Waiting for JFK

For the past few weeks, I have been distracted by work (i.e., my livelihood). I am now getting back on track with my art (which I hope one day will be my livelihood).

This month I am doing the Exploring Patterns (Chapter 6) exercises in Keys to Drawing with Imagination by Bert Dodson. This drawing is my solution to Exercise 34, Shape Mergers. The exercise is to take a news photo and draw it in black, white, and two shades of gray. Shapes with similar shades are merged, and the viewer's eye fills in the details.

I used a photo of a group of Fort Worth school children who are waiting for JFK's motorcade. You can see the photo here.

I read that Howard Pyle once advised N.C. Wyeth to not necessarily illustrate an event in a straightforward, obvious way. Rather, it is sometimes more effective to illustrate a story in a more oblique way. I think the crowd of school children is a good example of this. JFK's motorcade would be an obvious way to illustrate JKF's assassination, as would Lee Harvey Oswald in the Book Depository. But I think the bright-eyed schoolchildren, waiting for the motorcade, is much more poignant and tells the story of the impact of the assassination on the nation: unfulfilled expectations.

Peter Max

I just completed a study of Peter Max. Peter Max is a commercially successful American artist whose artwork appears on posters, clothing, dishes, watches, clocks, pillows, postage stamps, cars, and airplanes, as well as on canvases. I used the book The Art of Peter Max by Charles A. Riley II, which has excellent reproductions of Peter Max's work. In addition, there is a Wikipedia entry on Peter Max , and the web site lines and colors has an article on Peter Max. The official Peter Max website is here.

Peter Max was born in 1937 in Berlin. During his childhood, his family moved around, first to Shanghai (where his family lived next to a Buddhist temple and a Sikh monastery), then to Israel (via India, South Africa, and Italy), and finally to the United States (via Paris). Peter Max's cosmopolitan upbringing influenced his later art.

Peter Max received extensive training in art. At first, he did realistic art (e.g., portraits), but quickly moved to graphic design and the pop/psychedelic art style for which he is famous. Love and Different Drummer (below), both created in 1968, are examples of his pop art style.

I personally find the pop art style very appealing, and I want to understand why the images work. The images make use of only three design elements: color, shape, and line. The colors are bright and tend to be primary. I can't discern a color scheme per se, but do notice that Peter Max makes use of analogous colors and complementary or near complimentary colors, all in the same piece. For example, in Love, the colors inside the Love letters are analogous blues and purples. The purple part of the 'L' is next to yellow background, and the blue part of the 'L' is next to an orange solid circle and a lighter orange background.

Pop art is a style that looks easy but it is very hard to do well. I tried to do the Illustration Friday prompt "Pet Peeves" in a pop art style; the results are here. While my Pet Peeves piece is not one of my better efforts, I do like the bright colors and was surprised to see how far the design element color can carry a piece of art.

Starting in the late 1970's, Peter Max started to move towards a Neo-Expressionism style. He did a number of Americana pieces; here is one example. I love the bright, loose, primary colors and the minimal black contour drawing that defines the face.

Here are more examples of Peter Max's Neo-Expressionism style (most of which are in acrylics). Until I embarked on this study, I had no idea that Peter Max did this type of work. I only knew his pop style.

Finally, Peter Max has some pieces that interpret masterpieces in a fun and original way. Mona Lisa, below, is an example.

I tried this approach for the Illustration Friday prompt "Heavy". The result is an interpretation of Rubin's Venus in Front of the Mirror . I find this approach to the masters to be more creative and enjoyable than blindly copying their work.

N.C. Wyeth

I studied the illustrator N.C. Wyeth in February. Wyeth (1882-1945) is considered to be one of America's greatest illustrators. In addition, he is the father and grandfather, respectively, of artists Andrew Wyeth and James Wyeth.

I particularly liked the reproductions in the books Wondrous Strange: The Wyeth Tradition and An American Vision: Three Generations of Wyeth Art. You can also find many N.C. Wyeth paintings here.

I also studied design in February. I read Design Basics (2nd Edition) by David A. Lauer. N.C. Wyeth excelled at design and composition, so I studied Wyeth's paintings in the context of design principles. Here is an example of how I approached this project.

The following painting is an illustration for the book Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. A black spot is a piece of paper with a black spot on it. If a pirate receives a black spot, it means he is to be executed.

The Black Spot They Were Collected in a Group (1911)

Here is an analysis of the painting in the context of design principles.

Unity

• Proximity: All the figures are very close to one another.
• Repetition: The pirates in the background have similar dress.
• Continuation: The barely visible pirate in the right background is connected to the back wall, the back wall is connected to the left shoulder of the back standing pirate and to the left-most crouching pirate's neck, and the left-most crouching pirate's leg is connected to the kneeling pirate with the knife. The pirate in black in the foreground is not connected to the other picture elements, but his right-hand heel almost merges into his shadow and the floor. The left side of the wall runs into the floor.
• Unity with Variety: There is some variation in the pirates' clothing.

Emphasis/Focal Point

I see the focal point as being the book and knife: the making of the black spot.

• Emphasis by Contrast: The focal point is one of the most lighted area of the painting (although the back right wall and white pirate shirts are also very lighted).
• Emphasis by Isolation: I don't think this technique is used here.
• Emphasis by Placement: This is the primary technique used here: All the pirates are looking at the book and knife.

Balance

I struggle with balance. This is the principle I understand least. This painting uses Asymmetrical Balance, as opposed to Symmetrical Balance.

• The dark left-hand wall and the mass of the three left-hand pirates seem to balance the mass of the single standing pirate dressed in black.

Scale/Proportion

• The pirate in black in the foreground appears much larger than the other pirates. I have never read Treasure Island, so I can't say if the foreground pirate is more significant than the rest. Did Wyeth deliberately make this pirate dominate the others in the painting?

Illusion of Space

There is a sense of depth in the painting.

• Size: The foreground pirate is larger than the background pirates.
• Overlapping: The foreground pirate hides parts of the background pirates.
• Vertical Location: The upper pirates are farther back than the lower pirate.
• Aerial Perspective: I don't think this is used here.
• Linear Perspective: Is this one-point perspective?
• Amplified Perspective: I think the pirate in black may be an example of amplified perspective.
• There are a number of other techniques--Multiple Perspective, Oriental Space, Open Form/Closed Form, Recession, and Spatial Puzzles. I don't think any of these are used.

It is nice to know that the two simplest techniques, size and overlapping, are also very effective.

From 2 to 3 Dimensions

Yesterday, I played with 2- and 3-dimensional designs. The problem is to take a 2-dimensional design and convert it to a 3-dimensional one, by adding gray. I started with the design shown below, which I created a few months ago. It is black construction paper pasted on white paper.

I scanned and printed the above design. I then used gray marker to give the design a 3rd dimension, as shown below.

Finally, I scanned the marked-up version of the design and used Photoshop Elements to improve the black and gray colors. The final result is the image at the top of the post. I found this exercise to be very enjoyable; I find it very freeing to work with abstract shapes.

Figure-Ground Reversals

These pencil sketches are solutions to a design problem in the book Design: Principles and Problems by Zelanski and Fisher. The problem is to create a figure-ground reversal using black and white. In a figure-ground reversal, the figure and background are ambiguous. Is the black the figure or background? How about the white? The simplest examples of this are a checkerboard and the yin and yang symbol. M. C. Escher was a master of this design technique. For example, Sky and Water I is a well-known Escher piece that uses this technique.

Karl Zipser has a post titled Why does art change with viewing? that gives additional examples of figure-ground reversals. He shows a famous illustration that can be seen in two ways: as a pair of faces looking at each other, or as a vase. He also shows a drawing that can be viewed as a rabbit or a duck.

I found this problem to be very difficult. I see potential is the first two sketches (fairies emerging from between bottles and the snake plant), so I will develop them further.

December Goals

Do other people write down art goals at the beginning of every month? I am a compulsive list maker, so at the end of each month, I write down my goals for the coming month. It is a chance to make New Year's resolutions 12 times a year: I get 12 fresh starts. I use a cheap spiral notebook to record and track my goals. I don't always achieve all of my goals, but I think I achieve more than I would without goals. My December goals are shown below. Keys to Drawing from Imagination and Design: Principles and Problems are books I am slowly working through. EDM stands for Every Day Matters, which I have been meaning to join for a long time now. I have an expensive set of Koh-I-Noor Rapidograph pens, but I use Micron ones instead due to laziness. I want to get comfortable with the better pens so I will use them. I think the rest of the goals are self-explanatory.

Metamorphosis II

On October 23rd, I posted a series of drawings that transforms one form into another form. Here is a series of drawings that transforms one shape into another: A mug is transformed into a woman's profile.



Yesterday I came across an advertisement that uses the metamorphosis of one form into another to effectively convey an advertising message. Interesting!

Implied Shapes

Another design problem from the book Design: Principles and Problems by Zelanski and Fisher. The problem here is to imply a shape without actually drawing the shape. In the mug drawings, the viewer hopefully sees a complete outline of the mug, even though there is no line separating the mug and white stripes. Perhaps the mug even seems to be a different color from the white stripes, even though the mug and white stripes are actually the same color. In the star drawing, differences in the densities of tiny dots give the illusion of a star.

Reassembling a Square

Another design problem from the book Design: Principles and Problems by Zelanski and Fisher. Here I cut up a small square of black construction paper and organized it on an 8" x 10" piece of white paper in such a way that the square can still be identified.

Metamorphosis

This series of drawings transforms one form into another: the snowman is transformed into a tree. This is a design problem in the book Design: Principles and Problems by Zelanski and Fisher.

See Ellis Nadler's Illustration Friday entry for an excellent and more professional use of this technique.