newly released and sold out Nomad Brush for the ipad. It looks really interesting, especially since you can have a light touch on it. Other styli I've used require a heavy hand.

Gesture Drawing Demos

I teach figure drawing at the 100 level at Brigham Young University. We focus a lot on the form figure and a simplified version of anatomical structure in this class. Students initially begin with the line of action, an armature, basic form figure, anatomical contours and notations, and simple light and dark value structure. We've just started applying enveloping and comparative measuring techniques using the head as a basic system of measure. This first image is an example of the process. The black conte was used for the underlying aspects and I saved the red conte for the contours. I had them break the drawing down into 20 minute segments for a one hour drawing. The First 20 was used to place the Line of Action, the head heights and widths, and the envelope. The Second 20 was used to lay in the armature and the form figure. The Third 20 was used to put in the contours and values. I spent about 10 minutes on this drawing, working up to each level quickly and then going around to check and see how everyone else was doing.

We start out each class by warming up with quick gestures. We start at 3 minutes and work our way down to 10 second poses. This is a sample of one session progressively going from 3 minutes to 10 seconds.

In these drawings you can see the underlying armature and line of action and how I apply them.

I posted some other figure sketches at my other blog.

James Gurney's Bag

Boing Boing blog did a picture feature on what's in James Gurney's bag. A wonderful assortment of drawing materials is what's in there!

James Gurney's Blog

Daniel Sprick

Daniel Sprick has an upcoming show at New York's Arcadia Gallery in March. It should be a jaw dropping exhibition. Matthew Innis has a preview of the show on his blog. Sprick was also interviewed in the Fall 2010 episode of American Painting Video Magazine.

The Art Department Tutorial Sale

I've not been posting much for the last little while due to a deadline.  Since this is time sensitive, I thought I'd take a little break and put this up.

ConceptArt.org's The Art Department is having a sale on their instructional dvds, streaming videos and downloads. There's a lot of great stuff in there that's worth checking out.

Mike Mignola

The preeminent Mike Mignola was recently featured in an article on his use of architecture.

He also provided USA Today with a great short Hellboy story.

I like to show Mignola's work to my students because of his application of simple black and white design (notan) to clearly show what's going on in an image. He allows the lights to merge together and the darks to merge together to convey mood and meaning.  Keeping them absolutely distinct clarifies the narrative and creates more engaging imagery. This is an especially helpful consideration when developing their thumbnails and should be kept in mind during the entire development of a picture.

Carlos de Haes

19th century Spanish landscape painter Carlos de Haes featured on the Bearded Roman blog. There are large detailed images if you click on them.

Art Project, by Google

Hi Res zoomable images from major art museums worldwide, not completely complete yet, but some amazing work available to see here! I've added the link to this page to the left hand Utilities/Reference section.

Art Project

Several recent blog articles about Art Project (added Feb 3 2011)

Flying Fox
Lines and Colors
Underpaintings 
Victorian Paintings

WWII Propaganda Posters

Propaganda posters featured on the Animation Archive blog.

Eight Dog Chronicles

Gorgeously illustrated Japanese book from the 19th century. 

Israel Hershberg

Israel Hershberg is a painter educated at the Pratt Institute and the State University New York in Albany. Recently founded the Jerusalem Studio School in Israel. He has recently been featured in a couple of blogs on painting.

blog features
Painting Perceptions Interview
Painting: Powers of Observation

other:
Marlborough Gallery Page
Jerusalem Studio School blog

Recent Additions

I added to the handouts pages for both Digital Painting and Head Rendering. To the Digital Painting Handout page, I added my paper set, which includes the mars textures, canvas textures, and various other useful papers. To the Head Rendering Handouts page I added a Drawing Procedure list, that I will also hand out in class. This hand out is not intended to be the final word on the ways and means of drawing or painting the human head, but is rather a general list and gives the order of general method that I follow. Additional considerations or models may be necessary depending on the circumstances you find yourself in.

Doug Fryer

Utah painter Doug Fryer put up a blog recently. Check it out.