Two Chinese Art Competitions

Two different international art competitions hosted by organizers from China are looking for submissions.


In “Share One Planet,” they’re looking for digital paintings of wild animals. I’ll be one of the judges. Arnie and Cathy Fenner of Spectrum will also be judging.

For oil painters, there’s another art competition called “American China Oil Painting League,” ACOPAL. Winning paintings will be exhibited in New York and Beijing. The deadline for that one is April 18.

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Share One Planet
ACOPAL

Moving Out

The old house stood beside the railroad tracks. A satellite dish turned its ear to the dead sky. Some of the windows were covered over with clapboards, like blind eyes. A freight train rumbled by, screeching and grinding.

A man came out of the house. He lifted a TV into the back of the pickup. Then he loaded in a chair and a table. He stretched a black plastic tarpaulin over the load and tied it down, jerking the rope and muttering. The black tarp shimmered in the March sunlight.

A woman leaned her head out of the door. “Get lost,” she yelled. “I don’t care if I never see you again.” The door slammed.  A turkey vulture circled overhead.

I sat on the sidewalk across the street, painting quietly. Cigarette butts were scattered beside my feet.

The man got into the truck and started the engine. The train passed and the crossing gates lifted. The truck roared across the tracks.

A half hour later the woman came out, wiping her eyes with her sweatshirt sleeves. She walked by, pushing a baby carriage, slowing down a little to see what I was doing.

(Note--I did this painting on location last week, and parts of it happened--the action of the truck and the train and the vulture, but the human story was imaginary. Sometimes I can't stop my mind from overlaying a story onto a scene, and I'm attracted to sketching in bleak neighborhoods because of the strange glimpses of human existence I encounter there.) 

Progress of Spring

Spring arrives today, along with the “supermoon,” the full moon in its closest approach to Earth on its elliptical orbit.



This is “Progress of Spring” (1905) by Charles Daniel Ward.

Menzel’s Drawings

Nineteenth century German artist Adolf von Menzel (1815-1905) was a tirelessly curious artist who drew everything, from buildings to wagons to his own big toe. Here’s one of his late drawings, a study of an old woman.


“I never do drawings with a view to selling them,” he said. “As a rule I do them only as nature studies for a particular picture or as a casual thing for later use.”


His drawings often capture life on the run. “Art is a bolting horse,” he said. His pencil captured the tumultuous modern scene around him. He made many studies on location for a painting of the interior of an  iron rolling mill (link to painting). “For weeks on end from morning to evening I stood between the huge whizzing, oscillating wheels and belts with red-hot blocks, and sketched.”

“Art has kept pace with all the advancements and deviations of the development of the mind and will always keep pace with them, as artists, like mankind, are an integral part of this development.”

Quotes from Menzel by Bruckmann
Previously on GJ: Menzel: Beyond Appearances
Portrait of old lady from "The Later Work of Adolf von Menzel," by Jarno Jessen, Magazine of Art, 1902, page 49 
 Wikipedia on Menzel
Drawing of rolling mill worker from the Getty collection (which I believe incorrectly states that the drawing was not drawn on location. All the studies were done on site, according to Menzel's own letters.)

Blending Into the Background

Thin channels of snow linger in the tractor ruts on a clear March day.


After I painted the scene on location, I set up the painting in front of the scene itself, angling the painting to try to match the light levels.


Trying to match a painting up with a camera view was the challenge faced by pioneering movie matte painters. One early technique, called a “glass shot” involved painting part of a scene onto a pane of glass positioned vertically in front of a camera. That way you could place a castle or some other structure in the scene adjacent to the filmed action.

If you want to play with this idea, it helps to have a panel that’s a little wider than the easel (in this case an 11x14 panel on an Open Box M pochade easel).

Also, the illumination on the painting has to be just right. My painting is shown in direct sunlight, but I often use a white umbrella to diffuse and control the light on the painting, especially when painting contre jour (facing the light source). In any kind of observational painting it really helps in color mixing if you can match illumination levels as much as possible.


And speaking of blending in, check out how this Chinese artist does it.
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The second photo is of Paramount matte painting veteran Jan Domela setting up for a glass shot. You can read more about Domela at the blog Matte Shot

Previously on GJ:
White Umbrellas
Contre Jour Lighting

How to get a feeling of misty light

This painting from Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara uses a simple device. The subject is placed in a high-key silhouette near the sun. The silhouette colors shift to warm hues as they approach the sun.


The color corona around the sun spills over and influences both the colors of the sky and the silhouette colors. The color mixtures are actually fairly low-chroma (not very saturated), but you can get a feeling of great brilliancy this way. This is very easy to do in digital, but it takes a bit of deliberate planning in paint.

A silhouette treatment is good to use in a sequential work like an illustrated book, comic book, or animated film, especially if you want to give the viewer a break from looking at a lot of detail.

Good rule of thumb: the most brilliant impressions of light are achieved in paintings when looking toward, not away from the light source.
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Previously: Color Corona
Color and Light, page 166-167.
Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara

Mucha’s "Le Pater"

Half-naked figures prostrate themselves in misty gorges, struggling and writhing before serene spirits of light.


Among Alphonse Mucha’s greatest achievements in his mature years were his seven pictures from the Lord’s Prayer, known as the “Pater Noster” or “Le Pater.”

He created a separate image for each line of the prayer. Above are the images for “Thy kingdom come,” and “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Mucha visualized the familiar prayer as a universal expression of humankind’s relationship with the divine, mixing traditional Catholic devotion with an Asiatic-tinged occult mysticism.
 
Above: “Lead us not into temptation” and the cover.

The Century magazine in 1904 described Mucha’s unique conception of God as “no longer the benign or wrathful Father, but a mysterious Being whose shadow fills the earth. Nature is personified as a luminous, adolescent giant, and Love descends from heaven in the guise of a woman.”

You can see all seven images, as well as the decorative elements and calligraphy Mucha produced for the cover and the intervening pages at this website.
Quote from: “Alfons Mucha and the New Mysticism,” by Christian Brinton, Century Magazine, 1904.
Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) on Wikipedia
Lines and Colors update on Mucha with a LOT of helpful links 
Good reproductions of all seven pictures in the Belvedere Catalog