Lines and Colors – Page 559

Lines and Colors is a blog about painting, drawing, sketching, illustration, comics, cartoons, webcomics, art history, concept art, gallery art, digital art, artist tools and techniques, motion graphics, animation, sci-fi and fantasy illustration, paleo art, storyboards, matte painting, 3d graphics and anything else I find visually interesting. If it has lines and/or colors, it’s fair game.

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Free Comic Book Day 2007

May 4, 2007

OK, so maybe you haven’t picked up a comic book since you were 12, and you’re so past that; or maybe you’ve never picked up a comic book and you’re so beyond that; or maybe you just associate comics with steroidal aberrations in spandex bashing into one another like runaway freight trains and you’re so not into that.

Well, if you think comic books are what they used to be, or what you’ve been told they are, or what you only think they are, you could be so missing out on something you shouldn’t.

So,… tomorrow, Saturday, May 5th, 2007 is Free Comic Book Day! Here’s a great opportunity to casually drop by your friendly neighborhood comic book store, where the staff will be on their best behavior, prepared to accommodate newcomers to modern comics, happy to answer any questions, and handing out free, yes free, comics!

Free Comic Book Day has been going on for six years, and has grown each year. Comics companies large and small have published free special editions that showcase some of their best titles, and the comics store often put on sales, have guests, artist and writer signings and other events to make it as much of a celebration of comics as they can.

There is a web site devoted to the event, that contains a brief description, a list of frequently asked questions and other information about the event and comics in general.

In my post about last year’s Free Comic Book Day, I go into more detail about the event, talk a little about why you should take the time to check out modern comic books, and give a brief introduction to comic book specialty shops for those who haven’t dared to peer into the mysteries of what too often seems like a private club.

Not only will the stores have their doors wide open and the red carpet out, the free comics themselves will showcase some interesting titles. Of course there are the expected superhero books, from the the big publishers and independents, but there are many other titles appealing to kids and adults with a variety of other tastes.

There are 28 titles in all; you can see covers and descriptions here and here. In addition, many shops will add some titles from their own stock.

Notable this year is a Nexus comic by Mike Baron and Steve Rude, one of the best of the off-beat superheroes (preview here); a Linda Barry collection from Drawn and Quarterly; comics festival, a collection that includes artists like Darwyn Cooke and Hope Larson; a couple of how-to books on drawing and creating comics, Impact University and Wizard’s How to Draw sampler; a preview extract from Eddie Campbell’s new graphic novel, The Train Was Bang On Time (preview here); and some collections that showcase the continuing move of popular webcomics into print, like the Digital Webbing Jam and the Keenspot Spotlight.

So, what are you waiting for? Find your local comic book store and check it out on Saturday! You just might be so surprised.

www.freecomicbookday.com
Comic book store locator
Comic book descriptions here and here
My previous post about last year’s Free Comic Book Day

Categories:
Comics
Lawrence Northey

May 3, 2007

I don’t often feature sculpture on lines and colors. I probably should consider it more often. Sculpture can have, after all, both lines and colors.

In the case of Lawrence Northey’s wonderfull small scale sculptures (the one shown here, “Jim & George: Space Cadets” is 30 inches [76cm]), the colors are those of polished brass, aluminum, copper and glass, and the reflected colors of their environment; and the lines are the charmingly whimsical lines of cartoonlike robots.

OK, I’ll admit right off that I’m a complete sucker for robots, particularly shiny, reflective, steampunkishly mechanical robots with completely silly bubble headed space helmets and art deco ray guns, carrying anachronistic apparatus with dials and gauges and accompanied by equally silly mechanical dogs replete with dials and embossed lightning bolt insignia, so I may be inclined to like Northey’s approach.

Sculpture can be be visually appealing in a number of ways, but rarely is is as much outright fun as these beautifully crafted, meticulously detailed and marvelously imaginative creations from Northey’s hands.

Not only do his objects delight the eye with their rich metallic colors and sleek lines, many of Northey’s sculptures actually do things — move, sing, speak, produce music or “Zap!” sounds.

Northey has received recognition several times in the Spectrum collections of contemporary fantastic art and other publications. His gallery shows some of the range of his works. Much of his current work is commissioned. He also has multiple, but limited, editions of certain works.

His site lacks a bio or “About” page, but you can find one here.

www.robotart.net
Northey Bio on ToyRayGun.com

Categories:
Outsider Art, Sc-fi and Fantasy
Joseph Lorusso

May 2, 2007

Even though the initial impression of Joseph Lorusso’s paintings is not of bright colors, there is an intensity to the colors and their relationships that makes them feel rich and vibrant.

Lorusso focuses on painting people (though he also paints very nice urban landscapes), and places an interesting emphasis on strong reds in the places in the face where there are extra blood vessels, the cheeks and the end of the nose. This is often contrasted with the sheen of highlights that are almost devoid of color, emphasizing the reds even more. Looking back through his online galleries, reds are a predominant color in many, perhaps most, of his paintings.

His subjects are sometimes formally posed, but more often captured in moments of quiet activity, reading, eating, or, often, embracing. Some of his images seem reminiscent of the Parisian bar scenes of Edouard Manet, others have a feeling of the storytelling and dramatic compositions of classic illustration.

Composition is an important factor throughout Lorusso’s work and he crafts strong ones, with figures angled obliquely through the rectangle of the canvas, carefully chosen areas of color creating bold shapes, and careful attention given to the role of negative spaces. Lorusso lists among his influences Sargent, Sorolla and Whistler, all of whom placed particular emphasis on those aspects of composition.

Lorusso studied a the American Academy of Art and received a BFA from Kansas City Art Institute. He was influenced by early trips to Italy and exposure to the Italian masters. He majored in watercolor and considers his oil painting skills as self-taught, crediting lunch hours spent wandering the collections of the Chicago Art Institute as one of his courses of study.

www.josephlorussofineart.com
P&C Art
Galerie du Soleil
Morris & Whiteside Galleries
Demott Gallery
Howard/Mandville Gallery

Categories:
Gallery and Museum Art
Matt Gaser

May 1, 2007

Matt Gaser is a concept artist currently working for Lucasfilm Animation on the new Star Wars CG television series.

He was Senior Concept Artist for Stormfront Studios on their recent game Forgotten Realms Dreamstone. Prior to that he was Concept Artist on their game for The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers.

He started out with an interest in animation when, in high school, he was appointed California Art Scholar and had the opportunity to attend a summer art seminar in traditional animation at Cal Arts. He majored in Illustration as Art Center College of Design and went on to intern at Klasky Group (Rugrats).

Amid his professional work, Gaser finds time to work on his own projects, including a GC short film and two children’s books. You will also find in his galleries, that he keeps up with figure drawing and finds time to sketch and doodle.

Gaser works primarily digitally, but his images have a nice feeling of paint surface and materials. He has a terrific sense of color and a wonderful command of lighting as a theatrical device for creating focus within a composition. He knows how to control your eye and make a small area of an image snap into clear relief as a focal point.

In the Projects gallery, you’ll find some his work for the Dreamstone project. As with many concept artists, however, I find myself most drawn to the work in his Personal section, where he has been able to let his considerably fertile imagination run free, with delightful results.

When left to his own devices, Gaser creates bizarre landscapes populated with offbeat characters that make you want to know more about the “story”, even if there isn’t one.

www.mattgaser.com

Categories:
Concept & Visual Dev., Digital Painting
Portraits of Sandra Day O’Connor

April 30, 2007

For many years I have been going, on and off, to open figure drawing and painting sessions here in Phliadelphia at either the Philadelphia Sketch Club or the Plastic Club, two of the country’s oldest arts organizations.

These are not classes, per se, with a set course of instruction, but simply sessions where artists jointly pay a model fee and are free to pursue figure drawing or painting in the medium of their choice. The sessions consist of a series of long and short poses, usually over three hours or so; and there is no requirement to sign up for a formal class. You can attend when it’s convenient. Hopefully, you have access to similar sessions in your area (they are sometimes part of the continuing education offerings of art schools).

There is a somewhat similar artist organization, or club, in New York called the Painting Group. It’s a little different from most in that it has a closed membership and is led by the renowned caricaturist and watercolorist David Levine, and the highly regarded portrait painter Aaron Shikler, who counts among his portraits the official portraits of John F. Kennedy Jackie Kennedy and Nancy Regan. They have been meeting regularly as a painting group for over 40 years.

Last October Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor sat for the group in a unique full-day portrait session, resulting in a fascinating situation in which 25 artists painted her portrait at the same time. You may have seen mention of it on the CBS Sunday Morning magazine show a few weeks ago.

The resulting works are being presented in an exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. through October 8. 2007. (See my previous post about the National Portrait Gallery.)

There is a slideshow online on the NPG site of seven of the portraits and a couple of photos of the session.

My thanks to Daniel van Benthuysen for the link and additional information

Portraits of Sanda Day O’Connor at the National Portrait Gallery
Slideshow of images

Categories:
Drawing, Painting
William Joyce

April 29, 2007

I finally got to see Meet the Robinsons, Disney’s 3-D, 3-D CGI animated feature. (How are we going to phrase that?)

I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised and liked it much more than I anticipated. Part of that is due to the design work, adapted from concept drawings by William Joyce, who wrote and illustrated the children’s book A Day with Wilbur Robinson, on which the film was based.

Joyce is also the author/illustrator of several wonderfully idiosyncratic children’s books, including Rolie Polie Olie and George Shrinks both of which have been adapted for television animation, Bently & Egg, Santa Calls, and the terrific Dinosaur Bob and His Adventures with the Family Lizardo (interior image here).

The production design on the film owes a lot to concept art by art directors Robh Ruppel (who I profiled last October) and David Goetz. Ruppel has finally begun posting some of the production art on his blog, The Broadview Blog. I found some other production art for the film scattered about on the Unofficial Disney Animation Archive and CanMag. There is a small book of The Art of Meet the Robinsons; and you can also see some early production art for the MtR game on San Neilson’s Tasty Art blog.

As much as I like the wonderful 1930’s retro-future, art deco meets the Jetsons by way of Flash Gordon look of the film, I can’t help but think how much better it might have been if the production team had been able to cleave even closer to Joyce’s charmingly quirky production drawings. Word is that the Disney execs wanted to change the title to “Get Lewis”, so you can imagine that they were pressing the production artists to make the design less original and more like other successful CGI features. A lot of Joyce’s originality comes through, but once you apply that standard CGI sheen over everything, it loses some of the visual charm it might have had if it were, dare I say it, a traditional drawn animation.

Joyce is no stranger to concept design for films, having worked on Toy Story and A Bug’s Life as a character designer and Robots as a producer and production designer. There are a few of his wonderfully quirky concept drawings in the beautiful, but unfortunately out of print, oversize book Toy Story: The Art and Making of the Animated Film. (Search alibris. There is also a miniature edition of this title, I don’t know how much of the original it contains.)

Joyce’s site has some of his original concept drawings for Meet the Robinsons, (above) along with some renderings from the final movie (inset) that you can compare. Unfortunately, I haven’t found any kind of gallery of his illustrations or concept art for other films, but I may not have dug hard enough. There is, however, a book called The World of William Joyce Scrapbook, that includes some of his illustrations in the working stages, as well anecdotes about his childhood, sketches and photos.

There is an info page about Joyce on the Harper Children’s site, along with a page about the books themselves. There are some short video interviews with Joyce on the Reading Rockets site.

William Joyce, and Meet The Robinsons concept art page
Meet the Robinsons official movie site
Google image search for MtR concept art, and here

Categories:
3d CGI, Animation, Concept & Visual Dev., Illustration