And Now For Something Completely Different

As many of you already know I started my art career as an illustrator working in science fiction and fantasy. This was back in the mid eighties and before computers were tools for artists. Computer games looked like pong and pacman not like a blockbuster movie.

I still work in games and in Science Fiction and Fantasy and recently had the opportunity to contribute to a book called SciFi Art Now. John Freeman is the editor and has a blog where he is interviewing some of the artists for the book. My interview is here with a link to a download of this step by step demo in .pdf format.

My piece in the book was made digitally using my own photo reference and 3d models and combined and painted in photoshop. For this piece I painted right on the plate (photo) although this isn't always how I work digitally it is an effective tool to quickly sketchup ideas and bring them to completion. The following is the step by step process I used to make Marooned.

I started with a photo I took on a painting trip to the Sierras in Eastern California. The sandstone looked melted and gave me the idea for a crashed spaceship. I got down on the ground to shoot the small sandstone rocks from a worms eye view.

1. I  separated the foreground from the sky into two layers. Using a hard brush, selecting local colors and the eraser tool I began to make the framework of the spaceship.

2. I created a third layer for my figures around a fire and established some color to get the general feel of how it will fit in the scene.

3. Next I painted some walls with portholes to make the ship seem familiar, again using the local colors in the photo to keep the sense of light.

4. I continue to add more hard edges and machine like shapes and establish a horizon line with mountains in the distance.

5. I rough in the figures around the fire on another layer. I paint them all in warm hues so they will stand out against the rest of the scene. I make one figure female and the two sitting figures male to create a subliminal tension for the scene. Next I created a sky gradient on another layer. This will be my basis for the stars and planetoids that come next.

6. I create stars by using the noise filter then selecting a limited color range and copying and flipping the selection. I do this a couple of times adding a layer each time and make a color pass over each version to vary the look of the star field. The last thing I do is go in and hand paint selected stars with the airbrush tool before collapsing the layers back down.

7. I build and light the planetoids in 3ds Max and then import the images on to their own layer in Photoshop. At this point I collapse all of the layers except the figures and fire and then manipulate the colors and values to harmonize the scene. I want everything to be covered in dust to give the sense of the passage of time, unifying the color does this and I choose a color that will compliment the tones in the fire.

8. To finish the painting, I collapse the whole image and adjust the color for the figures and add more detail around them. I work all over the image fixing and adjusting where I think things need it.

Bouguereau Quotes Part 2

by
Armand Cabrera



This final group of quotes represents the last  of three articles on Bouguereau that I started two weeks ago. At some point I might return and write about his process since it is well documented and maybe it will help to dispel the myths that have grown around him. For those interested the ARC sponsored book on Bouguereau is out at $262.00 US dollars, it is 800 pages and is a luxury two-volume set in a slipcase, which includes all of Bouguereau's known paintings as well as a comprehensive biography. I’m trying to figure out how I can justify buying one and slip it by Diane. If anyone wants to buy and send me a copy I’ll be happy to review it here:-)

Every morning I get up at seven without fail and have breakfast, then I go up to my studio which I don’t leave all day. Around three o’clock, a light meal is brought in; I don’t have to leave my work. I rarely have visitors, since I hate to be disturbed. My friends though are always welcome. They don’t bother me, I can work even when it’s noisy or they’re chatting. When I’m painting I don’t pay attention to anything else.

In painting, I’m an idealist. I see only the beautiful in art and, for me art is the beautiful. Why reproduce what is ugly in nature? I don’t see why it should be necessary. Painting what one sees just as it is, no- or at least, not unless one is immensely gifted. Talent is all redeeming and can excuse anything. Nowadays, painters go much too far, just as writers and realist novelists do. There is no way of telling where they will draw the line. I prefer poets; each to his own taste.

Starting a picture is very pleasant, for you always believe that this time you’re going to create a masterpiece; you take pains, and little by little the painting takes shape, the effect comes through. You feel marvelous sensations. When it’s done however things are different. You want to touch up the arm, the movement of the body doesn’t seem graceful…and you end up doing nothing for fear of having to redo the whole thing completely.

People say I paint to make money; it’s not true. I don’t need to make money; my family and I already have more than we need. But I have to paint all the time as I see feel, and know. That’s all there is to it. People pay a lot for my paintings and I’m not complaining; it proves my work is still appreciated. But if they didn’t sell as well as they do it wouldn’t stop me from making them.

Theory has no place in an artist's basic education. It is the eye and the hand that should be exercised during the impressionable years of youth. It is always possible to later acquire the accessory knowledge involved in the production of a work of art, but never -- and I want to stress that point -- never can the will, perseverance, and tenacity of a mature man make up for insufficient practice. And can there be such anguish compared to that felt by the artist who sees the realization of his dream compromised by weak execution?

Adolphe William Bouguereau 1825-1905

by

Armand Cabrera









Adolphe William Bouguereau was born in 1825 in La Rochelle. He was the son of a wine merchant. At sixteen his father allowed him to attend art school as long as his son paid his own expenses. Bouguereau took a job as a book keeper and also made labels for local grocers. After two years of study Bouguereau entered a local art competition and won first prize. With help from his Uncle who was a priest, Bouguereau was commissioned to paint portraits for wealthy landowners of the parish. Bouguereau painted 33 portraits in his first three months.

In 1846 with the money he had earned painting portraits Bouguereau entered François-Edouard Picots atelier in Paris. Fellow students included Gustave Moreau and Alexandre Cabanel.

In 1847 Ecole Competitions Bouguereau garnered four medals on for perspective and three for figure work.

In 1848 Bouguereau joined the Monarchy to help contain the civil uprising that had broken out. That same year he won one of two Grand Prix awards.

In 1850 he receives the Prix De Rome which allows him to study in Italy for three years. In Italy Bouguereau refined his technique by copying master paintings and sketching the people and countryside.

On his return to France Bouguereau resumed entering exhibitions. The state purchased Triumph of the Martyr from him in 1855.

In 1856 Bouguereau received one of his most important commissions Napoleon III visiting The Flood Victims of Tarascon. For this commission he was paid 5000 gold francs. He was also married to Marie Nelly Monchablon later that year.

The next few years Bouguereau received commissions for public spaces painting murals in Churches and theaters. In 1866 Bouguereau began marketing his genre work exclusively through Adolphe Goupil.



In 1875 he took a teaching post at the Academie Julian and in 1881 became its director. He held this office until his death.

Bouguereau moved his family to a house he had built in a Paris neighborhood. Here he stayed and worked until the outbreak of the Franco Prussian War. He moved his family to Brittany for safety but he stayed through the siege of Paris and its surrender. The siege was followed by the Communard insurrection against the formal French Government and as many as twenty thousand died in the city.

Bouguereau suffered many personal tragedies in his life; four of his five children died and his wife died at the age of forty.

He began a relationship with one of his students Elizabeth Gardner but he did not marry her until after his mother’s death. His mother had objected to their relationship and so they postponed a formal marriage until 1896.

Bouguereau was extremely successful during his lifetime he was honored with many awards. He was also vilified by younger generations of artists that rejected his focus on a high degree of finish and skilled drawing. This did not stop him from working at subjects that others found shallow or overly sentamental.

There has been much made about the style of modern art as a response to war but I think one could make the case for Bouguereau and his art as an equally valid response. His art was a refuge from what must have been for him a sad, painful personal life, burying almost all of his children and then his wife at a relatively young age. During these times his religious faith sustained him and he worked. In this context his art makes sense and I can’t help but see it as a need to make the world a beautiful place in some small way after experiencing so much tragedy.

Adolphe William Bouguereau died august 19th 1905.

Bibliography

William Bouguereau 1825- 1905

Louise d'Argencourt Mark Steven Walker

Exhibition Catalog published in 1984

The Lure of Paris Nineteenth Century

American Painters and Their French Teachers

H. Barbara Weinberg

Abbeville Press1991

Some Call it Kitsch

Masterpieces of Bourgeois Realism

Aleska Celebonovic

Abrams 1974

Mural Step by Step

by
Armand Cabrera

I was awarded this commission through a design company I work with from time to time. The client initially liked a barn painting I had done. The image for the original painting was 20 x 24. For the mural the client wanted the painting to be 119x19 almost five times the original length. I mocked up the new version in Photoshop for approval and once the okay was given I started the project.

The first thing I needed to do was build a frame work for the linen. I decided to just tack the linen to the framework and after it was completed roll it up and ship it to the clients where it would be stretched and framed for the hotel. The framework consisted of three pieces of 2 x 4 foot birch panel held together with 1 x 3 pine. This would allow me to sit it on my easel and secure it. The easel is counter balanced and slides side to side making it easy to paint awkward sizes like this.

I figured on a week for the painting process; one day for the drawing, one day for the block in/ wash, and three days to finish.

For the drawing I divided the image space into twelve horizontal and two vertical sections to make it easier when placing the elements. The drawing took me 9 hours.

I mixed some test colors for the foliage before I made up the large piles of paint and I blocked in the dark cedar trees and some other key elements as guides over my initial drawing.

For the block in I worked on the background and then the foreground saving the middle areas for last.

This way I would get the two extremes in hue and saturation shifts established making the middle section easier. The block in took me 10 hours.

The last few days were spent refining and adding details where appropriate. I changed the middle of the painting, moving and shrinking a tree between the barn and pond that I thought looked good in the initial digital mockup but was distracting at full size. The total time for the painting was a little more than sixty hours.

This is the first mural I have done in many years. There were three done for businesses back in the seventies and eighties, a store in Hawaii (6x15 feet) and a restaurant (9x12 feet) and store in California (12 x24 feet).Those are long gone, they were painted directly onto the walls and did not survive the remodeling process and in one case the store was demolished for a newer store.

I’m hoping because it will be mounted and framed it might make it through the inevitable remodeling ten or twenty years down the road. The Mural will be in the Gaylord Opryland Hotel which reopens on November 15th 2010 in Nashville TN
http://www.gaylordhotels.com/gaylord-opryland/

Adolphe William Bouguereau Quotes

by Armand Cabrera

Adolphe William Bouguereau became the epitamy of what was wrong with academic art in the late 19 and early 20th centuries. Villified by the more progressive movements in art, his work has been trivialized for 100 years now. These atitudes are slowly changing and Bouguereau seems to have had the last laugh. His work has continually risen in popularity. He was a successful artist and an important and influential  teacher in Paris in the 19th century. With a resurgence in respect for quality in drawing, painting and beauty, Bouguereau's impact on art and his work has a chance to be placed in correct perpective within art history.

For me a work of art must be an elevated interpretation of nature. The search for the ideal has been the purpose of my life. In landscape or seascape, I love above all the poetic motif.

Paint as you see and be accurate in your drawing: the whole secret of your art is there.

If you want to draw and model effectively you have to see all of the details as well as the whole at the same time.

One of the tricks for getting the overall feeling of a painting is to blink your eyes while looking at the model.

One is born an artist. The artist is a man endowed with a special nature, with a particular feeling for seeing form and color spontaneously, as a whole, in perfect harmony. If one lacks that feeling, one is not an artist and will never become an artist; and it is a waste of time to entertain the possibility.

The craft is acquired through study, observation and practice; it can improve by ceaseless work but the instinct for art is innate.

First one has to love nature with all ones heart and soul, and be able to study and admire it for hours on end. Everything is in nature. A plant, a leaf, a blade of grass, should be the subjects of infinite and fruitful meditations; for the artist, a cloud floating in the sky has form, and the form affords him joy, helps him think.

Before starting work, steep yourself in your subject; if you don’t fully understand it, seek further or turn to something else. Remember that everything must be thought out beforehand, everything, down to the last details.

As soon as a painting is completed, I know that in this or that portfolio I’ll find such and such a sketch, and straight away I go to a new canvas. I never ask myself, “Let’s see, what can I do now?” I have my work all cut out for me. Not to mention the many works that will go unfinished for want of the ideal model.

Think about the drawing, the color the composition- when you work you must consider all these things equally.

You leave unpainted what you cannot see; it is ignorance that makes you blind; it is inattention that makes you ignorant; inattention is imbecile.

I understood that the subtlety of accents, in contrast with large planes, is what makes drawing great. This truth, which I have yearned all my life to express and which still drives me on, is the secret of art. It applies to composition as well as to drawing proper. It is the principle that must guide both the young beginner and the fully developed artist.

Bibiography

William Bouguereau 1825- 1905

Louise d'Argencourt Mark Steven Walker

Exhibition Catalog published in 1984