J.C. Leyendecker - Part 1

Do you like classic American advertising illustration art? Me too! The period from the late 1800s to the middle part of the 1900s is known as the “golden age of illustration”. It included Norman Rockwell who is a household name, but there were many other illustrators whose work had a huge impact on the American consciousness - illustrators such as Howard Chandler Christy, James Montgomery Flagg, and Charles Dana Gibson.

During that "golden age", some illustrators were as well known to the general public as movie stars are today. Why? Because advertising and the media hadn’t yet developed into the saturating monsters that they’ve become in this lovely 21st century world we live in. As a result, some of the characters these artists created for the print media became American icons, being seen on magazine covers, ads, posters, and newspapers.

Ever hear of the "Gibson girl" or the “Arrow Collar Man”? Well all right then. When these icons were created, it wasn’t art directors who dreamed them up, it was illustrators. The public was sometimes as familiar with the illustrators as much as they were with the iconic characters they created.

I’m a huge fan of Norman Rockwell’s work, and I love the illustrations of many artists of that classic era. However, my favorite illustrations to study and simply marvel at, are the ones done by Joseph Christian Leyendecker.

 J.C. Leyendecker lived from 1874 to 1951 and had a style and technique all his own. During his career he was an illustration god to a young Norman Rockwell, and in fact, Rockwell stopped doing "Saturday Evening Post" covers after he did his 321st, stopping just shy of Leyendecker's total of 322, in homage to his hero.

Here are but a few Post covers that the casual art observer might think were painted by Norman Rockwell, but you and I know differently now don't we!

In the next few posts we’ll be taking a closer look at some of J.C. Leyendecker's great illustration work!

joe@joewinklerart.com

JoeWinklerArt.com

Today’s Featured Sketch

Today we have a sketch out of my Sketchbook Project sketchbook. A basic quick rendering of a figure from my photo archives of tennis players I enjoy shooting. It’s always fun to try and catch the player in mid air, especially on a sunny day, in order to see the funky shadows that are created on the court.

As mentioned in the previous post my sketchbook, along with the Sketchbook Tour 2011, finds itself at the SPACE gallery until early April!

joe@joewinklerart.com

JoeWinklerArt.com

Sold! - Group Show Opens Today

The Upper St. Clair League for the Arts group show at the Lois Guinn Gallery in McMurray PA opens today. The wife and myself will be heading there soon for the reception.

The bad news is that only two of my three submitted pieces will be hanging in the show.

The good news is that the owner of the gallery purchased the one that will not be hanging! The landscape "Light in August" is now in her private collection. That's two paintings sold in the past three months. Here is "Light in August".

It is a 5x7 oil on canvas.

As mentioned in my other posts, I think I'll stick with smaller sizes for the next few painting I do. It just makes sense with everything else going on.

One other note for today, my sketchbook for the Sketchbook Project travels to Portland Maine to be displayed in the SPACE Gallery from March 30th to April 2nd.

joe@joewinklerart.com

JoeWinklerArt.com

Today's Featured Sketch

This oil sketch is from my Sketchbook Project sketchbook. I could see myself doing this up really right as a finished oil painting someday.

It was done on a piece of canvas that actually comes in the form of a sketch pad. You just tear off the sheets and away you go. Those kind of pads are nice because when I really screw up and have to chuck the thing, I don't feel as if I'm being too wasteful. However I'm thinking of going exclusively to artist panels in order to do away with the texture of the canvas all together. Sometimes I work too thinly in my oils to get the brushwork to show, which is what I'm always after in a finished painting.

joe@joewinklerart.com

JoeWinklerArt.com

Today’s Random Cool Things

Just dropped off my three paintings this morning for the Upper St. Clair Art League exhibit at the Lois Guinn framing and gallery. Come to the reception this Saturday! (Yes you’ll get free food and drinks).

As if that’s not cool enough, I just came across a story about a really cool sounding art exhibit. It’s cool because it has tennis as the theme. I love tennis. Read the story here.

Do you love the paintings of Diego Velazquez? Me too! Well click here for a really cool YouTube video that reviews the exhibit of his work at the National Gallery of London a couple years ago.  I enjoy watching this from time-to-time. And I KNOW you will too! So tangible!

And finally, turning to graphic design for a moment, thought I’d share a website that is a must for any self-respecting graphic artist. Or anyone looking to get a clean logo art as opposed to a messy jpg. Brands of the World dot com enables you to download vector, yes VECTOR art, of millions of company logos. (If you don’t know the difference between vector art and a rasterized piece of art, you probably won’t find this site so cool.)

joe@joewinklerart.com

JoeWinklerArt.com

Today’s Featured “Sketches”

I stated a few posts ago that the goal this year was to work smaller and looser in my oil paintings. Well here are two beginnings of small works that sit atop a stack of new beginnings in my studio right now.

The goal on these is to separate values mostly. If you’re thinking they look a bit too “tight” for someone trying to loosen up his style, you might be right. But there is a reason for starting in this way. I continue to be inspired from a working method I learned in a day-long painting class I attended two years ago at the World West Gallery in Washington, PA.

The instructor that day was Dan Marsula, a fantastic local oil painter, who has a day job for steady income as a graphic artist (as do I). Among the many photos I shot durning that class were first stages, done in pencil, of some of Dan’s paintings. It was really inspiring seeing some beginning pencil sketches (done like the images above) sitting right next to the finished versions of oil paintings.

To me that helped reinforce something I knew, but in my haste to get to the “fun” part of painting, didn’t always put into good practice - the fact that a solid beginning and planning of values is not only necessary for the painting stage, but can be fun to execute in itself. The loosness I continue to seek is a loosness of brushwork, but a foundation that is planned out and accurate is essential for a good painting in a representational piece of art.

joe@joewinklerart.com

JoeWinklerArt.com

New Painting - Steps 2 to Finish

Well... I was going to carry on my step-by-step of the new oil painting “Salt and Pepper” this week with one step per post. But then I realized how inconsistent I am at shooting progress shots as I work on paintings! What happens is, I have a painting session, then afterwards, I wallow in the enjoyment and satisfaction that the act of creation gives me. Then I get engrossed in planning what the next step will be and forget all about shooting what I’ve done.

As a result, the three images shown below, which were shot early in the process, are a fairly good representation of how the painting progressed during the first session.

 

 Then the wallowing and engrossing (as described above) began, and the progress shots quickly got forgotten. So as you can see in the final image below, the main thing that I changed was the rendering of fabric and values in the background.

I never tire of dramatic lighting effects - one of my favorite painters is Caravaggio after all - so I decided to really darken down the background, and just hint at the fact that there might be a piece of fabric back there.

The type on the can was the biggest challenge. I met that in two sessions - one for the painting of the type, the other for the surrounding areas of color after the type dried.

joe@joewinklerart.com

JoeWinklerArt.com

P.S. The next stop for my Sketchbook Project sketchbook is the SPACE Gallery at 538 Congress Street in Portland, Maine.

New Painting - Step One

As promised (sort of) here is the first post in a series of posts that will show a step-by-step of the creation of my latest painting, “Salt and Pepper”.

The idea for this painting took shape last year while spending a day photographing various still life set ups using perishable items found around the house. Soon I realized that using the little girl’s gaze might be fun and interesting. After considering several objects to pair her with, I went with the one object that would put a bit of a twist on a very common household item.

I wanted a dark background, so I placed a piece of dark blue cloth behind there. As you’ll see in later steps, the way it was positioned and lit became almost irrelevant.

The first step is not always set in stone for me, but on this piece I began with a fairly detailed outline in pencil and no other shading. Sometimes it's good to do a full blown pencil value breakdown, but in my rush to get to the "fun" parts of the process I didn't do that this time. Plus the fact that I had photographed this subject various ways and under various light angles, then proceeded to manipulate it in Photoshop - so I knew what luminous effect I wanted from the subject and I knew how to create that special glow in oil paint without further prep work.

Working from back to front, I started by brushing in the background, but also did the immediate foreground of the table to establish the surface. At this stage I was still figuring on depicting the background as a readable piece of cloth draped behind everything, so I tried creating a middle value and light value.

Many times in working on a painting, the painting itself dictates to me how long a painting session lasts. Since there was some detailed type and label work to come, my time on this step saw me finishing up the first stage of background and that was it.

joe@joewinklerart.com

JoeWinklerArt.com

New Group Exhibit in the South Hills of Pittsburgh

One of the more local artist groups I enjoy membership in, here in the South Hills of Pittsburgh, is a group called the Upper St. Clair league for the Arts. Every spring for about the last four years or so, that group has been given the opportunity by the Lois Guinn Gallery to have a nice group exhibit. In past years I’ve sold work in this exhibit so I try not to miss the show.

The gallery (which is technically in McMurray) sits about three miles or so past South Hills Village mall. Click here for directions. The owner, Ms. Carrie Hutsko, is very cooperative and helpful in putting on this exhibit and the members appreciate it too.

This year the show will run from Saturday, March 26th to Sunday April 10th. The opening reception will be held at the gallery on Saturday, March 26th, from noon to 4:00 PM. Many if not all of the artists will share refreshments and talk with the visitors to the show. Below are the three pieces I’m submitting this year, although the two small ones may not make it in because of space limitations.

As a ramp up for the show I always like to (if time permits) design, and send out a few post cards. This years post card had my new oil painting “Salt and Pepper” on the front, and the back looked like this:

 

I mentioned last post that I would share a brief step-by-step of this painting. Didn’t happen did it? Well I’ll try and do it next post.

By the way, my sketchbook for the Sketchbook Project Tour, travels to Austin, Texas on Saturday. It will be on display at the Austin Museum of Art. Who knows, maybe Andy Roddick will see it!

joe@joewinklerart.com

JoeWinklerArt.com

Today’s Featured Sketch - Tennis Anyone?

Today’s sketch is from my Sketchbook Project sketchbook.  It ia a colored pencil drawing on a piece of blue/gray canson paper.

With Spring right around the corner here in the northeast, and the ATP Tour ready to begin its hardcourt season out west at Indian Wells, thought I'd share a tennis player portrait with you.

I did this up from a reference photo I shot a few years back at a USTA mens futures event that a local tennis club hosts every summer. My zoom lens came in handy for this shot! Actually I think I was on the other side of a chain-link fence at the time. The intense concentration as he's ready to accept serve is what the subject really is here. I like cropping in nice and tight for compositions.

In any case, warm skin tones always pop nicely off of a cool background. Orange and blue are complements after all. I am learning to enjoy colored pencil work more and more but cannot ever see them replacing my love for the oil paints. This took me maybe an hour and a half.

Tune in next time for a first step of the next new painting I'll be releasing for 2011!

joe@joewinklerart.com

JoeWinklerArt.com

Book Suggestion of the Week

Usually I wait until I read a book all the way to the finish before blogging about it, but I'm in the middle of one now that I'm just loving. It's called "The Story of Art"

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Many books have that title, but this one is by Professor Sir Ernst Gombrich and it’s been flying off the bookshelves since it came out in 1950. it’s been called “a treasured standard” and “a classic narrative study of art history” both of which are true.

I actually got this book as a gift during Christmas 2009. This latest version of the book is the sixteenth edition and it’s a beautiful one published by Phaidon which is the publisher of many beautiful editions of art, photography, and design books.

The thing I like about this book is that even though Gombrich was an old-school European university professor, his tone is conversational and not “high browed” in any way. The book is in chronological order and easy and fun to read. It’s not so easy to hold on the subway however because it weighs a ton!

Before I’m finished, I’ll probably have many pages of the book dog-eared, highlighted, and tabbed for future reference - it’s that useful in my view. Too many books simplify the breaks and turning points between various movements in the history of art, but rarely is history that clean cut and tidy. This book lets you begin to have a better understanding of those various eras and movements, and how each one evolved in different locations and why.

The other cool thing about this book is that, unlike so many other art history books I look at, this one keeps the images together with the text that references them. I know that sounds like a simple thing, but you’d be surprised how many art books don’t do that. It isn’t real easy or fun to have to keep flipping back and forth from one part of a book to another, especially when it’s as thick as this one. Heck, some books don’t even include visuals of the art they talk about at all.

Guess there’s a reason why the sticker on the cover touts “Over 6,000,000 Sold”. There’s about as many reasons you should buy this book today!

joe@joewinklerart.com

JoeWinklerArt.com

P.S. My Sketchbook for the Sketchbook Project is still on display in the Big Apple. Click here for tour dates!