Notes from Smelly Rhino Studio

Friday, March 12, 2010

#11 Sumi-e (Japanese Ink and Wash); 31 days of rhinos!

You don't like this knock-off? So Sumi-e!!!

#11 Sumi-e (ink and wash); 31 days of rhinos
India ink on watercolor paper

Another mediocre example of a complete knockoff from a sumi-e painting found on Wikipedia. I added the "indigenous ghost rhino of the Valley", naturally.

[wiki excerpt "Ink and wash painting is an East Asian type of brush painting also known as wash painting or by its Japanese name sumi-e (墨絵). Ink and wash painting is also known by its Chinese name shui-mo hua (水墨畫, Japanese suibokuga (水墨画^?), Korean sumukhwa, Vietnamese tranh thuỷ mặc'). Only black ink — the same as used in East Asian calligraphy — is used, in various concentrations."]

Ink has the oldest history perhaps next to charcoal. as we talked about the other day, pigment mixed with water and slapped on a substrate..doesn't get any simpler than that! Well Wiki says it dates back to the Tang dynasty in China about 600 BC! Wow, that's old. But, charcoal still has it beat by about 30,000 years. Ink is very practical, and it even worked to mark criminals and village idiots' foreheads. Still used today on college campuses! Pretty practical, indeed.

Lots of fun, and quite similar to watercolor. It is best if you lay it down in washes of extremely light to dark, as you would watercolor or colored pencil, if you will. 1) Lay the ink, let dry, add another layer. 2) lay ink and pull the color with a bit of water to manipulate, blot if desired, and let dry. Continue to add layers until completion.

If you haven't yet experimented with watercolor yet this month, now is your chance..or play with a little ink. Simple calligraphy brushes can be dirt cheap, often in multi-packs. Practice dragging the brush around the paper with a drop of ink in there, making a rich heavy line. Then, add some water to your brush and pull some color away. Let some lines dry completely before going near them again. Although you will still get some movement, the original ink has already permeated the paper. Experiment to see the different looks you can create! If you add an India ink pen for accents on a wash, it will dry waterproof and stay put if you wash over it again, which is cool (although, it wouldn't really be true Sumi-e at that point; more like Sumi-e-Gandi?).

Click here for more on Japanese art

To read all about the art of Ink and Wash, start on Wiki here and then explore! (it seems like I am endorsed by wiki, but I just like the ease of access)

See you tomorrow!

Thursday, March 11, 2010

#10 Pastel Pencil; 31 days of rhinos

My horn is my temple, not yours, so go cut off
your own face, jackass!

#190 Pastel Pencil; 31 days of rhinos
Pastel on black paper

This picture was copied from a very important site that you should visit! SavingRhinos.org. One reason I am featuring Rhinos is to raise awareness that they are endangered and mean people in places like Yemen and China don't seem to care that there are only a literal handful left, because they want to butcher them for their horns so they can have some super dust to snort or eat and make themselves feel like a man or some ridiculous medicine ritual. Stupid people are everywhere! I wish they would evolve brains! Saving Rhinos is on Facebook, too!

Pastels rock! Pastel pencils give some versatile fun on the go. You don't have to get your fingers dirty, so they travel well to figure drawing groups. Not that you will often find me in life drawing, because I live out in the burbs and will always find a good (lazy) reason not to drive into the city at night! But, once in a while, I show up and surprise my friends!

To further attest to my total laziness, I even know where all the sketch groups are (especially with my laptop handy) and I still don't go!

If you live in Atlanta and want a really fun life drawing experience, try Mellow Mushroom's Drink and Draw in Decatur, the first Monday of every month! Two models, a husband and wife, dress in the own private stock of super hero costume-ry (or fetish-ry, not quite sure, but I like to make up words). We get to draw them while eating some of the best pizza in the city! See you next month!

For those living dangerously, you may still be able to find Dr. Sketchys at the Clermont Lounge!

So, a relatively minor mention of pastels. It's basically pigment with a binder, like historically gypsum or chalk. We often think of pastel as chalk, because it has chalk in it. Just don't use it on the sidewalk..that would be really expensive.

Pastel may have been first mentioned by Leonardo DaVinci in 1495, although the French didn't actually invent the word until the mid-1600s. I suppose the Italians had a name for it that didn't stick.

I'll delve more into pastels on another day, because I want to emphasize sketching everyday, and life drawing or figure drawing as often as you can. My friends are really good at sketching and I'm usually pretty embarrassed in their company, because I take way too much time to do things. When I try to hurry, well, this piece above is an example of overworked and unfinished...
One thing that is nice about this blog. Letting go. Letting myself just get it out and not be perfect. Writing takes as half as long as the Rhino Art most days. But I want you to know that you will feel a sense of accomplishment to allow yourself to be imperfect! Too much perfection goes unfinished, if you catch my drift.

A friend a mine, Jessica Cook (who is showing in Austin at the market there in May) quoted someone today..."Perfection inhibits progress!"

So, go sketch something tomorrow. (Maybe I'll get back to these drawings someday to perfect them!)

Find Life Drawing in your City:I Googled to find this site to find a local meet up! Don't know if it's good, but you can try! Find a Meet up

Other life drawing opportunities in Atlanta:
Atlanta Artist's Center has several weekly opportunities for live drawing and painting. Click here for Sketch groups
Marietta area find figure drawing at the Cobb Museum

I really hope that my Artist friends, after reading this (as if) will not leave me alone the next time I say "I might make it".

See you tomorrow!

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

#9 Collage; 31 days of Rhinos

..And now for something completely different!#9 Collage; 31 days of rhinos

Media: acrylic, ink and paper on canvas board

I'm coming back from the dead. I am taking Sudafed though, so I will dismiss later anything that didn't make sense this week as drug induced fuzz.

Today's Rhino will appeal to the more contemporary audience, I hope. Collage art is no new thing, though. It's been commonly referred to in Modern art since the early 20th century, but it's been used since before Christ!

If you are some kind of art purist and can't appreciate anything other than Oils (for example), you may be mocking collage art right now. Well, hopefully you will read some history and visit some museums to find that as an art form, it's been used by some of the greatest painters in history!

-[wiki excerpt- "The term collage derives from the French "coller" meaning "glue".^[1] This term was coined by both Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso in the beginning of the 20th century when collage became a distinctive part of modern art."]

You may remember from our quick lesson in cubism that Pablo and George were very aggressive and liked starting movements and genres and techniques...nuff said. I wonder if both their egos fit in the same room? You don't see me complaining. I'm so glad they met!

There is just so much information to give you on this subject, like that the ancient Chinese and Japanese used it, and that a lot of collage exists in the form of large scale installation art, and that Kurt Schwitters, a well-known collage-er (hehe) utilized various woods in his collages! Neat!!! The techniques and uses are as wide as the ocean and can be humorous, serious, political, non-sensical, abstract, breathtaking and more...whatever you can imagine (or randomly place!)

So hold your heads proud collage artists! You are not cottage crafters, you are in good company! If you are a collage artist, you will find yourself in good company with a boatload of artists of great fame, especially these (and, again more that are too numerous to mention)

David Hockney
Pablo Picasso
Kurt Schwitters
Marcel Duchamp
Henri Matisse
Nick Bantock (the writer---remember, The Griffin and Sabine Trilogy?)
Click to learn more on Collage art.

...and now for something completely different
I would be remiss if I didn't mention Terry Gilliam, whose animation genius depended on cutouts for creating the treasured and immortal Monty Python! --Not exactly "fine art" to hang, but you wont forget it!

So, ready to go try one? If nothing else, it lets you have a little fun!
See you later.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

#8 Fashion Illustration; 31 days of rhinos

I'm too sexy for my dress, too sexy

#8 Fashion Illustration; 31 days of Rhinos
Media: Ink and pencil

I do apologize for being sick. I vowed to do 31 days of rhinos and I was flat on my back yesterday and missed a day. I will make it up tomorrow. I'm finally feeling a lot better. Let's hope it stays that way. On with the next one! It's late and I've finished a very special rhino.

This rhino is a tribute to fashion illustration, something many artists don't think about when they consider an art genre. But I'll tell you why it's important!

Did you know that everyday artists for centuries have been illustrating fashion for a living? You already know such greats as Albrecht Durer illustrated plants. Well, fashion is no different. Fashion Illustration has been a popular genre for advertising the couture of the day for 500 years! Sounds crazy right? Well, clothiers are the second oldest profession, I'll bet!

And, one of the all time great illustrators in history, and very dear to me, Alphonse Mucha, an art nouveau era painter from Moravia (now Czech Republic) made his fame regularly illustrating Sara Bernhardt for her shows, as well as many advertising campaigns. In fact, he wanted to be a serious painter, but his fame came in his illustrations, and it wasn't long before he accepted his fate and ran with it (although he still painted historic old world paintings for the homeland!)

Imagine life before the invention of photography, or even the popular use of it! It wasn't really until the 1930s that fashion photography became vogue. literally! It was Vogue Magazine that popularized photography for the fashion world.

Back to illustration. Since it's first uses in medieval times to current popular culture, fashion illustration has stood strong as an art form. In fact, now more than ever, it is indeed created as art and for the sale as art, not just some one's livelihood as an underpaid advertising artist.

Notable fashion Illustrators, which are way too numerous to mention might not be known to you, except a few eccentrics who dabbled...Andy Warhol, for one! Another, Kenneth Paul Block is known to be the biggest of the 20th century, and worth reading about!

" In the introduction to Drawing Fashion: The Art of Kenneth Paul Block, published in 2008, Isaac Mizrahi described Block’s influence: “More than any single designer, he gave New York fashion its sophistication. Because he drew Babe Paley and Jackie Kennedy a certain way, they became what he had envisioned.” - excerpt Wiki

As Fashion Illustrators go, Kenneth Paul Block was God!

Many of you wont know this, but right out of college, my Mom and I got our starts as fashion designers. We had our own business, Auzias, where we designed and sold better women's apparel to high end boutiques. Although I moved and went to Interior Design before becoming a full time artist, Mom is still an apparel designer. One day soon, we are going to work together again and create a fun new line that you will have to have!