Book Review: Color and Light

Review by Armand Cabrera

James Gurney hits it out of the park again with his new art instruction book Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter. Following the success of his other art instruction book Imaginative Realism, which was released last year, Gurney’s new book Color and Light is filled with everything you will want to know about these two important subjects, written in a clear and concise style. This is not a step by step how to book per se but there are plenty of explanations describing the effects of color and light and how to use them in your paintings. The images accompanying the text are made up of James Gurneys own plein air paintings, figure studies and illustrations for his professional assignments. Over 300 color Illustrations and diagrams.

Beautifully printed and designed, Color and Light is sure to be considered the text on the subject for years to come. Gurney writes about this subject as a successful, professional artist. This is not someone who doesn’t make their living as a painter or some scientist who only observes but offers no practical application for his information. The paintings by Gurney are a feast for the eyes, his talent is showcased well here and you see the depth and breadth of his formidable abilities as an artist. He has included images of city scenes, portraits, landscapes, illustrations for National Geographic, magazine articles, science fiction and fantasy book covers and his own series of Dinotopia books. The sheer amount of work is amazing and you begin to understand that here is someone who loves the process of making art.

Many people know Gurney as one of the premier illustrators in the world and the author of the Dinotopia books, but for those who don’t follow his excellent blog gurneyjourney, they may be surprised to find he has always been an avid plein air painter as well. His landscapes are just as accomplished as any of his illustrations. Many of these small outdoor landscapes are showcased in this book and make up a third of the color illustrations. This is important because it is his work painted outdoors from life that infuse his real and imagined scenes with a sense of light.

Some books are considered classics in the field of art instruction; Harold Speed’s The Practice and Science of Drawing, John F Carlson’s Guide to Landscape Painting, Andrew Loomis’ Figure Drawing for all its Worth and Creative Illustration, Edgar Payne’s The Composition of Outdoor Painting, and Richard Schmid’s Alla Prima. Jim Gurney’s Color and Light is one of these books. There is no excuse for you not to buy this book, it is very reasonably priced and the wealth of information in it will help anyone interested in representational art. Whether you are a seasoned professional or Sunday hobbyist, this is the book for you.

You can order Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter from the Dinotopia website where James will sign copies if requested

http://www.dinotopia.com/dinotopia-store.html

The book is also available from all the usual book retailers like Barnes and Noble, Amazon and Borders

For more information on James Gurney visit his websites

http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/

http://jamesgurney.com/

http://www.dinotopia.com/

http://jamesgurneyoriginalart.blogspot.com/

More on Construction in Painting

by Armand Cabrera

I want to talk more about construction for landscape painters. Figure painters know that construction is an important aspect of their training. With figure drawing and painting you learn the ideal and then adjust and apply the specific to your understanding. This type of training rarely takes place for landscape painters. Landscape painters tend to copy what they see for good or bad. While this approach can work over time, great landscape painters, like great figure painters, understand their subject on a deeper level. Their method is partly based on observation and partly on construction. It is as much from what they know about something as it is about what they see. This combination of construction and observation helps to strengthen the painting.

                                                                          Thomas Moran
 Everything has an anatomy to it; understanding this underlying structure helps you paint with a more authoritative approach. Observation alone can fool the viewer into believing they are seeing something they are not. How many times have we been fooled by some foreshortened object in the landscape thinking something looks a certain way when in reality our view of it is giving us false information? If you understand the anatomy of the thing you are looking at there is little chance for confusion since you can visualize what is going on even when its shape is distorted in your view.

William Wendt

A constructive approach can aid the design and the elegance of your depiction too. It can help with an interpretation based only in part on naturalism. Many great painters have used their understanding of the landscape and flora and fauna to create paintings truthful to nature but utterly unique to that artist. This approach requires a thorough knowledge of the subject, the ability to pick out what’s important and strip away what isn’t. For the artist, it creates a completely personal view of the world irrespective of the subject matter.

Maynard Dixon

Observation, Construction and Visualization

by Armand Cabrera


Observational painting directly from nature opens your eyes to a world filled with color and light. There are very few situations outside that shadows aren’t filled with ambient and reflected light. Colors of local objects are affected in unusual and unpredictable ways. The organic groupings of rocks and the undulating flow of the landscape are always more interesting than imagined.

There is a drawback to observational painters though; the information is overwhelming at first. Learning to translate the 3d image of what you see is harder than copying a 2d photo. It is hard to decide what to use and what to ignore. The organic patterning of trees and other elements are hard to organize. Too many easel painters don’t transcend the observational aspects of painting. They cannot construct what they cannot copy. They lack the basic knowledge of construction to elevate their drawings past the mundane.Until they learn to visualize their compositions tend to be weak always depending on what is in front of them, whether a figure model or scene.

In the book on the biography of the Payne’s, Edgar’s daughter Evelyn remembers “He sometimes planned his studio painting in the evening; he very often sketched penciled compositions as he sat listening to the radio. They were little composition sketches, working out artistic problems. It was interesting to watch him draw; his hands moved very rapidly, and he held his Venus 6B pencil in the same fashion you would hold a piece of charcoal when drawing on canvas…” What she is talking about is construction and visualization.

A constructive approach is the one often used by comic book, illustrators and production artists. In these industries many times you learn the rules governing perspective and anatomy and construct the scenes out of your head. Color schemes follow strict rules of theory to maximize impact. Little time is spent using models under real world lighting conditions if at all.

Visualization is also used in these disciplines, creating worlds, creatures and characters from the imagination or scenes from antiquity. The skill is an important one in painting and drawing because it allows for manipulation of elements to suit the image. Artists are not tied to something observed and more focus can go toward design and composition.

The problems arise when people rely too much on these systems for a completed painting and ignore observation. A lack of understanding of how light actually works or natural effects really look can over simplify a scene. Too many illustrators ignore real world observation and use only construction and visualization for their subjects, relying solely on these skills which can never match the lighting in a real world situation. Their lighting is simplistic with the shadows too dark and their colors too saturated and color combinations monochromatic.

NC Wyeth maintained his plein air painting his whole life he incorporated impressionist observational studies into his illustrations to great success. His illustrations were painted using the places he knew giving them life.

Painting from life doesn’t just benefit the easel painter. Construction and visualization are not just good tools for the illustrator or the painter of historical subjects. Any painter serious about their painting should incorporate all three of these skills in their work. It requires a lifetime of dedication and practice.

Combining all three, visualization, construction and observation will take your art to the next level and your paintings can only improve no matter what the final use for them is.

 Top two images Edgar Payne

Bottom two images N.C. Wyeth

Daniel Urrabieta Vierge 1851-1904

by
Armand Cabrera

Daniel Urrabieta Vierge was born in Madrid, Spain on March 5, 1851. His Father Vincent was also a professional artist and he encouraged Daniel to draw from the time he was three. Vierge was rarely without his drawing tools after that age. At thirteen he was entered into the Academy in Madrid and studied under Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz, Federico Madrazo and José Villegas Cordero. Vierge received his first assignment when he was sixteen illustrating  Madrid la Nuit.





With money from his work he decided to move to Paris to study painting but the outbreak of the Franco Prussian War kept him from entering the academies there. Instead he chronicled the war and sold the illustrations to Le Monde Illustre and other periodicals. By the age of 21 he was a highly sought after illustrator of books and magazines.

Vierge is considered the father of modern illustration. He worked to incorporate his illustrations into the text and  he helped develop a process to copy the art directly to a plate for printing avoiding the translation of a wood engraver.  This produced a line quality unique in the publishing world a the time. Vierge worked in Guache, pen and pencil. His ink work was done with a glass pen on Bristol Board. His working method was to always sketch from life, quick vignettes of everything around him. These sketchbook illustrations would be used as the basis for his professional work. He rarely used models for assignments having so much information collected over the years. His facile handling and expressive, fliud line work kept him one of the most sought after illustrators of his day.

 His largest assignment was Michelet's History of France containing 1000 drawings in  26 volumes. Vierges best known work was to be Pablo De Segovia. Vierge would create 110 illustrations for the book. After completing the first 90 illustrations he had a stroke which left him paralyzed on the right side of his body, unable to draw and with short term memory loss; he was 30 years old.

Vierge spent almost ten years retraining his left hand to draw as well as he could with his right. The second edition of Pablo De Segovia had all 110 illustrations; the last twenty finished by Vierge left handed; they are indistinguishable from his earlier work. He had to have someone repeat the passages to him over and over again while he drew them because of his memory loss which eventually was cured.

    

In 1889 he was awarded a gold Medal at the Paris Exhibition for his work on Pablo De Segovia. His last work was the four volume set of Don Quixote, creating 75 illustrations for Cervantes Classic. Vierge never regained the use of his right hand. Daniel Vierge died at Boulogne-sur-Seine in May 1904 at the age of 53.

Google books has free complete copies of some of the books illustrated by Vierge including On the Trail of Don Quixote and Don Quixote. The books are in .pdf format complete with all of the illustration albeit in slightly fuzzy scans.

Bibliography

Daniel Urrabieta Vierge in the collection of the Hispanic Society of America

Elizabeth du Gué Trapier

New York, 1936

Pablo De Segovia the Spanish Sharper

Fransico De Quevedo

London 1892

Quote

Work is the greatest fun in the whole world it is the only fun I want to  have.

~Daniel Vierge