Dürer's Triumphal Procession

A modern presidential motorcade is a public demonstration of glory and power. Aside from the flags, the look is black, austere, and vaguely ominous, like a fast-paced funeral procession.



In the Renaissance they had a different notion of how to do a motorcade. Their style was extravagant, ornate, and full of symbolism, more like a float in the Rose Parade.

In 1518, Albrecht Durer worked with other wood engravers to portray a procession of the imperial family. Victory descends to the emperor with a laurel wreath, accompanied by cardinal virtues: Justice, Temperance, Fortitude, and Prudence. Feathers on angels’ wings list the victorious battles.

Ernest Meissonier’s Costumes

----
From Masters in Art: Meissonier, by Gustave Larroumet, 1893.

Escher’s three worlds

M.C. Escher’s lithograph "Three Worlds" is a good illustration of the behavior of light on a smooth water surface.


At the far end of the pond, the water approaches the reflectivity of a perfect mirror because we’re looking straight across it at a very shallow angle. At shallow angles, most of the light bounces off the water (reflection) rather than angling down into it (refraction.)

At steep angles of view, the opposite happens: we see less reflection and more refraction. Therefore the water is dark and we see the fish more than the sky or the trees.

Wikipedia about "Three Worlds"
Color and Light, page 200.
Previously on GurneyJourney: Transparency of Water

Angry Animals

In Dinotopia, dinosaurs and humans humans get along most of the time. But not always.

If you drive a strutter through the Rainy Basin, don’t be surprised if you get attacked by a T. rex. (Image from Dinotopia: The World Beneath)

The same is true with animals in our world, as the following photos attest.

 

I don’t know the sources for these photos, so sorry, I can’t credit them. Thanks, Jim!
Video of World Beneath artwork with ZBS audio adventure

American Artist’s Plein Air Painting Issue

Spring is here. Get out your paints!

American Artist’s new special issue featuring on plein-air painting has just arrived on the newsstands.

The emphasis is on landscape painting from observation. There are articles about Scott Christensen, Clyde Aspevig, Chris Blossom, Clark Hulings, and others.

They asked me to adapt material from the Color and Light book for an article about sources of light, so I covered direct sunlight, overcast light, window light, candlelight, incandescent, fluorescent, and streetlight.
---------

 American Artist’s Plein Air Painting Issue

Three Years of Daily Doodles

Larry Roibal has been doodling portraits of famous people on his newspaper for three years now, and posting the results on his blog. 



To celebrate, he made a video mashup. The result is a fun experience of face recognition, and an impressive display of drawing.
Link to YouTube video
Larry Roibal's Blog

Exhibit: Illusions of Reality

An old man struggles to carry a heavy load of wood as his daughter (or granddaughter?) stops to pick flowers. It’s a simple and universal human story, painted with extraordinary sympathy and attention to natural detail.


This painting by Jules Bastien-Lepage is part of an exhibition at the Ateneum museum in Finland. The show includes paintings, photography, and cinema of the Naturalist movement.

The curator of the exhibition is Gabriel Weisberg, an expert on naturalism, and on the early uses of photographic references by 19th century painters.

“Illusions of Reality - Naturalist Painting, Photography and Cinema, 1875-1918” at the Ateneum Museum in Helsinki, through 15 May, 2011. According to blog reader Christoph, there’s a nice catalog, too.
-----
Thanks, Christoph Heuer
Ateneum museum
Bastien-Lepage on Wikipedia
More on current exhibitions of realist paintings at the excellent blog Underpaintings.