Sunday, July 31, 2016

DISNEYLAND: 'Man In Space' Part 2 - 1955 [feedly]



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DISNEYLAND: 'Man In Space' Part 2 - 1955
// 13

As promised, here's part 2 from this great episode of DISNEYLAND. This time we take a trip around the Moon that showcases some beautiful artwork in the process. This is the kind of art that captured my young imagination and had a lot to do with why I chose sci-fi and horror art as my lifelong endeavor!

Things get going when the rocket is brought out of the giant hangar. It slowly moves out to the launch pad to prepare for the take off.

Here's the bunker with the technicians getting ready to start the countdown. Love the art here, the bunker design, the vehicles, the equipment, the dude, wow!!

This piece of equipment caught my eye. Is it possible that H. R. Giger, the artist that created the ALIEN monster and sets, stole this design for his alien spacecraft from this Disney masterpiece? It looks like it to me! My grandmothers' maiden names were Kilgore and Giger!!

Everything is GO! All we need now is the countdown!..

Five.. Four.. Three.. Two.. One!.. BLASTOFF!!

High above the Earth, the rocket plane loses its bottom stages.

And, the rocket plane is now in space, headed for the Moon!

There it is, the Moon! Once around the orb, and, back to Earth we go!

This part is a little weird. During a spacewalk, a satellite zooms by, just barely missing the rocket and crew! What the Hell?!

Now it's time to prepare for the landing back on Earth. The rocket plane turns red as it enters the stratosphere.

The plane makes ready for the landing...

Love this shadow shot of the people watching the landing. We just don't wear hats like we used to, kind of a shame since they make the wearers look more interesting!

This shot is one of my favorites, love all the shadows and the spotlight in the background. I remember how popular spotlights were when I was growing up, you always knew where to go when there was a special event. We'll have more for you tomorrow, be here!!

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A Friend of Order, René Magritte [feedly]



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Tweet by History In Pictures on Twitter

History In Pictures (@HistoryInPix)
Yachting with her puppy, Los Angeles, CA, 1949. pic.twitter.com/saXbsAzEoS

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Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Nava Rasa

Love/ erotic
Comedy/ laughter
Fury/anger
Compassion/grief
Disgust
Horror/fear
Heroic/ valor
Wonder 
Peace/tranquility
Parental love
Spiritual love

5 swatches for each
1 primary + related subsidiary colors


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Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Tweet by Colleen Doran on Twitter

Colleen Doran (@ColleenDoran)
JC Leyendecker dudes in Georgian period clothes make me think of Lord John Grey from #Outlander SuhWOON. pic.twitter.com/Tdq8Fn8Vjg

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Tweet by Colleen Doran on Twitter

Colleen Doran (@ColleenDoran)
BTW the only known photo of JC Leyendecker's model and lover Charles Beach. Sorry can't recall where I pinched this. pic.twitter.com/GC5hP2Aj2y

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Ten Tips for Better Brushstrokes [feedly]



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Ten Tips for Better Brushstrokes
// Gurney Journey

Over on my Instagram page, Sean Walsh asks: "What are some tips for getting better with brushstrokes? Yours are so deliberate and telling. They do so much despite having almost no detail. Is it a "better with practice" sorta thing or is it something you've focused on specifically?"

Thanks, Sean, and those are good questions. Here are ten tips.



1. Mix plenty of paint
If you prepare plenty of paint on the palette, you're more likely to use it. Sometimes a big, juicy stroke full of paint is what you need for a passage. With oil, do this mixing with the palette knife before the painting session. You'll save yourself a huge amount of time, and it will triple your painting speed. Here I'm loosely mixing value strings of green, gray-violet, and orange.

2. Use it thinly, too
Although thick, generous paint is attractive, also be ready to use the paint thinly and delicately. Have a tiny brush for extremely delicate details. Have a soft blender to blur out some areas. Rarely should a painting be covered equally with thick paint strokes. Variety of handling is almost always desirable.

3. Variety of brushes
Use a lot of different brushes: big ones, small ones, synthetics, natural fibers, stiff ones, soft ones, flats, filberts, new brushes, and old splayed out brushes. Experiment with them all and get to know what you can do with them. With old brushes you can push and pound with them (moving the brush in the direction of the brush tip) as well as the typical movement of gently stroking away from the tip.

4. Big brushes
Before you start painting, select a family of brushes that you expect will do the job. Five or six will often be enough for a given painting. They should range from large to small. But for any given passage, choose the biggest brush you can get away with for that passage.


5. Don't forget the painting knife
The painting knife is useful not just for mixing paint, but also for applying it. Use it for troweling on paint and for dropping in random textures. Here I'm dragging dark paint over a dry underpainting, so I can pull it over the bumpy underpainting. I can get textures this way that I could never get by diligently painting stroke by stroke.

6. Scratch through
Don't forget that you can scratch through the wet paint with the tip of your brush handle. This works with wet oil paint. Scratching through is a good way to sign an alla prima painting. (An alla prima painting is executed from start to finish all in one session.)


7. Use the edges and corners
Flat brushes are really three or four brushes in one. The knifelike edge can give you thin lines or hairs, and you can use the corners for details that are smaller than the width of the brush. Filberts were invented because they have advantages of both flats and rounds.

8. Make every stroke count
There's no formula for good technique, but most often it comes from a sense of urgency and economy. Use whichever touches convey the most information about your subject with the least effort. That doesn't mean you have to be hasty and loose, but rather that you think before you mix and apply paint. Great painters of the past have often been described as holding their brushes above the canvas deliberatively before going in for the stroke.



9. Better with practice 
Yes, it gets better with practice. The best kind of practice is painting from living subjects in changing light, because the dynamics and risk adds more focus than you're going to get under controlled studio conditions.

The deliberate, thoughtful but efficient stroke-by-stroke consciousness becomes second nature as you focus more attention on the subject rather than on the surface features of your painting. Think how economical and automatic your movements are when you wash dishes or tie your shoes. That's the way you want your brushwork to be. Your brushwork should be deliberate and controlled, but occasionally wild and impetuous.

10. The test of good technique
As you paint, your ultimate goal is to think beyond the strokes, the way a race driver is thinks about the line they're taking on the turn, not about how they're holding the steering wheel. Try to think as much as you can about the thing you're painting and how its made and how the light is playing on it. If you can do that and reach for the brushes more unconsciously, you'll be more likely to make the brushstrokes less attention-getting.

So, what's the test of good technique? Ideally the viewer shouldn't notice it. Rather, their awareness should be directed to features of your picture that are on a higher level, like the light, mood, or story.
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The images in this post are from my tutorial video Tyrannosaurs: Behind the Art, which demonstrates oil painting techniques and brushwork in the context of reconstructing extinct dinosaurs.

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Sunday, July 24, 2016

Peter Saville and Tate Design Studio create beer can artwork for Switch House pale ale [feedly]



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Peter Saville and Tate Design Studio create beer can artwork for Switch House pale ale
// It's Nice That

Peter-saville-tate-beer_list

Tate Design Studio has worked with Peter Saville to create a can design for the Tate's Switch House beer by Fourpure Brewing Co.

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Elena Éper's spirited illustrations to make you smile and squirm [feedly]



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Elena Éper's spirited illustrations to make you smile and squirm
// It's Nice That

Elenacrop

Spanish illustrator and designer Elena Éper has already begun making waves with her work for Reebok, Pull & Bear and Absolut Network, but it's her latest works that we've been making a fuss of. Initially created by hand, Elena transfers her works to Photoshop, "when working on a digital platform I can do things I would have never imagined I could do on paper," she explains.

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Painting Reality, Alexa Meade [feedly]



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Painting Reality, Alexa Meade
// this isn't happiness.














images Alexa Meade | instagram @alexameadeart

Painting Reality, Alexa Meade


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Art Competitions Equal Recognition | See Your Watercolor Painting in Watercolor Artist [feedly]



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Art Competitions Equal Recognition | See Your Watercolor Painting in Watercolor Artist
// Artist's Network

The biggest draw about being recognized in art competitions like the Watermedia Showcase, in our opinion, is publication (in this case, in the April 2017 issue of Watercolor Artist)! Of course, the prize money isn't terrible, either. This year we've doubled the cash awards—totaling $4,500! Think about what $2,500, $1,250 or $750 could mean for your art—and what having your watercolor painting appear in print could do for your career.

You only have until August 1 to enter: click here to show us your best work!

 

The post Art Competitions Equal Recognition | See Your Watercolor Painting in Watercolor Artist appeared first on Artist's Network.


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Spectrum 24 Poster [feedly]



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Spectrum 24 Poster
// Muddy Colors

By Justin Gerard


I recently had the opportunity to work with John Fleskes on the Spectrum 24 Call for Entries poster. It was a great project to work on and today I'm going to share a bit about the development of it with you.   


Development Comp

The scene is inspired by Tolkien's depiction of the fall of Gondolin in The Silmarillion.  

In the above comp I have drawn from several other development drawings that I created while immersed in the story. I don't always have such detailed comp work for my images, but I had the benefit here of a few years of drawings that I had created before I was ready to attempt the scene.  
In truth, there have been a lot of false starts and failures along the way. Perhaps I just wasn't ready to paint it until now. Perhaps I was lacking some small technical ability that has eluded me until now. 

OR perhaps I was cursed. Which is why I have placed all of my miserable little failed thumbnails in a locked box, wrapped that box in chains and even now plan to sink that box to the very bottom of the sea, so it's wretched existence and my humiliating defeats are known only to the muddy denizens of that vast watery grave. 
Or maybe I will throw it in a giant volcano of doom, and make it my scapegoat for all my artistic failures and we will have a good harvest this year. 
Anyway, all that to say, that painful failure is a wonderful teacher and i had all the near-hits to draw on for this one. And I had a really good feeling about the thumbnail pictured at the upper right of the comp. 


Toned Study 
of Elf knights having a bad time.


Tight Drawing 
on Strathmore 500 bristol


Watercolor

The painting itself was drawn on paper (using Caran D'ache Pablo pencils) and then watercolored. It was scanned at high resolution and brought into Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop is great because I am practically blind and it allows me to zoom in 1000%.  It also offers some wonderful tools for painting and working with lighting which feel not so different from their traditional counterparts.  The digital aspect of the painting begins with working in shadows, then highlights, then colors, then details.



Shadow Layers

After adding the shadow layers to achieve the level of darkness I want, I add highlights using a light grey tone on a screen layers. Working this way feels the most like adding the whites in the dutch flemish manner of underpainting. (Which is the only painting method that makes any sense to my brain) 



Highlight layers

Working in the initial highlights is one of my favorite moments of the whole painting process. Using screen layers allows me to not only lighten focal areas, but also add sharp details to them at the same time. Comparing the above image to the previous one you can see the figures crystalize and leap out from the shadows. I love this moment.  

This effect of using a screen layer to recapture lost highlights and also sharpen details is one that I will use several times throughout the painting whenever areas get too muddy.



Detail Layers

Color and details are added next using a variety of layer types: normal, multiply, color dodge and color using both normal and mixer brush types of my own sinister design. And while the colors and little highlights are important, the main statement of digital phase is made in the shadow and highlighting phases and I consider this the most important part of the digital painting phase.  



Final Painting

The Final Spectrum Poster will be going out in the fall. For more information on the contest and Spectrum in general visit them at Spectrumfantasticart.com.

We will also be selling prints later this year at Gallerygerard.com. Details on that and Sketchbook 2016 soon!







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