Thomas P. Quinn - Brushwork, and then some..great example of confident painting style

This gouache illustration for Field & Stream by Thomas Patrick Quinn Jr. dates from 1964...This is really as good as it can get for confident brushwork - lush and creamy style..Tom was a classmate at the Art Center School and brief roommate when we were all at the old Third Street studios.  Regrettably this style of illustration was slipping into oblivion with few exceptions ( John Berkey the most accomplished among them..) Magazine illustration was about to die almost completely in a few years and advertising was rapidly moving into photography snapping the ambition of fairly well trained graduating illustrators.

             Click to enlarge...!

 

   When the mid sixties hit (Mad Men plus) a lot of really good people dumped out..Cooper Studios
who had most of the top illustrators and most of the top business for all of the country went down.
For the next decade everyone scrambled to pick up what they could...paperbacks, spot drawings,
packaging..whatever.  Reps specialized and some did not always cut you the best deal...keeping major shares for themselves as you rarely saw the invoices.  I was working at J.W.Thompson as a sketch artist on the Ford account doing gouache 24 sheet (bill board) comps for the new Mustang and filling in on other major accounts.  What you see on 'Mad Men' was pretty much it at the time with the exception that I did not see a lot of in house drinking but everything else was common... the AD's and writers only hired good looking women who came from the Seven Sisters (Smith, Wellesley etc) as their secretaries. All others to the typing pool and media.  Assistant art directors were hired at about $60 a week and worked the bull pen for about 3 or 4 months and then be assigned to an AD.. no raise for a year and then if you were lucky got about a grand more per year.  I had a place on Prince Street in the village at the time and occasionally a married AD would ask for the keys to my place during lunch...That was never going to happen I am happy to say..there wasn't much they could do about it as the illustrators were needed for presentations.

Below is a small sketch by John Berkey who regrettably is no longer with us.

Improve Your Painting -The Value of the Small Sketch - part 2

Working small ... 3"x5" offers a lot of benefit to your development as an artist and thinker.
First, they get a lot done in a short time..They also usually wind up set aside and eventually rediscovered as nice little paintings - real examples of your true handwriting...

gouache study

gouache study

gouache study - Maryland

gouache study - Inlet Chester River - Maryland

oil study - Vermont

gouache study - Spain

Improve your darwing and painting - the value of the small sketch

I can't stress enough the value of working up a small sketch (thumbnail size 1.5 inch by 2 inch or more) in order to develop better paintings... even when you are working from life or outdoors Plein Air style.
Working small freely enables you to think about the very basic composition re: lights and darks, shapes and placement of major forms.  That is what was taught 'Old School'. Just using a 2B pencil or simple black wash you build a visual fluidity and eventually a rapid understanding of exactly what you are looking at.
Somebody said once "The sketch promises everything and delivers nothing "--- not so fast - It delivers plenty.

Here are a few small thumbnails by Mucha done on toned paper with a little pastel for some of his murals

These were done as background studies for a sci fi TV film proposal for a Hasbro toy

The next step is to bring up your idea to a more detailed small painting -about 3" x 6" - to work out the color and discover how much you don't know about your subject...i.e. more studies..definitely Old School

War Draw - Ivor Hele - Aussie Artist 1912 - 1993

self portraits

 

Ivor Hele is one of those great draftsman that you probably never heard of...An Aussie that served in the war and chronicled daily drudge.. He was also enormously prolific and completed more commissioned works than any other artist in the history of Australian art. His front-line responses to war, sketched and painted for the Australian War Memorial, the portraits that won him the Archibald prize an astonishing five times during the 1950s, his exuberant nudes (Ivor and his wife swam nude at Maslins beach long before it was fashionable or legal to do so) and his magnificent landscapes of that rugged coastline south of Adelaide - where he lived as a recluse - combine to make up a prodigious body of work.
Read more about Ivor Hele here.

red crayon on toned paper

Whitney Houston Portrait

Offering for the untimely death of Whitney Houston... This small portrait sketch was created for a promotional several years ago that never reached the light of day...

Painting in Yellowstone Park - Transendent Experience

Ken Burns' inspiring series now on Public Television brought back with amazing clarity my first experience with the national park system.  I drove across the country from New Jersey to California in a '50 Buick 4 door and slept in the back seat at truck stops serenaded by cattle carriers and revving Mack's and Peterbuilt's.  Burns speaks of having a transcendent experience upon a first viewing..indeed.  I spent the night outside the gate to the Grand Canyon south rim and entered at the early morning opening in time time to see the sunrise across the canyon.  The cool air chilled the body and etched the image forever.  I promised to return not knowing when.  I was still in college and had not yet decided to go on to study painting and illustration at the Art Center School as it was known at the time... now The Art Center College of Design.
The next experience was similarly sleepless in a parking lot near Artists' Point in the Yellowstone accompanied by my wife and an acrobatic Great Pyrenees with paws the size of catcher's mitts. Every animal sound within ear shot was translated into a trampling leap from front to side to back of the Econoline van which served as house and home for the trip. Finally at sunrise we wandered down the path to the lookout and watched the most incredible display of light crawl down the canyon walls warming both body and soul with sulfur yellows, crimsons and deep purples.  Again, I vowed to return to paint this time as I had graduated from the ACS some years before. 

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone - 30 x 40 oil

Shoshone River Canyon- oil

Canyon Pools - plein air gouache - 3" x 5"