I decided to change gears today because I, until recently, had studied more of the old masters work than more modern painters/illustrators. One of these is relatively unknown to me illustrators is Maxfield Parrish. Once I heard the name, I kept hearing it over and over again and today I decided to give this man a better look. I was really interested in his work as it seems to be a more modern version of a combination between the Pre-Raphaelites and the Hudson River landscape painters. I found this image, Cinderella, and would like to discuss it further as it seems to have been able to distill the idea of warm light, cool shadow into an almost geometric simplicity. The figure here which is the centerpiece of this painting is illuminated with a very strong warm light, which also is used to render the form of the steps and pillars on the steps. It also illuminated the tree leave adding texture and interest to the upper right portion of the painting. Almost modeled as I have done with value paintings of spheres, the light rolls away over the edge of the figure into neutralized grey tones and then over to darker cool tones. These cool tones also act as a backdrop for the leaves and floral pieces making the warm foliage pop away from the canvas. I am truly amazed at the effect that can be attained by simply working warm against cool.
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Norman Rockwell
Today I am going to look at The Art Critic by Norman Rockwell. The first time that I saw a Norman Rockwell original was at the Society of Illustrators in NYC. I was amazed at the size of the piece for one and the other was the thickness of Rockwell’s paint in conjunction with the light leaks he left which allowed the canvas to show through. As I look at The Art Critic, three more things jump out at me which I would like to comment on. The first, being an artist myself, is that the man in the painting is holding a palette. How Rockwell lays the colors out on the palette in the image says somethign to me about how he used his own palette and the way that he arranges his colors. He seems to have them laid out in a modified color wheel setup with white at the apex and what I don’t see is black. This is just an interesting point to note. The second is that the paintings on the wall in this piece are very reminiscent of Frans Hals. (If they actually are Hals, I am not familiar with them, however, maybe I will look at Hals tomorrow.) Hals was an alla prima type painter as was Rockwell (I believe), so it is noteworthy in that apparently, Hals was admired by Rockwell. The third is the fantastic texture that Rockwell has created in this piece. The great textural effects on the frames, the wall texture, the texture created through the color choices in the floor tiles…amazing. My belief (based on the original I saw in NYC) is that these textural effects have been created in large effect by the thickness of the paint. I know that Turner also used thick paint as this to create textural effects (but more atmospheric in nature). In order to gain a better understanding of this effect, I will definitely need to view more of Rockwell’s work in person.
William Bouguereau
The Lost Pleide by William Bouguereau is the painting that I will be looking at today. Beyond the fact that this is a beautiful painting and a wonderful example of his work, I am always astounded at the supple realism of Bouguereau’s skin. Since there is a full nude in this painting, I feel that it is a great example for analyzing these skin tones. The academic artists of Western Europe at this time in history had the tendency to paint skin tones (especially women’s skin tones) a very pasty whitish color. This is most likely due to the attire of the time, having women generally covered from head to toe getting no sun and powdering their faces. That being said, Bouguereau had the uncanny ability to use color and tone to make these vampiric individuals look aliv, full of life really. He has a wonderful ability to mix warm tones with cool tones in order to mimic light and shadow. Subtle greens and purples are used in shadowy areas in spot appear to approximate in 2 dimensions, the translucent characteristics of skin. The light areas with their warm thick application of paint model the body with a sclpter’s precision. There are lovely pink areas showing warmer blood filled areas of the body as well as veins and blue-green areas such as on the back, butt and leg areas. One could probably look at the skin tones in this painting for hours and still be baffled at how he accomplish this task. Next time I am at a museum where I am blessed enough to see one in person, I will be taking note of how he applied these paints to achieve this marvelous feat.
Jim Lee
In the spirit of next week’s NY ComicCon, I have decide to choose a piece of art from one of my favorite comic artists for nearly 20 years now, Jim Lee. I think that I first saw Mr. Lee’s work in Marvel X-Men during the early 1990’s and one if his more recent works “Hush” is perhaps one of my favorite graphic novels. I chose this piece because I quickly noticed a classic compositional form in how Mr. Lee has arranged his figures. He has chosen a triangular arragnement having the top of Superman’s head, the point of Batman’s sword and the edge of Wonder Woman’s shield being the peaks of the triangle. I triangular composition exudes strength and stability and I believe that Mr. Lee chose this arrangement to reinforce the heroic quality of the figures. The brightest, most saturated colors lie within this triangle and fade out to lighter or less saturated areas outside this area. This composition which can be viewed as far back as Da Vinci and his Madonna oof the Rocks (and farther back I am sure) shows Mr. Lee’s knowledge of classic art history.
I will attempt to recognize and utilize these types of composition geometries when I create new pieces.
Frank Frazetta
I had mentioned in a previous post about limited palettes and I remembered that one of my favorite modern fantasy illustrators often used limited palettes. So today I am going to talk about “The Silver Warrior”. Frank Frazetta is a home town favorite as his home and museum are only about 40 minutes from my house. I have had the pleasure of visiting the museum, meeting Frazetta’s wife and enjoying the masterworks they have on display there.
Frazetta uses a cool color palette in the blue range of the color spectrum in this piece, high lighted with small areas of what appears to be yellow ochre and burnt sienna. The lack of greenish tints in this piece leads me to believe that he used Ultramarine blue rather than prussian or pthalo blue. There are some purple hints in the snow and the sky that remain on the cool side, which leads me to believe that he was using alizarin crimson, which is cool red and when desaturated with white would give these type of hues. Frazetta also uses these blues, and possibly raw umber for the skin tones which actually forces a feeling that the warmest parts of the this piece are actually the whites of the bears. (One thing to note in this piece is the decision to not paint any reigns from the warrior to the bears. I have read that Frazetta couldn’t make them work, so left them out.)
This painting makes me want to go paint with this color palette as well as do some more research into limited palette options.