Revisiting the Masters

Man it's been a while since I posted anything! Last week I went to the Laguna Arts Festival with some friends and checked out all the great art by local residents of Laguna. The art was very inspiring and I enjoyed it all. One artist I thought was very cool was John Taylor. He made some incredible sculptures of submarines, ships and paddleboats. He used trash and computer chips to make them, it was so awesome! You can check out his work at www.folkartships.com . Later on that night I went to go see a live show called Pageant of the Masters. Now this is an incredible show where props and people are placed on a stage and in movable frames. They showed how it was done and at first it looks like people and props on a stage, and then the lights go off. When they come back on the lights are different, and the figures and props become the painting. Everything looks completely flat. They also did this with sculptures and they actually looked like sculptures. It was crazy to think how these actors could stay completely still while the audience stares in awe of what they are seeing. They hold their pose for around 90 seconds. Master paintings are recreated in a very surrealistic way that seemed almost impossible to me. This got me thinking upon looking at all these master paintings about how can I revisit the masters of Illustration. I studied them at school, but it's always a smart thing to go back and take a good look at how illustrators like Dean Cornwell, Howard Pyle, Harvey Dunn, J.C. Leyendecker and N.C. Wyeth worked and study their drawings. Here are a few drawings of Dean Cornwell and a J.C. Leyendecker. Dean Cornwell is called the dean of illustration and rightly so. His knowledge of anatomy is incredible. His figures are drawn with such authority, they jump out of they page with so much personality it's crazy. J.C. Leyendecker is a master of design in his figures, he edits out all the busy parts and puts in what matters in the drawing. I learned a lot by doing these yesterday and today. I look forward to doing more each day.

More Sketches

Here are some more doodles I've done in my sketchbook. Nothing really major but just fun drawings. I haven't really tackled any major paintings as of late. Opportunities for upcoming classes are flooding in and it's kind of overwhelming. It's hard to find time to just sit down and paint without putting a whole lot of thought to it. Most of my stuff requires a lot of involvement. It's finding the time to get fully involved in my illustrations that's hard. Sometimes I just want to do stuff that's easy and fast. We'll see how that goes.