Following up on my recent Eye Candy post about an Ingres graphite portrait, I couldn’t help but think of this well known and beautiful portrait painting.
Comtesse d’Haussonville, by Jean-August-Dominique Ingres, on Google Art Project. Use controls at lower right to zoom in.
Note the way he has carefully handled the reflection of the back of her head in the mirror and the attention given the incidental objects in the room.
Here is the painting on the site of the Frick Collection.
Japanese artist Nagai Hideyuki has created a fun series of drawings that span two sketchbooks propped at 90° to one another, and when viewed from the proper angle, give the illusion of continuous three dimensionality.
You can see a selection on his website and on his deviantART page.
There is a video on YouTube that gives a clearer picture of the relationship between the two sets of drawings.
[Via Visual News by way of Colossal and io9]
When I wrote about the lyrical paintings of Charles Courtney Curran back in 2007 I mentioned being disappointed at the small amount of his work available on the web.
Since then the web has continued to expand, bless it’s silicon heart, and more resources for Curran’s idyllic scenes of women in gardens, hanging clothes and surrounded by flowers, as well as his scenes of children playing and domestic activity, have be come available.
Notably, Matthew D. Innis has an extensive and eclectic post on his blog Underpaintings that gives a nice overview of Curran’s work, though the images are not large. For that, look to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s superb high resolution reproduction of Curran’s portrait of Betty Newell (above, top with detail), as well as some of the zoomable images among Christies past auction lots.
I’ve listed other resources below. For more, see my previous post on Charles Courtney Curran.
[Thanks to TimM for the suggestion.]
Erik D. Martin is a visual development artist based in Los Angeles and currently working for Disney Interactive.
His past clients include Nickelodeon Animation, Hasbro Animation, Disney Imagineering and Jim Henson, among others, He also contributed work as a color artists on Kazu Kbuishi’s beautiful Amulet graphic novel project.
Martin has the kind of springy, energetic style often characteristic of the best concept art, with lively drawing underpinning an effective use of controlled color. I particularly like the way he handles atmospheric perspective in his landscape environments.
On his website, you can find galleries of his work divided into categories like Environments, Visual Development, Character Design and Sketches. Don’t miss the Props gallery, which is more interesting than you might suspect (images above, second from bottom). There is also a section for Storyboards and Sketches. (Avoid the “Client Portfolio” section; it leads to a login page that is hard to back out of.)
Martin Also maintains a blog where he posts both professional and personal work, including some plein air paintings (above, bottom).
Martin has conducted an online class in Digital Painting for the Computer Graphics Master Academy, which is still available (for the CGMA’s usual fee).
There is a small Erik Martin gallery on the Creative Talent Network (where you can also find links to many more talented concept and visual development artists).
If you’re on the east coast of the U.S. it’s a little warm today. Cool off with “Winter View” by 19th century Dutch artist Charles Leickert.
From this past exhibit at Rijksmuseum.
With a terrific skill for caricature, a flair for whimsy and superb draftsmanship and technique, C.F. Payne has long been recognized as one of America’s foremost contemporary illustrators.
His clients include Time, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, Esquire, National Geographic, The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic Monthly and a wonderful series of covers for Mad magazine.
Since I last wrote a brief post about him back in 2005, Payne now has his own website and a Behance portfolio and is well presented on the site of Richard Solomon Artist’s Representative.
Payne has an amazing ability to combine cartoon-like sensibilities with an underlying solidity of drawing and refined, richly textured rendering that give his illustrations an exceptional punch. His likenesses are simultaneously entertaining and revealing, making fun while exploring the essence of the figure’s personality.
Payne has recently collaborated with Astronaut Mike Kelly on the upcoming children’s book Mousetronaut: A Partially True Story (Amazon link here) that is due out in October of 2012.
His Behance portfolio has the largest reproductions of his work I can find, but the selection on the Richard Solomon site is much more extensive. Both have an example step through of his working process.
There is a 10 minute portrait demo video of Payne working and explaining his process on Vimeo.
