Julie T. Chapman - ArtBlog

It’s that time of year: time for my annual summer workshop. For the next four days I’ll be putting my workshop participants through the wringer - we’ll be starting each day at 6 AM to go photograph gorgeous animals in beautiful northwestern Montana settings, then the rest of the day we’ll be drawing, critiquing, sketching from life, and painting. If everyone is still alive by 5 PM I probably won’t have done my job. Then we all go off for beer and food and we talk art until late at night.

I’ll post a couple teaser photos from the workshop next week. In the meantime, you can either be envious or relieved that you’re not with us in Kalispell.

One of the best ways - if not THE best way - to learn to draw is by doing it from life. I can hear my hapless workshop participants groaning right now, since I have so much fun getting out the cattle-prod and making everyone do gesture sketches from a constantly-moving cougar or raccoon kit or whatever.

If you ask my opinion (not that anyone did), a lack of drawing ability prohibits many artists from realizing their vision effectively and fully. Once you know how to draw, and know the anatomy of a given critter, you know what liberties you can take, and to what effect. Bob Kuhn said that he would tweak aspects of his subject to make it look like what we think it ought to look like.

Or consider Picasso. The work he painted in his teen years was beautifully represented; the man knew how to draw…and then spent the rest of his life going beyond just representing his subjects - he got inside of them, took them apart, twisted them around, to get at other aspects of them.

But back to our topic. This sketch is of my German Shepherd girl, Suka, sleeping on the couch next to me. When a critter is awake and moving, the best I can do is gesture sketches; repose offers a better chance to observe details and proportions. So I have a LOT of drawings of Suka sleeping. I once watched Bob Kuhn sketching a lynx from life; the cat was not moving much, but it certainly wasn’t holding still. Bob developed one particular pose, adding to it when he could as the cat moved about; meanwhile, I was scribbling away doing 40 zillion bits of gesture. Bob’s was a helluva lot nicer. Duh.

So this is everyone’s challenge in the next week: get a sketchbook, a charcoal, and a critter, and go to it. I’ll be flogging my summer workshop with the same thing. We’ll all suffer together.

Ten days until the summer solstice and this is what greeted us this morning! The poor bedraggled plant on the right demonstrates why deciduous trees don’t want their leaves in winter. This is one of those days when I feel like someone in the Duckboy card “Montanans for Global Warming” (a photo of a bunch of parka-wearers huddled in deep snow … the Duckboy images are an especially Montana brand of humor).

Yeah, I know, this isn’t really art related. So shoot me. Next week we’ll be back to our irregularly scheduled program, once I’m done with this spate of agility trials taking me away on weekends.

Someone recently asked how I go about preparing my support for a painting - so herewith, I’m inflicting this on all of you…

If I want to paint on a canvas panel:

1. Cut a piece of MDF (from Home Depot) to size
2. Glue army duck (a smoother, tighter weave of cotton duck) to the MDF with Lineco Archival adhesive (pour on glue, spread it out evenly with a wall scraper, lay panel on sticky canvas, turn it over, run a brayer over the whole canvas surface several times)
3. Weight glued panel under boards and heavy boxes overnight
4. Apply first coat of Daniel Smith white gesso, let dry
5. Sand lightly with one of those handy sanding pads from Home Depot
6. Apply second coat of gesso, dry, and sand

If I’m painting on a stretched canvas, then I just do steps 4 - 6. After all that, it’s time to draw the composition on with vine charcoal; this step can take a while to get right. Once the charcoal outline is done, I spray fix it.

Recently, I’ve started texturing the prepared panel with acrylic modeling paste, if I want a surface that already has some movement to it. It’s loads of fun to paint on, and makes me lather on oils more freely for some reason.

After all the acrylic steps are finished, I then do an underwash of very thin oils to tone the whole shebang.

So why a panel vs stretched canvas? I much prefer the harder surface of a panel for palette-knife paint application, but the MDF-based panels get really heavy over a certain size…plus, they’re only readily available in 2′x4′ sheets. Thus, if I’m considering a 30×40 or similar, it’s gotta be a stretched canvas.

Continuing on the theme from the Rungius post a few days ago, I’m including this entry here and in my Artzine so folks can weigh in on the topic.

With “Wildlife Art” magazine closing its doors, and the mere handful of animal-themed paintings in the 200+ works at the OPA show here in Missoula, I have to wonder: should we even be trying to set wildlife (or animal) art apart from other subject matter? The OPA exhibition categories are landscape, still life, and figurative…which begs the question as to what category my grizzly bear or barrel-racing piece ought to go in. Generally, though, it seems that many exhibitions and auctions don’t try to separate entries in this manner.

Quoting once again from the essay by Kirsten Evenden, written to accompany a recent Rungius exhibition:

This is a concern with wildlife art - that isolating works depicting similar subject matter does nothing to move the tradition forward. Artist Robert V. Clem has said, “…I have been increasingly put off at the extent to which…works involving natural history subject matter are relentlessly categorised as ‘wildlife art’, in such contrast to everything else which seemingly qualifies as simply ‘art’.” Indeed, during his day, Carl Rungius confronted the same issue, “What do you mean, Sporting art? There is only art; it may be good or bad, but it’s still art.” [emphasis mine]

So…where does animal art fit? should it be set apart? what do you think?

Apologies to any rednecks reading. So…how many of you have ever heard this said by a bystander - and intended as praise - for a painting? Why would something “looking like a photo” be a GOOD thing? Possible explanations:

• Many species of animals are generally unfamiliar, so total verisimilitude is expected
• Animal art, as a genre, has heavily emphasized photo-realism (to the detriment of artistic expression, perhaps…?)
• An unsophisticated viewer of art might consider this, indeed, as the highest compliment

The image, BTW, is a rather zoomed-in crop of a recent painting - the kind of piece that one would assume probably wouldn’t be mistaken for a photo. At least, I hope not…

OK, show of hands here: how many of you have been to the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole? If you’ve visited, you could not possibly miss seeing at least one of the many fabulous Rungius paintings in their collection - especially since there are two giant Rungius pieces flanking the reception desk.

Now, how many of you have studied a Rungius original up close? we’re talking from a few inches away (or as close as you can without alarming the docents and security folks).

I’d seen plenty of Rungius images in books, but until I saw one in the flesh, I had no idea how THICK the paint is on the man’s canvases. He seems to have layered values and hues pretty frequently, and often his top 2 or 3 layers are very broken - like dry paint dragged across other mostly dry paint. On one of his moose pieces, I could swear the paint was more than a quarter-inch thick on some of the tree branches and antler tines.

I recall reading that he worked rather quickly, and could complete a “major” canvas in as little as 4 days. How the heck did he manage to build such thick and broken layers of paint that fast? I don’t know what painting media were available back then, but it sure seems like he must have been using an aggressive drier that allowed for impasto technique. Opinions?

Postscript: in the course of poking around on the web for Rungius info, I stumbled across this essay that accompanied a Rungius exhibition in 2001. It’s worthwhile reading, and my eye was especially caught by this quote:

…this is a concern with wildlife art - that isolating works depicting similar subject matter does nothing to move the tradition forward. Artist Robert V. Clem has said, “…I have been increasingly put off at the extent to which…works involving natural history subject matter are relentlessly categorised as “wildlife art,” in such contrast to everything else which seemingly qualifies as simply ‘art.’” Indeed, during his day, Carl Rungius confronted the same issue, “What do you mean, Sporting art? There is only art; it may be good or bad, but it’s still art.”

This report comes from Susan Fox, who - along with many other artists - had planned to participate in this show, which was to be hung at the Cow Palace (Bay Area, CA).

It would appear that the organizers of the show were either delusional or deliberately dishonest. The show was actually held, but show artists have had problems with:

• Getting their artwork returned
• Dirty or damaged artwork when it is returned
• Art not in original packing (some have lost expensive Airfloat boxes)

…among other issues. Susan has more on her blog. In the meantime, stay very far away from:

• Grand National Artist’s Society
• Santa Barbara Fiesta (contact the organizers for current info on who is running the show)

If you were involved in any of these, or know an artist who was, be sure to email this person.

I touched on this subject a few weeks ago (see this post) and, at the time, it seemed the hysteria was unfounded. There is now actually legislation before Congress (S 2913, HR 5889) that some support, but many creative types - singers, authors, artists - don’t. There are countless blog entries on this topic, and I cannot add more to the many erudite postings, other than to point you to a few -

Example favorable comment on the bills: http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1537

Example unfavorable comments (of which there are many):

• http://photobusinessforum.blogspot.com/2008/05/orphan-works-2008-wolf-in-sheeps.html
• http://lessig.org/blog/2007/02/copyright_policy_orphan_works.html
• http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/issues/bills/?billid=11320236

I’ll be honest: the summaries I’ve read, both pro and con, leave me more than a little nervous about the potential unfavorable impact on us artists, who are almost universally self-employed, sole proprietors, or otherwise individuals trying to make a go with our creativity. As often seems to be the case with well-intentioned legislation, the bill is overly broad, VERY important details (such as what defines “a reasonably diligent search”, or how “visual registries” will be set up and run) are left mostly to the imagination, and the overall effect is far too mushy to be anything other than attorney grist.

If you want to take action on the bills, here’s a quick link to do so - http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/home/

This arrived in my email today:

Dear Wildlife Art magazine community,

It is with deep regret that we announce that Wildlife Art magazine ceased operations Friday, May 9. We remain hopeful that someone will purchase the magazine and continue to operate it for the benefit of wildlife art lovers around the world.

…and it goes on to offer the services of the magazine’s staff for hire.

So, this seems like an excellent topic for discussion: whassup with this? why did it happen?