Open Studio

It was quite a surprise to see this site completely changed without warning, but worse to find it unaccessible from my home computer, hence why I'm closing this site down from a neighbor's pc where things here perform terribly even when I do get in. I can't begin to understand the tech behind why and support hasn't been forthcoming, so I'm packing it up. I have had very little luck finding any service (short of paying for one) consistant and reliable enough for my needs. I have gone the distance to learn html and build sites and have used other blog services and have had no luck in any of it. I suppose technology and I are like oil and water, we don't mix. It was fun to touch bases with other artists and read other blogs. I will still frequent them and will visit the forums as usual....as long as those areas behave. So, thanks again for all the great comments and support! That has carried me a long ways in my pursuit of painting and it still does! ThankYou!

On my wanderings around the net, I came across this piece about Disney laying off some 650 animators who work in traditional methods in favor of retaining those who work in the digital media. Given the success of Pixar's work, I'm not surprised. I remember reading in some book a while back, could it be Walt Disney's bio by Bob Thomas or Shamus Culhane's account of working for the studio in the late thirties?..one or the other, I can't readily put my finger on it, but a quote really struck me as unforgettable. In a meeting with his animators and in a fit of temper, Walt was quoted as saying, "if I had machines to replace all of you, I would!" Whether this was accurate or not, I don't know unless I can recall the source, but it is interesting to see that very thing happening now. Walt was an innovator without question and would accept digital art as the next medium to explore, but I know he was shrewd enough to keep the traditional method of handdrawn animation for any projects that required it. Much like the Disney studio archives in California that houses millions of sketches, drawings, paintings, and sculpture for film and parks alike, nothing is thrown away as it may provide the answer to a perplexing question that may be faced in the future.

 

The article goes on to mention that many of the traditionalists, (probably considered "old-timers" with no inspiration and lacking vision) have formed new studios in an attempt to save handdrawn animation from extinction. One of the most important ingredients for success of this move (in my opinion) is to really hone in on story to carry the animation. One of the mistakes the Disney Co. is making is relying on the unique and cutting edge quality of digital art to sell the final product. In fact, "keeping up with the times". What is saving them from such a folly is the fact that Pixar already knows how to deliver entertaining stories and knows how to benefit from that with their new animation. This is the ongoing differences between corporate and artist. One thinks in figures and the other thinks in emotion. What gives corporate a product to manage (or more to the point, a job) is the artist who delivers a good story that entertains the paying customer who must decide whether the next escape is really worth paying for! If the traditionalists intend to stay viable, they need to pull on some heartstrings in the theater and they will raise eyebrows, because a good story survives regardless of the medium. Walt himself believed in this approach, hence his success and dominance in feature animation for so many years until his passing.  

 

Now there is that situation where one medium does work for a story better than another. Always is there that argument that the book was better than the movie. Disney discovered that was the case with a cool reception of it's feature animation of Alice in Wonderland. Perhaps no medium could save that piece other than Lewis Carroll's own words, but these are rare instances where genius can't likely be tampered with by any meduim.

 

Personally, I'm for both traditional and digital forms of animation. It isn't right to toss out the symphony, because we can produce synthetic music, or quit painting on canvas, because we have the latest edition of Paintshop Pro! Handdrawn animation, despite the arguments on what looks better or one technique is superior to another (and there is plenty of that) should not be tossed out entirely for the sake of a new toy that we will quickly grow tired of. More choices of mediums does enrich art as a whole and hopefully these new studios can succeed in keeping some traditions alive.

 

As the summer continues, I have been running hot and cold with my painting and drawing. Basically from being distracted, but that is getting better. Even when I don't accomplish anything, I should update every now and then to let you all know that at least I haven't skipped town! I appreciate the comments left here. Even when I reshuffle the albums and lose some of the comments posted, I'm very grateful for such encouraging words! So, thanks again. 

 

I finally have a new project underway. 16x20, stretched canvas in water-mixable oils. I started with a drawing to work out where everything will lay and to "rehearse" the shapes. I toned the canvas with a wash of viridian and cadmium orange and propped in areas of color. The green is being done the way I had mentioned earlier while practicing landscapes. By tossing out viridian altogether, I'm mixing cadmium yellow pale and french ultramarine blue as a base. For the foreground, I need a high value, so instead of tinting with white, I use naples yellow and to tint the background I resort to white. Naples yellow tints some colors nicely while retaining vibrancy. White adds a bit of chalk to some colors, which I want for the background for atmospheric effect.

 

I'm still making some adjustments to the shapes of the horses, much of it the legs. Once I'm settled with the layers to the background, I can add heavy doses of brushstrokes to form the legs. Here's how things look now.

It feels good to be back in the saddle. I started the portrait class this morning and finished a 14x18 oils on canvasboard in roughly two hours time. Painting from a live model is much about problem solving on the fly and I had a crumby start. The main challenge was painting in white as you can see! So, the first thirty minutes was struggling with that fact and I had to wipe the mess down and start fresh. I built up on what immediate darks I could see which was the face, neck, and shoulder, treating it like an abstract shape on a white surface and then gradually introduced the warm and cool middle values and some lights. Dress and hat was worked out ok, the folds gave me the worst trouble, being subtle as they were in value and they never look the same when the model moves. As time went on and got that scrub down behind me, I felt more confident. It was fun and I learned a few things.

 

I noticed the photo album here was acting funny, so should you find it doing so, I notice it takes it a minute to correct itself. Not sure why, but it works slower than previous, when you are going from one album to another. I had to do a few things to it and may yet work on it some more to fix the content.  

I signed up in hopes to take the eight weeks of the summer portrait class. The main difficulty is finding enough people who will take the class to make it a "class". If it doesn't work out, I still have open studio on Fridays. In the meantime, I'm priming some canvasboard just incase.

 

Finding a decent palette recipe for portraits took some work. I browsed the bookstores and library and copied everything I could find. Howard Sanden's palette was one system out of a few (Burns and Singer to name a few) that I was impressed with right from the start and even to my benefit, his system consisted most of the base colors that I had in my palette. I cut a large card, painted and labeled as many variations of the skin tones as possible. When working in a class environment, this palette became ungainly for painting alla prima in two hours. For one, I haven't had my favorite mixes on memory and second  there is so much variations that I studied the skin tone of the model too hard. My more recent teacher noticed my struggling and asked me to streamline my palette and add more color.

 

What resulted was based on very simple needs. First, I needed one light, medium, and dark skin tone color. With three values, I can render anything in three dimensional form. I always liked the light which consisted of naples yellow, cad red light, and white. This I decided to keep using. For a medium value which I will call my base color, I chose to remove the white making it simply naples yellow and cad red light. For the dark, I found viridian and cad orange to be perfect. With that mix, I can slightly add a dab to the base value of naples yellow and cad red light for a dark medium. Too much will muddy it, so quantity is important!

 

Now, with the palette fixed to work with speed and reliability, I can now add french ultramarine blue, cad orange, alizarin, indian red and so forth to enhance the base of naples yellow and cad red light to suit the mood, temperature, or colors I see in the lighting. My palette may not be perfect or even professional, but it has made many of the moels happy with my results! If I have a cool light with blue or white, I need warmth in the shadows which I could use viridian mix heavy on the orange for contrast. With more cad red light or orange (carefully I might add...not needing the model to look too sunburned!) I can warm the lights and paint cool shadows with blue thrown into my base color and lessening the orange in my dark value of viridian and cad orange.

 

I suppose I will improve on this current system, but for the meantime it allows me to work more on likeness and brushstrokes. That is if the class will go on as planned.