The Art Center School circa 1960-1963

I recently posted a shout-out to one of my closest friends from the Art Center, Fred Pfeiffer, illustrator,whose career ended much too soon by his own hand.  At this age we are starting to loose our pals at an increasingly rapid rate.  Nostalgia took over while digging up as much as I could find from that period to provide some  back story to a dedicated site of his work FredPfeifferArtist.blogspot.com by two really avid fans Courtney Rodgers and Scotty Phillips. 
I thought it might be of interest to some still around as well as to those younger to what it was like at the former building on West Third Street in Los Angeles.

A later photo of the buildings on West Third

Lorser Feitelson

Lorser taught painting  history and technique starting generally with a short lecture and then an open session for your own project.  He encouraged younger painters to copy master paintings for technical understanding

Harry Carmean - drawing and anatomy

An accomplished draftsman, Carmean emphasized careful analysis of the human form.  The texts were Bridgeman and Peck.  Live models were naturally posed for varying lengths of time.  Conte crayon and newsprint pads were generally exclusive materials for these classes.

Morgan Henninger - Advanced Illustration class

 Assignments were given out a week in advance and the crits lasted most of the session...
Do not ever be late...(Deadline of Death)

Kaminski and Ted Youngkin at coffee before morning classes

Ted Youngkin

 Typical studio class

 Paul Sousa with I believe one of the Hubner twins

taken from an Art Center Catalog

preparing a board

 studio session during break

 Roommate John Demming and my truck at our shared studio on North Cahuenga

Check out the price of gas...1962

During our last year at the center we found a muddy lot on Franklin and thought up the idea of a rope pull between the Advertising Design Majors and the Illustration Majors.  The prints below were scanned in from photostats and have lost a great deal of detail.  Below are the art directors and I believe it was pretty much an exhaustive draw as we were all laughing so hard..

 The end of the day when the Blue visited the Brown

 Sandy and Timmy

Future Mad Men around 1963-64

If anyone out there has anything to contribute to this section I would love to hear from you...GL

Improve Your Painting - plotting the lights and darks

One of the early lecture lessons in Lorser Feitelson's painting class at the Art Center School was analysing how the masters plotted out the lights and darks in their paintings.
Who better to look at than Caravaggio.  Here is breakdown of   'The Crucifix of St. Peter."

Desaturated to reveal the grey scale

Reduced to three values

 - light - middle - dark

 You can rotate your value study 180 or 90 degrees and flip back and forth to isolate your view to lose the subject matter and concentrate on value spotting.  Does it work in all directions?  One quick studio method is to hold up a small mirror to your eye and view your composition while in the process of painting or drawing..The errors usually leap right out at you. See other example at Sundblom.

Let's use the three major values dark - light - and middle and work with them from now on to put together small thumbnail sketches.

 I have below some cuts from Ted Kautzky's terrific book on watercolor 'Ways with Watercolor' still available.

 I added the value blocks Foreground, Middle, and Background with the appropriate value arrangement to help you design the same pictorial elements you see on site (or photographic reference) and create an interesting painting.

I hope that simplifies the constant struggle to make your work better and better - when in doubt -KISS

"Keep It Simple Stupid"

Lorser Feitelson and Harry Carmean at the Art Center 1960-63

Two teachers at the Art Center School during the 60's Lorser Feitelson and Harry Carmean not only had a heavy influence on their students but I believe on each other..

Lorser Feitelson giving a crit

Harry Carmean teaching a drawing class

 

This is a video of Harry demonstrating figure drawing from a master painting

Old school painting practice..copying the masters

Feitelson also advocated copying old masters after studying the composition and brushwork of old masters such as Frans Hals.

Frans Hals. Gypsy Girl. 1628-30. Oil on wood, 58 x 52 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Malle Babbe, c.1630. Oil on canvas, 75cm by 64cm. Staatliche Museen, Berlin

Below are the studies done in his class at the Art Center School.

(Close but no cigar) 

Valuable lessons in time management and brush technique.

I regret that I did not photograph these exercises with greater care.