Daily Art Fixx

visual arts blog, painting, drawing, sculpture, illustration and more!

Keith Thompson: Concept Art/Illustration

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Scribe © Keith Thompson

Scribe © Keith Thompson

Today’s image is by English/Canadian artist Keith Thompson. Thompson studied illustration at Sheridan College near Toronto and currently works internationally as a freelance artist.  His work is used in books, magazines, tv, film, and video games.  Most recently, he illustrated Scott Westerfeld’s young adult novel Leviathan which debuted as a New York Times bestseller.

Thompson creates his work using black colerase pencil on 110lb paper which he then scans and glazes using soft light layers in Photoshop. Most of his pieces come with their own story.  The image above is called “Scribe” – here is the story:

“A scrivener automaton working in a rather wealthy merchant’s library. The arcane procedures for creating automatons are as varied as their appearance and roles in society (servitors, military, labour, prostitution, etc). The taxidermic use of cured human remains is legalised, economical and common place in their construction (similar to how the powdered wigs in our past often used the hair of corpses). However the practice of “rendering” down living persons into an automaton state is outlawed, it is frequently employed since the resultant product tends to outperform the legal alternative. The merchant who owns this particular scribe automaton has some very extensive paperwork detailing her conformity to all applicable regulation. Despite this assurance, those who deal with her have noticed how quickly she learns new tasks, and have caught her smiling when backs are turned.”

To see more of Thompson’s amazing creations, visit KeithThompsonArt.com.

Gabriel Silva: Illustration

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© Gabriel Silva

© Gabriel Silva

Today’s image is by San Paulo, Brazil artist Gabriel Silva. Though the subject is of a mother and child, the illustration reminds me of Klimt’s “The Kiss“. Since the folder where the image is located is titled “Gustav”, I’m guessing that it was the inspiration for this piece.

I was unable to find any biographical information on Silva but to see more of his work, check out his profile on Behance.

Update: A kind reader Lea pointed me to Klimt’s “The Three Ages of Woman” as the reference for Silva’s illustration. Thanks Lea!

Gustav Klimt - The Three Ages of Woman

Art-e-Facts: 5 Random Art Facts VIII

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aq_geisenheyner_fore_edge_painting1. Fore Edge Painting is a scene painted on the edges of the pages of a book such that the painting is not visible when the book is closed. In order to view the painting, the leaves of the book must be fanned, exposing the edges of the pages and thereby the painting. The earliest signed and dated fore-edge painting dates to 1653: a family coat of arms painted on a 1651 Bible.

Auguste Rodin - The Age of Bronze (aka The Vanquished One) 1875-762. “The Bronze Age”, Rodin’s first recognized masterpiece sculpture was was exhibited in Brussels and Paris in 1877. The life-sized male nude was such a departure from academic sculpture that Rodin was accused of casting from a live model – a charge that was disproved by photographs the artist kept on which the sculpture was based.

Francis Bacon - Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne Standing in a Street in Soho - 19673. Francis Bacon preferred painting on the reverse (unprimed) side of his canvas which he found more absorbent and suited his technique and the matt effect of paint sinking into the weave of the canvas. He discovered this method by chance after he had run out of materials and was compelled to use the back of an already painted canvas.

Fourth Dimensional Abstraction - E.E. Cummings4. E.E. Cummings was very popular throughout the 20th century and received tremendous critical acclaim for his poetry and writing. Less well-known is his accomplishments as a visual artist. Cummings considered himself as much a painter as a poet and he devoted a tremendous amount of time to his art. He also produced thousands of pages of notes concerning his own opinions about painting, colour theory, the human form, the “intelligence” of painting, and his thoughts about the Masters.

Chaos Glow 1 - Sherry Bellamy - Lampwork Bead5. Lampworking is a type of glasswork that uses a gas fueled torch to melt rods and tubes of clear and colored glass. Once in a molten state, the glass is formed by blowing and shaping with tools and hand movements. It is also known as flameworking or torchworking, as the modern practice no longer uses oil-fueled lamps. Although the art form has been practiced since ancient Syrian (1 Century B.C., B. Dunham) times, it became widely practiced in Murano, Italy in the 14th century.

Related Books:
The Art Lover’s Almanac : Serious Trivia for the Novice and the Connoisseur
Facts On File Encyclopedia Of Art ( 5 vol. set)

Sources: Wikipedia-Fore Edge, DAF-Rodin, DAF-Bacon, DAF-Cummings, Wikipedia-Lampworking

Jan Matulka: 1890-1972

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arrangement-with-phonograph-mask-and-shell-jan-matulka

Born on November 7, 1890 in Vlachovo Brezi, Bohemia (now Czech Republic), Jan Matulka worked in a variety of styles including Realism, Post-Impressionism, Abstract Impressionism, Surrealism, and Abstraction. In 1907, Matulka’s family immigrated to New York where he studied at the National Academy of Design for nine years.

In 1917 Matulka received the Joseph Pulitzer National Traveling Scholarship allowing him to travel to New Mexico, Arizona, and Florida. During this time, he created paintings as he went, including recording his time with the Hopi Indians. He was one of the first modern artists to depict the Hopi Snake Rain Dance.

Matulka married Lida Jirouskovamade in 1918 and traveled to Paris in 1919, spending much of the years between 1920 and 1924 abroad.  From 1924 to 1934, Matulka split his time between Paris and New York City. His paintings ranged from landscapes, still-lifes,  interior scenes, and portraits. His oil paintings and watercolors in the late 1920s, are considered his most sophisticated cubist works.

As well as painting, Matulka created a series of etchings of scenes of New York and illustrations for the socialist magazine “New Masses”. From 1929 to 1932, he was a teacher at the Art Students League of New York where he became associated with Arshile Gorky, Stuart Davis, John Graham and his most famous student, David Smith. He was also employed as a muralist by the Public Works of Art Project and the Federal Art Project from 1935 to 1939.

Despite his accomplishments as an artist, Matulka did not achieve a great deal of fame, and he virtually disappeared from the art world in the 1940’s.  His work however, gained renewed interest in 1970 when New York dealer Robert Schoelkopf began representing him and gave him a solo exhibition. The Whitney Museum of Art held a retrospective of his work in 1979 and in 1982, an exhibition was organized at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.  In 1995, an exhibition was organized by the McCormick Gallery and from 2004 to 2006, The Global Modernist Exhibition traveled to six venues.

Matulka continued to paint and exhibit throughout his life. His works are in the collections of the the Smithsonian, the Whitney Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Carnegie Institute, and others. Jan Matulka died in New York on June 25, 1972.

Sources: McCormick Gallery, Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York Times, Wikipedia, Blue Heron Fine Art

Ryan Larkin: Art and Animation

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ryan-larkin-1 ryan-larkin-3 ryan-larkin-2

I was reminded by a friend on facebook today about Canadian artist and animator Ryan Larkin and I thought I would share it with you.

Larkin, the son of an airline mechanic, was born in Montreal on July 31,1943. He grew up in Dorval, Quebec and studied with painter Arthur Lismer at the Ecole des beaux-arts de Montreal. The death of his brother in the 1950s affected Larkin, and he began drinking heavily in his teens.

Larkin began working at the National Film Board in 1961 where he was tutored by master animator Norman McLaren. Using new film techniques, he created the short “Syrinx” in 1965. In 1968 Larkin received an Academy Award nomination for his animated short “Walking”. In 1972 he created “Street Musique“ which was considered a masterpiece of animated movement.  Larkin won dozens of awards during his 14 years with the film board.

In 1977, Larkin suffered from a combination of creative block and alcohol and cocaine addiction.  He eventually left the NFB and began living on the streets of Montreal and panhandling. “I had difficulty handling my ego when I was famous. I’ve made a fool of myself.” Larkin once told an interviewer. “It was a psychological problem I had to deal with, and my first choice was to use drugs. “I had sexual proclivities, too – I was doing coke and getting hard-ons instead of what I should have been doing, which was making interesting, comical, beautiful animation films.”

Larkin was brought back into the spotlight as the subject of the film “Ryan“, a digitally animated tribute by  Chris Landreth that won the Academy Award for best animated short in 2005.  The film rejuvenated his career and he returned to animation by creating three short animated bumpers for MTV in December 2006.

Larkin died on February 14, 2007 of lung cancer in St. Hyacinthe, Quebec.  At the time of his death, he had been working on  “Spare Change”, a film about his experiences on the streets of Montreal.

To see more of Larkin’s animations, visit the National Film Board online.

 

Sources: CBC, Canada.com

Janelle McKain: Surreal Art

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Enigma © Janelle Mckain

This week’s Deviant is Surreal artist Janelle McKain.  Born and raised in Nebraska, USA, McKain has a Bachelor’s degree in K-12 Art Education with an endorsement in Gifted Education from Kearney State College and has been teaching art for the past 29 years in public schools across Nebraska. Currently, she is Department Chair and teaches Drawing and Advanced Drawing at Millard South High School in Omaha, NE.

McKain works mainly in graphite but enjoys watercolour painting as well. She is also involved in collaborative drawings with other international artists through the The Exquisite Corpse and The Antipodes Project. In all of their complexity, nearly all of McKain’s drawings are unplanned.  She begins when she feels inspired and lets the images and shapes emerge without constraints.

Despite her busy teaching career, McKain always has a drawing or collaboration on the go. “I draw because I enjoy it immensely; it is soothing to me, not unlike rocking a child in a rocking chair… and this sensation…keeps me coming back to the drawing table over and over again. I enjoy the mystery of what is unraveling before me, and each drawing appears full of personal imagery that has no obvious answer. This is what inspires me; this is what fuels my work.  Breathing and drawing are of equal importance to me.”

McKain’s work has been exhibited in group shows, has been featured in numerous magazines, and will be included in the upcoming book “Imagine the Imagination. New Visions of Surrealism” in November 2009.

For more information about Janelle McKain, visit her profile on Deviant Art. For an in depth interview visit Deviantly Surreal Magazine.

Bon Vivant © Janelle Mckain Idiosyncratic Mckainations-© Janelle Mckain Joe Mcgowan Trinity © Janelle Mckain

Sources: Oranges and Sardines, Deviantly Surreal Magazine.

Minjae Lee: Painting/Illustration

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Dace 2 © Minjae Lee

This week’s Deviant is 19 year old, South Korean painter/illustrator Minjae Lee. Lee finds inspiration in the human face and abstract movement and colour. Lee assembles his colourful creations with  combinations of acrylics,  coloured pencils, postercolors, pens, pastels, and paint markers.

To see more of Minjae Lee’s fantastic work, visit his profile Greno89 on Deviant Art or his website Renokim.com.