Innholdsfortegnelse for January - February 2017 i Artists Magazine

I worked as an illustrator for 13 years after graduating from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1956, but it was my move to New York in 1969 that changed everything. I began working in a bravura style under Samuel Edmund Oppenheim’s influence at the Art Students League—large, broad brush-strokes, with the subjects “swimming in the atmosphere” achieved by colors and tones. My illustration clients objected; Brown & Bigelow, for whom I painted an annual Cub Scout calendar, was annoyed by my new “soft touch” style, and gave the series to an artist who worked in the style of Norman Rockwell. But when I began to paint portraits professionally in 1970, my clients were, for the most part, pleased. I’m currently revising my first book, Painting the Head…

JOHN SINGER SARGENT’S Mrs Carl Meyer and her Children was a painting central to the artist’s triumph as a society portraitist. Adèle Meyer is seen seated with, or rather near, her children, Elsie and Frank. Adèle’s husband was Carl Meyer, a banker, emissary of the Rothschilds and Chairman of De Beers. Both were enthusiastic supporters of the musical arts, and Mrs. Meyer was a suffragette and social activist. For the painting, neither the subjects nor the artist was concerned with philanthropic matters; highlighting Mrs. Meyer’s elegant finery, Louis XV sofa and backdrop of fine wall paneling, the painting is the very image of Edwardian opulence. Standing above his subjects, Sargent devised a dramatically foreshortened design, at the base of which is Mrs. Meyer’s immense pyramid of a skirt. At…

First Place William Vrscak PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA • BILLVRSCAK.COM ARTIST’S INSIGHT: My primary medium at present is watercolor, but I don’t consider myself a watercolorist because I’m not a purist, as I occasionally use gouache. I’ve never lost my love of drawing, so I’m still filling sketchbooks. My earliest paintings were illustrative, influenced by my work in the graphic arts profession. For a short time, I experimented with abstraction. Now I’ve come around to making more personal statements about things that have a special meaning to me; that’s the reason I’m so often drawn to the back alleys in the inner city neighborhood where I grew up. Second Place Dillon Ding-Chao Huang ALBERTA, CANADA • DILLONHUANG.CA In my youth I was an avid Chinese flute player and always dreamed of becoming…

RED UMBER MICHAEL HARDING ALIZARIN CRIMSON MICHAEL HARDING MAGENTA MICHAEL HARDING GENUINE VERMILION RUBLEV RAW UMBER MICHAEL HARDING TRANSPARENT OXIDE YELLOW MICHAEL HARDING YELLOW OCHRE DEEP MICHAEL HARDING AUREOLIN MICHAEL HARDING LEAD-TIN YELLOW RUBLEV LEAD WHITE NO. 2 RUBLEV VIRIDIAN MICHAEL HARDING ULTRAMARINE BLUE MICHAEL HARDING COBALT VIOLET DARK MICHAEL HARDING VAN DYKE BROWN GAMBLIN IVORY BLACK WILLIAMSBURG MATERIALS Brushes: Rosemary & Co. small to medium soft synthetic and bristle—mostly rounds. Canvas: oil-primed Belgian linen by Artfix (84C)…

THE FIRST TIME I tried Sennelier paint was last April, when a gift certificate from Savoir-Faire, the exclusive importer of Sennelier, was part of my prize at the Portrait Society of America competition. I, of course, had heard of Sennelier but had always been fairly lazy about experimenting with paints. For the most part I’d stayed with whatever brands I’d used first that had seemed “good enough.” Until I’d won that prize of Sennelier paints, I hadn’t found one brand that produced all my colors to a consistent standard. Sennelier definitely does, so when I was asked to do a Road Test I was happy to be paired with a product I could enthusiastically endorse. A VENERABLE HISTORY The chemist Gustave Sennelier founded the company in 1887 and amassed an…

Q Please give me a few tips on how to create a watercolor kit that I can use while traveling or just going about my everyday business. I want something small that I can use on the spur of the moment. A There are a lot of small-to-tiny ready-made travel kits available (see Kits on Hand, page 14), but making your own, upcycling this or that and customizing it to fit your personal needs, is often more satisfying. I can’t look at a tin or plastic box without considering how it would work for a watercolor kit! Small containers, such as those manufactured for candies, mints or drawing media, can be made into lovely portable kits. I normally begin outfitting my kits with a few empty plastic paint pans that…

First Place Drew Price SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA DREWPRICEART.COM ARTIST’S INSIGHT: I came up with the imagery in Here and There through a process of action and response. I started by building a grid using Andrew Loomis’s grid system until a shape emerged in the lines. Whatever I saw first or the first thing to come to mind is what started the painting, and all subsequent imagery followed in the same way, influenced by and related to the imagery that came before it. It felt more like a conversation than a dictation of ideas. Second Place Pat Dews HOBE SOUND, FLORIDA • PATDEWS.COM In grammar school, I loved the projects where you had to paste wood onto a page to represent states that had lumber industries and cotton where there’s textile…

In 2012 the artist’s portrait submission of his wife, Laura, was celebrated as “deserving special attention” during the historic America China Oil Painting Artists League (ACOPAL) exhibition at the Beijing World Art Museum. Reproductions of Laura became the best selling souvenir throughout the Chinese tour, and the artist was commissioned to paint many other Chinese personalities, including Mrs. Wang Limei, director of the Beijing World Art Museum, and Mr. Brian Lu, vice president and general manager of Apple Inc. in greater China. This past June, another painting of the artist’s wife, Laura in Black won the 2016 BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery London. LaRock is represented by Collins Galleries, Cape Cod; Portraits, Inc., New York; Stephen Ling - Beijing. He has participated in exhibitions throughout the U.S.…

“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.”–Pablo Picasso THE ARTIST’S MAGAZINE (TAM): Tell us about your education. MIKELA HENRY-LOWE (MHL): I learned to paint from my classes at high school. I was taught color theory, which colors work well with other colors and why, and I always keep this in mind when working on my own projects. Most artists have to learn about the different “isms” of the art world, and being exposed to Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism and Cubism has molded the way I approach color in my acrylic paintings. TAM: Can you describe your process in some detail? MHL: Before I even start to stretch a canvas, I’ve already made decisions on what color goes where and how I want the subject…

SEEING CORRECT PROPORTIONS There are natural arcs to the hand—a convex arc across the metacarpals, a concave arc across the palm, and an arcing across the knuckles and fingertips. The middle finger is the apex of the first and last of these arcs. It’s the longest finger. The fingers on either side of the middle finger are slightly shorter than the middle and similar in length. The difference between the lengths of the pointer and ring fingers varies among individuals. While some people have a slightly longer ring finger, others have a longer index finger. What is predictable, however, is that the tip of the pinky will almost always be level with the bottom of the distal phalange (the topmost section) of the ring finger. The tip of the thumb…

First Place Don Williams SONOMA, CALIFORNIA ARTIST’S INSIGHT: I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska, and received my degree in painting from the University of Nebraska. I taught art at the University of Southwestern Louisiana and Limestone College in South Carolina, and then moved to San Francisco in 1969 and have lived in the Bay Area ever since. Two Point Perspective is the most recent in a series of paintings I’ve done of classrooms and hallways in an old grade school in Sonoma, Calif. Working from photographs, I began with a light pencil drawing and used a grid to enlarge the image proportionally. I then started rubbing pastel pigment into the paper while preserving the contours and edges defined by the pencil lines. I always adjust colors and values while I…

A TROMPE L’OEIL PAINTING BY RICHARD WHITTEN LURES THE VIEWER WITH THE ILLUSION OF SPACE AND DEPTH. One may well imagine stepping through an archway to explore mysterious passageways beyond. Then there are the attention-grabbing nonrectangular frames. Are these works paintings or sculptures? Those frames, however, are not frames, but a succession of painted borders on Whitten’s flat, wood-panel surfaces—buffer zones between our world and inner realms. The composition compels the viewer to sort through layers of reality or, as Whitten views them, levels of consciousness. “The division between reality and imagination, that is, between consciousness and unconsciousness, or waking and dreaming, is similar to the Romantic conception of the artist: The artist goes someplace deep within himself and brings back a gemlike creation,” says Whitten. “That creation works as…

BEATRIX POTTER (1866–1943) derived Peter Rabbit, Tom Kitten, et al, from observing her pets and the landscape of the Lake District. DAVID LOW (1891–1963) chronicled the rise of fascism in the West as a politcal cartoonist. ROBERT LAWSON (1892–1957) was the scribe of Ben and Me: An Astonishing Life of Benjamin Franklin Told by His Good Mouse Amos. BILL MAUDLIN (1921–2003) was famous for the characters Willie and Joe, World War II soldiers. MILTON GLASER (1929– ) designed the iconic "I Heart New York" logo and the psychedelic Bob Dylan poster.…

1. STARTING WITH THE EYE: As usual, I start with the eye. Prussian blue is a recent addition to my palette; I use it mainly when painting the white part of the eye, which requires the tiniest amount of the color. Sennelier’s version of Prussian blue is of such high quality that it will probably take me several hundred years to finish the tube. 2. INITIAL AND SUBSEQUENT PASSES: The first stage goes very quickly. Once I know that everything is in the right place, I add several more layers—usually at least three. I paint in thin layers, so the effect is cumulative. 3. DEGREES OF BROWN: When I opened the initial tube of Sennelier Van Dyke brown I discovered it was much warmer and lighter than my usual color.…

I STARTED STUDYING ART in junior high, and when I was able to drive, I studied in private studios around Pennsylvania. I went to artist and teacher Nelson Shanks, who sent me to study under Henry Hensche in 1977. From there I took night classes at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts where I met Arthur DeCosta in 1978. He encouraged me to attend full time, and I’ve been covering my square miles of canvas ever since. The subjects in The Thompsons—Emily and George—host a weekly life drawing class that I attend. They’re icons in the art community of Bucks County. I start all of my paintings as large sketches, blocking in shapes and colors as I go. Then I put one away and work on another that’s at…