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Showing posts from 2013

My CTNX Demo Saturday at 4pm!

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For those of you attending CTNX this weekend, stop by and join me Saturday at 4 to 4:45pm in the digital atrium for my demonstration. The topic will be using color and light as major design elements for concept art. And I'm looking forward to meeting those of you who signed up for my Friday workshop (sold out). See you there!

From Puss In Boots

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Northern California Studies

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A Full $100 Off My Self Taught Class, Sale Ends Friday

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The sale is now over, thanks so much for the overwhelming response! The class will remain available at this link as self taught or fully cri tiqued. I hope to have a chance to work with you in the future. Give your work beauty and artistry, drama and emotion, give it designed color and light! A full $100 off the regular price for the self taught class until Friday October 18. Now is the the moment you've been waiting for! Easy signup here.

SIMPLER IS BETTER

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No backgrounds. No clothes.    No photo reference   No fingernails or eyelashes.     No light source.   No facial expressions No laws of anatomy that can't be compromised in the name of design. No place to hide. Rodin's watercolors: Absolutely marvelous. 

Sign up for my CTN Animation Expo workshop!

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This event is now sold out but I am doing a presentation/demo on the main floor Saturday afternoon at 4pm. See you there! I hope to see you all at the CTN Animation Expo this year! My workshop is on Friday Nov. 15, 5:30pm and is now taking enrollments. Only $10, sign up while seats last!  Click this link and go to the third one down called "How to Find Artistry" Here's a description: Finding Artistry and Elegant Simplicity in Complex Concept Art  As an animation artist, you'll be required to find beautiful artistry and clarity within challenging and complex subject matter. Whether it's sophisticated architecture, busy foliage or a landscape filled characters, this workshop will give you tools to meet the challenge!

Location Design

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My Self Taught Online Course: Designing with Color and Light Fall Sale!

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Give your work beauty and artistry, drama and emotion, give it designed color and light! A full $100 off the regular price. Now is the the moment you've been waiting for! Easy signup here.

Enter the Villain

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Florianopolis Brazil Workshop!

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For any of you in Brazil, I'm very excited to travel to Florianopolis for workshops with Pixar's Louis Gonzales on November 2-3 See you there! http://www.schoolism.com/workshop-florianopolis/

Color Exploration While Listening to Music, 1998

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Charcoal and Pastel on T-V Bristol

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Charcoal on Strathmore paper

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Online Portrait Drawing Course!

Study portrait drawing with me from anywhere in the world in my online class Drawing the Portrait in Charcoal. It begins January 13, 2014, enrollment is limited, sign up today! Hosted by the great people at LAAFA! I've done my best to make this class the strongest such class on the market, it includes nine fully illustrated,  jam packed audio/video lectures, twelve video drawing demonstrations showing a wide variety of subjects, techniques and materials, and weekly homework assignments that will build on themselves to teach you a clearer, better way to work from life. I'll work with you personally each week, you'll get a full audio/video critique of your work where I'll talk through with you what's working in your drawing and what can be improved. I'll draw over your image to give you a personalized demonstration for every assignment you turn in. This class is designed to show you how to make drawing cease to be a source of frustration and become a ple

ART FRAUD

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"What is robbing a bank compared to founding a bank?"                                                             -- Bertolt Brecht This morning's newspapers bring the fun story of a massive art fraud, in which 63 "newly discovered" masterpieces by the greatest abstract expressionist painters (Rothko, de Kooning, Pollock, Motherwell) turned out to be forgeries, painted by a local artist in his garage. fake Jackson Pollock The paintings were sold over a 15 year period by prestigious art galleries for more than $80 million.  The New York Times reports, "How imitations of the most heralded Abstract Expressionists by a complete unknown could have fooled connoisseurs and clients remains a mystery."  No it doesn't.  Not in the least. See if you can spot the worst fraudsters in this food chain:  The painter who created the fakes first attempted to earn a living selling his own work on the streets of New York, but ultimately turned to painting masterpie

ROBERT FAWCETT, IN LINE AND TONE

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Here is another spot illustration by illustrator Robert Fawcett, this time a small ink drawing of his friend Austin Briggs who was giving a slide show presentation:   Despite the sedentary subject matter, close ups of the original reveal a vigorous knife fight:   Pausing over details, we begin to appreciate the extraordinary variety of Fawcett's marks on paper : Over the last few days we have focused on Fawcett's ink work, but before we move on to different topics, here is one of Fawcett's pencil drawings for a different perspective: This life drawing was included in Fawcett's book, The Art of Drawing but by looking at the original we can see that Fawcett (who was color blind) supplemented his drawing with shading from a red pencil.  Fawcett's eyes can't help but impose lines on a form:  but he understood tone and value as well:

Landscape Quicksketch

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Sketches in the vicinity of Crystal Springs Reservoir, California.

ONE L0VELY DRAWING, part 44

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I feel this blog performs a public service on days when I can share close ups from an original Robert Fawcett drawing.  This drawing had everything going against it: It's a tiny, low budget spot illustration for an industrial brochure... drawn from a photo... of a deadly dull topic: a middle aged, anonymous instructor at a correspondence school, working at his drawing board. Yet, for Fawcett even a boring subject could be like working in a firecracker factory.   He starts out working fairly tightly on the head, even using a little white paint to sharpen his focus... ... but from there, he quickly gets wilder:     With energy and integrity, it's possible to overcome even the most uninspiring subject matter.   In the next few days, I will be  posting more unpublished original work and some of Fawcett's handwritten notes about his approach to drawing.

Dusk

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COMIC-CON 2013

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This year's Comic-Con in San Diego was like the ancient bazaar of Constantinople teleported to the third moon of Zarbtron. There were charlatans and geniuses in abundance, hawking their wares from platforms that ranged from a cardboard box on the sidewalk to a glittering Hollywood extravaganza on the stage of the huge convention hall.  (Of course the platform was no predictor of quality, so you had to check out everything.) Comic-Con provides a true kaleidoscope of popular culture.  Where else could you find Neal Adams competing with Sergio Aragones-- his artistic opposite-- in a "quick draw" competition?  Where else would author Neil Gaiman discuss the merits of Jack Kirby's different inkers? One of my favorites: 20th Century Fox, promoting the new blu-ray edition of The Predator, used 3D copiers to scan the heads of the first 500 customers and create an action figure of the Predator holding up the customer's severed head . The loud, pounding base line from ampli

An Afternoon of Sketching in Central California

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 More at Land Sketch

The Herd

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A PICTURE'S PHYSICAL DELIGHT

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 "Wildness can be the picture's better part, its physical delight."  -- Gordon Parks  In the 1960s, American illustration entered a wild, expressive phase.  Many illustrators employed vigorous, slashing strokes to convey the new mood (and speed) of the country.   Bob Peak These pictures had an energy and virility that still stands out, fifty years later.  Bob Peak was one prominent example of that style, but there were dozens of less well known illustrators who helped to visualize the mood of the '60s. For example, the talented Harvey Schmidt worked in a similarly robust, vigorous style:   Another talented illustrator, Jim Jonson, made expressive, high velocity illustrations of figures stretched to the max: Here, Neil Boyle applies this same energetic line to inanimate objects:   The Society of Illustrators annuals from the '60s contain a great deal of art in this dynamic spirit; lots of slashing lines and lightning bolt scribbles back and forth.  In later decade