Art By Committee: Tookah

The 15th of the month is the day for a group sketch game called "Art by Committee." I share an excerpt from a science fiction story and you visualize it.

This month's quote was:

“Behind the bar, polishing four glasses at the same time with his blue tentacles, was the Tookah. Two of his three eyes didn’t bother to look up, but it was the third one, the upper eye, the sleepy one that appears bored by everything but never misses anything. That one sleepily looked over at me and then blinked and opened wide.”

This time I didn’t use a quote from a science fiction novel. Instead, the excerpt is from a radio play called “The Tookah's Tales” by Tom Lopez of ZBS Foundation.

Your solutions were, as always, a delightful surprise. We all had the challenge of figuring out how to clean out four bar glasses with four tentacles.

Mark Heng
Blog

Mei-Yi Chun
Website


Daniel Zhang
Image

Andy Wales
Blog


Rob Hummer
Photobucket

Marisa Bryan
Flickr

Roberta Baird
Image
Blog

Michael Geissler

Image
Blog

Jeremy HughesLink to Blog.

Arthur Keegan
Flickr

And the one that Jeanette and I did.

The next quote for May is: “The harper began to sing. His deep voice was fine and sweet, eloquently expressing his intent. He sang of the bitterness of defeat and the gut-wrenching carnage of war. He sang of boys…”


Have fun! Please scale your JPG to 300 pixels across and compress it as much as possible. Title it with your name, send it to: jgurneyart(at)yahoo.com, subject line ABC. Please let me know in your email the full URL of the link to a larger image or your blog or website so people can see your image in all its glory and learn more about your other work. Please have your entries in by the 12th of May. I'll post the results May 15.
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If you like bizarre science fiction audio adventures, check out "The Tookah's Tales" by ZBS link.

Tom Lopez adapted Dinotopia to the world of audio: link.

Seneca College

Imagine an art school where they bring a tiger to pose as a model.


Or they let you draw outdoors from an armored knight on a draft horse.

Seneca College in Toronto, Ontario offers a certificate program in art fundamentals that covers drawing, illustration, design, color theory, photography and art history. Students can then follow degree programs in a wide range of art specialties, including animation, game art, and 3D digital animation.

Taught by working professional artists, the program is designed to give aspiring artists the tools they need to communicate visually.
One of Seneca’s instructors is Werner Zimmermann, who teaches life drawing. In his blog "Man4Art" he shares some of his off-the-cuff sketches, like this one of a dog and a cat on scrap paper.

He gives his students a deep understanding of anatomy by having them sculpt the muscle sets layer by layer from modeling clay.

After I gave my presentation, program coordinator Phillip Woolf posed for a quick portrait demonstration. Later, he explained his philosophies of art education.

“My teaching is an epic battle against shape and outline,” he said. He wants his students to get away from seeing the obvious outer facts of the model, but rather to explore “gesture, massing, and bulking of form,”….to “see structurally and draw structurally.”

Toronto is a competitive environment for art schools as well as being one of the major arts capitals of North America, with a host of leading animation studios.

Seneca has earned one of the finest reputations for the education it delivers to the motivated student. As Mr. Woolf said, “our graduates have all the techniques to take them on their own journey.”

Seneca's Art Fundamentals Program, link.
Seneca's Visual Arts Program, link.
More on building anatomy in clay, link. Thanks, Larry!

Deleted Scene from Dinotopia

Once in a while a picture idea goes all the way from the storyboard to the finished illustration before you realize it’s a dud.

Here’s a deleted scene from Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time (1992). Norah, the matriarch of Treetown is supposed to be having a conversation with a dinosaur.

There are a lot of problems with this picture. Both Norah and the dinosaur are talking at the same time. They don’t seem to exist in the same light or space. You can tell that I was looking at a snapshot of a model (Betty Ballantine) for the person, and I let the photo snuff out my imagination.

I didn’t have a clear idea of two characters driven by a real, emotional situation. I wasn’t sure what I was trying to say; I was just pushing paint around. When that happens, be merciless. Put the picture aside, or stick it on the Gallery Flambeau.

En Loge Competition

Drawing plaster casts and nude models from observation was only a part of the French academic art curriculum in the 19th century.

The ultimate goal for most students, and the surest way to fame, was to win the Prix de Rome competition. If you won this contest, you were sent to Rome at government expense to study the old masters.

But winning it required a combination of memory and imagination.

To enter the Prix de Rome competition, you had to qualify by winning the concours d’esquisse, where students composed a painted sketch based on a theme provided by the professors. If you made it this far, you had already been sifted out of a large bunch of aspirants.

Then you went on to a captive sketch competition called the the concours de dessin, or ‘en loges,’ (the loge was an area of cubicles, illustrated above.)

The finalists were ranked and then sequestered into the little stalls. They were all assigned the same surprise theme, usually from Greek or Roman history, mythology, or the Bible.

They were given twelve hours to complete an outline drawing. They could not leave their cubicles, nor could they talk to anyone. (I assume they were given some bread, water, and a chamber pot.)

In 1876, the assignment was a scene from the Iliad: “Priam pleading for the body of his son Hector from Achilles.” The drawing below was submitted by Jules Bastien-Lepage.

When they finished the session, the professor signed and stamped their entry. The supervising professor in 1876 was W.A. Bouguereau, who won the contest himself with "Zenobia Discovered by Shepherds on the Banks of the Araxes" (below) in 1850.

Then the students each were given 72 days to complete their paintings, using the full benefit of models, costumes, and props. But they could not deviate in any significant way from their sketches.

The paintings were then publicly exhibited and received the full scrutiny of critics, fellow students, professors, and the public. Joseph Wencker was criticized for changing the pose of the head of Achilles, but he won anyway.

Dagnan-Bouveret took second place.

Success in this competition required the ability to draw figures and compositions from memory and imagination. It also required a familiarity with hundreds of possible stories from the standard myths and biblical texts.

Most ateliers offered some form of imaginative sketch practice, and, according to A. Boime, “the results often reflected a verve and expression lacking in the other studies.”

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For this post I drew information and images from three books that I've mentioned before: "The Studios of Paris" by John Milner, "The Academy and French Painting in the 19th Century" by Albert Boime, and "Against the Modern" by Gabriel Weisberg.

The painting at the top is by W.A. Bouguereau, "The Battle of the Lapiths and the Centaurs" from 1852 at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, link.
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Added later: Gallery of Prix de Rome subjects and images, Link. (Thanks, Saskia)

Book on Grand Prix de Rome, (Thanks, Darren) link.
Wikipedia on Prix de Rome, link.

Watching Television

People hold still when they’re watching television, and that’s a big help to the portrait sketcher.


A few days ago in Pittsburgh I had lunch at a restaurant with some friends. There was a TV set hanging from the ceiling near our table. A golf program captivated my friend’s son. He gazed upward with an angelic look and didn’t move until his hamburger came.

In 2003 my son sat like a statue at a diner while waiting for his scrambled eggs.

Next time you find yourself in a waiting room or a sports bar, pick the seat near the TV looking back at the watchers. You’ll have your choice of models. If they glance at you, just smile and say “I’m sketching your picture,” and they’ll go back to watching.

Lovell's Soldier

When American illustrator Tom Lovell (1909-1997) painted the standing soldier for The Continental Insurance Company, he researched the weapons and costume at a museum and did a charcoal study from a nude figure to understand the pose. The studies appear surrounding the finished illustration in this page from an article in North Light Magazine.

Here's how Lovell himself described the process:

The requirement here was to create an heroic, slightly larger than life embodiment of a man who could be identified with dependability and authenticity and at the same time be real. This was done to replace the original trademark figure used for many years by the Continental Insurance Company.

Before consulting a model, I drew this basically strong figure, to be certain he would not be overpowered by his equipment. Research in depth was done at West Point Museum under the guidance of Col. Frederck P. Todd, then curator. The painting later won a gold medal at the Society of Illustrators Annual National Show.

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Image is trademark of the Continental Life Insurance Companies.

Leif Peng's excellent illustration art blog "Today's Inspiration" has been doing a feature this week on Lovell , drawing from the 1956 American Artist profile by Norman Kent.

The material in this post was drawn an article "Tom, The Unswervable Lovell," in the North Light Collection, Volume 2, 1979, a compilation from the North Light Magazine.

Lines and Colors tribute to Lovell, link.

Columbus College of Art and Design

Columbus College of Art and Design, better known as CCAD, occupies several quiet blocks behind the city art museum in downtown Columbus, Ohio.


Jeanette and I pulled up in Trusty Rusty, right beneath the famous “ART” arch.

The school offers four-year major programs in many art and design fields, but we visited mainly with people from the illustration department.

The school has a world-famous faculty. Chris (C. F.) Payne, who heads the illustration department is one of America’s most celebrated contemporary illustrators, known for his gentle humor and dead-on characterization.

He recently painted the portrait of Barack Obama for Time Magazine’s Person of the Year issue.

He posed while I did a quick portrait demo in water-soluble colored pencils.

Mark Hazlerig teaches three dimensional illustration. He showed us his latex bust of a female satyr, which he described as a cross between Uma Thurman, LeAnne Rimes, and a sheep. She has cast resin horns, glass eyes, and a light beard, applied one hair at a time.

If male satyrs knew about her, they would never have bothered with nymphs!

CCAD has all the classes you’d expect on color theory, figure drawing, composition, digital techniques and concepts in illustration. Some courses allow them to draw from costumed models, sketch at the zoo, and design comics.

Mark Sullivan (second from right below) is a multitalented alumnus of CCAD and visiting lecturer. He is an Oscar-nominated matte painter for Lucasfilm and Imagemovers who made the transition from his traditionally painted mattes (Bugsy) to digital work on Polar Express and the upcoming Christmas Carol.

He also has a love for traditional stop motion effects. He is in the process of creating this Dimetrodon model out of foam-rubber over a jointed metal armature.

Stewart McKissick (at right in the photo above) also teaches illustration. He’s constantly updating the curriculum to make it relevant to the changing market, and to reflect the growing interest in CG animation, visual effects, character design, and conceptual design for movies and video games.

“Kids want to swim in the pop culture soup they grew up in,” he said.

What struck me about CCAD was that the whole school seems serious about keeping up with the evolving art world as well as staying rooted in the basic skills of drawing and painting—all the while having fun doing it.
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Home Website for CCAD, link.
Thanks, Stewart for a bunch of those photos, since my camera died!