Julie T. Chapman - ArtBlog

Julie, it is beautiful. I love atmospheric paintings. I would love to see that migration.

I bellieve that there is really no such thing as a “totally new idea”. With so many people painting animals and nature now and in the past, nearly everything has been at least thought of before. How we approach our painting is what brings the “us” into the piece. The point of view, the technique and mostly the passion is what seperates one painter from another.

I have taken some real risks in painting unusual animals. I don’t do this all the time, but now and then it is a really nice way to learn something more about an animal that is “new” to me. I recently painted a piece of a male and female prairie chicken out on the prairie. I have experienced their amazing mating rutuals for myself and came away inspired. With the painting a little more than half done, I put it away. Who is the world is going to want a painting of PRAIRIE CHICKENS???

I finished the painting way later…just becuse I WANTED to. This painting by the way, sold on opening night at NatureWorks Wildlife Art show. I could have sold it three times that night. So much for only painting “what we know will sell”…

I think an artist should paint what ever it is that moves them based on their own experiences in the field. An artist’s work should tell a story about his or her life and loves. This goes back to the “passion” thing. Passion shows in a painting. How can an artist be passionate about someone else’s experiences?

RE “no totally new idea”

Andre’ Gide may have said it best (though others had undoubtedly said it before)

“Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.” — Andre’ Gide

The same can be (and probably has been) said of painting:

“Everything has been painted before, but since nobody really observes we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.”

I personally believe that the main thing is not whether or not a subject has been painted before, but that it’s never been done by a particular artist, so it allows the viewer to see it with fresh eyes.

Think Bob Kuhn (I know that Julie and I do). There’s a zillion lion paintings out there, but nobody can duplicate Bob’s point of view and emotional response, or yours or mine, or at least they shouldn’t be doing that. The attempt to do so is where the derivative work comes from that is so tedious.

So, in that sense, it doesn’t matter if snow geese have been painted a million times in the past. JULIE has never painted them before and the filtering, selection, editing and emotional response she brings to them makes them new all over again.

“Everything old is new again”

In the “old days”, painters learned their trade by copying what the masters had done, but of course, the purpose was to learn rather than sell.

but I’d note the distinction between copying a painting and “copying” an idea.

As far as “copying ideas” (eg, a lion chasing a gazelle), I’d have to say that I can’t see anything wrong (or even negative) with that. When it comes to painting nature, the “idea” does not really “belong” to any particular artist. After all, the lion had it first!

Here’s a story where the “plagiarize” concept got out of hand…

As some may know (and some may not), I spent 22 years as an illustrator at Hallmark Cards before becoming a wildlife painter. We learned early on at Hallmark never to push an illustrative look too far towards our “inspiration”. Hallmark was a big target then…($$$) and constantly had litigation against them despite every attempt by the company and it’s artists to NEVER plagiarize. They had a zero tolerance rule on this, for obvious reasons

Later, we ran into an “interesting” predicament. Hallmark began to license the artwork of a well known Dutch nature painter. This painter sold like hot cakes for Hallmark and was a bit of a “Golden Goose”. An image that this painter often used in her work was a bumble bee. Many of her pieces featrued bees kind of as a garnish in the work. This artist saw a bumble bee as kind of her “trade mark”.

As the in house Hallmark illustrators began to paint bees too, this Dutch artist became so upset about it that Hallmark held a big meeting with all of the in-house painters. We were no longer allowed to use bees of any species in our illustrations.

This is a bit of an extreme illustration of how “touchy” the plagiarize concept can be with some people. I didn’t know that any artist “owned” an entire species….I guess I thought that maybe only God did that…

Animals have certain habits. If you go to Africa, you will see certain animals doing certain things. It is unrealistic to think that each and every artist is going to paint something completely different each time. So repeating ideas is natural…..as long as you DON’T paint bumble bees!

Joni:

How about a bumble bee chasing a lion chasing a gazelle?

I’ve been toying with that idea for a while now, but you’re saying maybe I should reconsider?

Larry:

You could paint a lion who has recently been STUNG by a bumble bee and is now mad at the gazelle… Maybe you could show just the stinger (I don’t think the Dutch artist ever painted just a stinger).

I showed my portfolio to a Hallmark recruiter who came to the Academy of Art shortly before graduation (1989). I was definitely more interested in paper product type work than editorial and, it appeared from the response, that if I had been willing to move to Kansas City…..but what was important to me at that point was, was I good enough to get a job at a place like Hallmark. We heard these incredible stories about how coddled the illustrators were to keep them productive. I suspect that’s all gone now.

But card work is a perfect example of how an artist has to find a way to be creative in treading the well-worn paths of things like Father’s Day cards, Santa Claus, but not bees, apparently :-).

Joni, I have always kind of envied that fact that you did work there. I just blogged about illustrators becoming “fine artists”, and how that training shines through, which is certainly true in your case.

I would have been happy if I had gotten traction as an Illustrator. I was proud to be a part of an art tradition that included people like NC Wyeth, Howard Pyle, Edwin Austin Abbey, JC Leyendecker, Al Parker, etc…..but it just was not to be. Wildlife/nature painting is the path that opened for me, thanks in part to John Seerey-Lester, and I’m not looking back, except to appreciate what there is to learn from great artists like all those great illustrators of the past.

So many of my teachers are painters now. The schools keep cranking out illustration graduates, but if you don’t want to work for EA or Pixar, the career options are very limited. At least with painting, there’s always the feeling that the sky is the limit if you are willing to work hard and keep learning. And be ready for a little luck.

Indeed, computer animation tends to be very “cold” and unhuman. Especially animals and people (and low budget dinosuar documentaries). In fact, I think computer animated people are down right creepy! BUT there is a big difference between what we are seeing in current animated movies, and in un-animated computer generated illustration. I was a painter during my entire career at Hallmark so I never developed the computer skills that many of my friends there now have. In many cases these days, even an educated eye would not be able to tell the difference between a computer generated illustration and a painted one when done by many of my computer savy friends. They are doing work that looks just like hand painted watercolor, loose oils, etc. It really is amazing.

To me, computer generated animation is much like “canned” music. My father was a professional musician (a trombone player). The very thing that makes music so magical is the human element of it, you know, the part that comes from the heart. My dad could bring me to tears with his music. Canned music is music that is generated digitally. It is perfect, cold and impersonal. The imperfections in animal hair, in the way trees grow, in the way an artist interprets all of these things is where the essence of being human is. So Larry, I quite agree with you, especially concerning digital animation.

In many cases these days, even an educated eye would not be able to tell the difference between a computer generated illustration and a painted one when done by many of my computer savy friends. They are doing work that looks just like hand painted watercolor, loose oils, etc. It really is amazing.’

I’m curious. Are they simply taking digital photographs (eg, of animals) and processing the images?

I have photo processing software that (supposedly) produces “paintings’ (oils, watercolors, pastel, etc) from digital photos, but quite frankly, the results don’t look at all like real paintings. Not even close. It’s very easy (even for a novice painter like me) to tell the difference.

So Hall mark must either be using some very sophisticated image processing software to “convert” photos to “paintings” or they are doing something different than merely processing digital photos.

of course, now you have piqued my interest and i will have to get some hall mark cards and magnify the images to see what this is all about!

You want to thank you over again for any beautiful ideas you gave Jeremy in planning her post-graduate research and even, most of all, per providing each of the ideas in a single text.

This report provides the light in which we are able to observe the reality. This is fairly great a single and offers in-depth information.