Sorry for the short notice on this one, but I received short notice myself.

There is a digital design workshop titled Visualizing Characters and Environments for Games and Animation tomorrow, January 6, 2009, at the Art Institute of California, Island Empire in San Bernardino, CA, from 4pm to 8pm.

It features Bill Perkins, art director, production designer, visual development and layout artist for Disney, Warner Brothers and Dreamworks (image above, left), and Stephen Silver, character development artist and character supervisor for Disney Television Animation and Nickelodeon (image above, right).

The event is free, but you must register ahead of time at 909 915-2100.

Noupe has aggregated a list of 60 Photoshop Tutorials from various sources. The list includes links to other lists of tutorials, so it’s actually a few hundred links and tutorials.

Some of them are directed specifically at creating digital art in Photoshop, like these 100 that I mentioned in a previous post (more here), and some of the ones here.

Others are more general, with effects, textures, patterns, downloadable brushes and PSD files, cheat sheets, keyboard shortcuts, actions and generally enough Photoshop links and resources to keep you knee deep in colorful pixels for several months.

Have fun, and don’t forget to come back up for air.

[Via Digg]

Since the jolt of receiving my Coraline Mystery Box I’ve been understandably curious about the upcoming animated movie, and equally frustrated that I can’t yet find a significant repository of Coraline concept art (though I did come across some very early concept drawings here).

I’ve also noticed that the Coraline movie web site is now active, with a nicely responsive Flash interface and lots of stuff to explore and download; and the ASFIA-Hollywood Animation Archive has added a few more Coraline Mystery Boxes to its tally.

In the meanwhile, I’ve been happily feeding my Coraline fascination with the excellent graphic novel adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s novel by veteran comics artist P. Craig Russell, which Santa, and/or my stepdaughter, brought me for Christmas.

The book is a hardback, a bit smaller in aspect than typical American comic size, but certainly big enough to give the art a good sized canvas. It’s also worth noting that the book, at almost 200 pages and consisting of a complete story, can be correctly called a “graphic novel”; as opposed to the constant misuse of that term by the mainstream comic companies to apply to the last six issues of some superhero comic slapped into a square binding.

Russell is no stranger to working with Gaiman’s material, Coraline is his fifth collaboration (including a stint as my favorite artist for Sandman), and he is currently adapting Gaiman’s The Dream Hunters as a graphic story. When HarperCollins originally proposed a graphic novel adaptation to Gaiman, he immediately asked that it be done by Russell.

Russell’s adaptation of Coraline was begun prior to the release of visual concepts for the movie and is free of the influence of the film. This is a Good Thing; not that the movie doesn’t look great, everything I’ve seen from it looks amazing; I’m just glad the graphic story is an independent artist’s interpretation of the novel and not part of a “movie package”.

Russell’s vision of the story is more straightforward than the highly stylized character designs featured in the film, with a realistic representation of Coraline, her parents and the other major characters; giving it more of the feeling one might conjure up on one’s own mind when reading the prose version.

Russell’s elegant linework, refined draftsmanship and keen sense of design are well suited to the story and its setting, and he seems to take particular delight in his portrayal of the old house and its surrounds.

Lovern Kindzierski contributes restrained and effective color to the artwork, Todd Kline adds nice touches to the lettering and the entire package is very satisfying, almost like a deliciously dark children’s picture book for adults.

There are some pages you can see on Gaiman’s site (from which the image above is taken, also here) and a couple bits of art (and here) on Russell’s site. There is an interview with Russell on Newsarama.

The HarperCollins site has a page devoted to the Coraline Graphic Novel; and both that site and Neil Gaiman’s Mouse Circus page have a Browse Inside link that takes you to a preview that is almost 40 pages long (large and long enough to get you reading and hooked on the story - clever).

I’ll start with a slight disclaimer, in that Gallery Nucleus, which is currently having a solo exhibition of Mike Hernandez’ work, is also currently an advertiser on Lines and Colors.

That being said, when I check in on Gallery Nucleus, it often turns out that they have something on exhibit that is interesting to the point where I want to tell you about it, and I’m trying to do that while the show is current and those in the area can still catch it.

Mike Hernandez is a concept artist and art director at Dreamworks Animation. He has worked on projects like Shreck, Sinbad and Bee Movie. You can see some concept art for Sinbad and Bee Movie on his blog.

Most of the artwork on his blog, though, is his personal work — beautiful small landscapes in gouache, a few somewhat larger ones in oil, charcoal drawings, and marker and ink drawings, often with versions colored after the fact in Photoshop.

Hernandez apparently paints and sketches either on the way to and from work, or perhaps on his lunch hour, as many of the small landscapes are of the area around or even on the Dreamworks campus. They range from traditional landscapes in parks and wooded areas to urban scenes and compositions of industrial buildings, which he renders as miniature marvels of geometric color and light.

Hernandez’ ink sketches, frequently done with a Sharpie, are loose and gestural, but nicely evocative of the California countryside and urban alleyways.

His gouache paintings and sketches are splashed with color and texture, and often have a nice quality of brushstrokes that feel a bit like scribble lines.

Unfortunately, you can’t just click an “Older posts” link to dig back through his blog, as it’s one of those Blogger arrangements where you have to go to particular months on the sidebar; but digging will be rewarded — with life sketches, wonderful charcoal drawings of dogs, photoshop renderings of imaginary scenes and lots of landscape paintings and drawings.

Gallery Nucleus has an online gallery of some of the work that will be offered during the show, though the images on the page are incomplete. (The prices, even given the small scale of the paintings, seem low.)

The Mike Hernandez Solo Exhibition at Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra, CA runs from now until Jaunary 11, 2009. There is a reception tonight, January 3, 2009 from 7-11PM.

Alexandre Cabanel was a French Academic classical painter who showed notable skill at drawing at the age of 11 and entered the École des Beaux-Arts at 17. He quickly began exhibiting at the Paris Salon.

He was renowned as a portrait painter as well as a painter of historic, religious and classical subjects, and eventually became an influential teacher at the École des Beaux-Arts (at the same time that Jean-Léon Gérôme was appointed there) and a juror at the Salon.

He counted among his students numerous painters of note, including Jules Bastien-Lepage, himself tremendously influential, and Daniel Ridgeway Knight (less well-known, but a personal favorite about whom I’ll write more in a future post).

He indulged his audience a bit, with historic or mythological subjects that allowed him to paint beautiful, languorous nudes, as in his Birth of Venus (also here), which was bought by Napoleon III at the 1863 Salon, and Cleopatra trying out poisons on her lovers (above, top, also known as “Cleopatra testing poisons on condemned men”).

With his precise draftsmanship and superb command of painting technique, he was something of an exemplar of an academic painter, and like many of his compatriots, his reputation fell after his death and remained suppressed during the anti-Academic wave of the 20th Century Modernist art establishment.

It’s interesting to compare Cabanel’s vision of Shakespeare’s Ophelia (image above, bottom, also here) with that of Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite painters like John William Waterhouse (images here, here and here) and John Everett Millais.

Another post of New Year’s babies from the illustrator who originated the concept of representing the new year as a baby, J.C. Leyendecker; and some of his numerous Saturday Evening Post covers which captured the essence of the year into the theme surrounding the baby.

There is (finally!) a new book of Leyendecker’s work, J.C. Leyendecker by Laurence S. Cutler and Judy Goffman Cutler. Though I haven’t gotten my copy of it yet, reviews are good.

Have a great new year, and may it be filled with lots of great art!

-Charley

When I wrote about Guy Rose back in 2007 there were only a few resources online, since then, however, much to my delight, The Athenaeum has posted has posted over 120 good-sized images of his beautiful paintings.

Guy Orlando Rose is considered one of the foremost of the painters known as “California Impressionists”. I put that term in quotes because, like the “Pennsylvania Impressionists” and “American Impressionists” in general, I think the term has been applied after the fact, and I doubt the painters ever referred to themselves that way.

The images posted on The Athenaeum are from the painter’s time in Giverny, where he learned about French Impressionism firsthand, as well as from California and its striking coastline.

The more I see of Rose’s work, the higher my opinion of him.

Inlay is a decorative process in which small pieces of material with differing colors are laid into carved channels in the surface of an object to create a pattern or image.

Inlays are often applied to decorative boxes or other small objects using wood veneer. It is also a common practice to use other materials, notably shells, particularly when inlay is applied to wooden musical instruments.

Inlays are often applied in to small areas of the fingerboards of guitars, giving them that extra appeal of decoration and craftsmanship.

William Laskin is a Canadian luthier (maker of stringed instruments), specializing in guitars, who goes well beyond the typical small decorative patterns normally applied to guitars several ways.

One is in the composition of his materials, which range into 9 different species of shell, 15 varieties of stone, 4 kinds of ivory and bone, and 3 types of metal.

Another is the location and extent of his inlays. While it is not uncommon for inlays to appear on the rosette surrounding the sound hole, or on the headstock, the shaped block at the top of a guitar’s neck which holds the tuning nuts, those applications are normally small, with headstock decoration usually consisting of the maker’s logo.

Laskin, on the other hand frequently takes the entire headstock or large portions of the fingerboard as his canvas, and the fact that he treats it as a canvas is the most unusual and interesting aspect of his inlay work.

Using a process called engraved inlay, Laskin hand cuts shaped channels into the ebony fingerboard or ebony headstock veneer that he uses on his guitars, and applies his carefully chosen inlay materials to create what he terms “narrative” inlay, essentially realistic pictures.

The result is a series of striking images, created with the different colors and surface characteristics of the inlay materials as his palette.

Laskin often sketches his subjects from live models, and does extensive research and preliminary drawings before beginning the intense, extremely time consuming process of engraving the design and forming and setting the inlay pieces.

There is a gallery of inlays on his site (click on the thumbnails for larger images), with a description of the process. There is a video on his site called The Guitar is My Canvas, but I was unable to see it as it requires RealPlayer.

Laskin resists the temptation to repeat a successful design, and each inlay image is unique. His range of subjects includes musicians, animals, film noir scenes and artists, like the portrait of Dalí above, as well as references to art styles like the design inspired by Japanese woodblock prints, also shown above.

Makes me wish I played seriously enough to afford one.

[Via Neatorama, via Sparkbox]

As I promised in my post about The Many Faces of Eustace Tilley last January, I’m letting you know about the 2009 Eustace Tilley Contest in time to participate if you’re inclined.

Eustace Tilley is the name given to the foppish character drawn by art director Rea Irvin for the first cover of The New Yorker in 1925 (image above, top left). The character has returned for a reprise on the anniversary issue each year and has essentially become the magazine’s mascot.

Last year The New Yorker began a contest in which entrants create their own version of an alternate or updated Eustace, and the winners are featured in a slide show on the magazine’s web site (some of last year’s entries shown above as well as in my previous post). Last year they were also featured in the print version of the magazine, but they don’t mention that on this year’s page about the contest, so I think it’s just online this time.

The contest is only open to residents of the US and Canada (with the exception of Quebec). To enter, you sign up, confirm your registration and then upload your image(s) as a jpg, png or non-animated gif file, ideally 465×633 (must be in vertical orientation).

You can submit multiple entries (up to three, I think). The entries must be received by midnight Eastern Time on January 15, 2009, and the winners will be announced on February 2, 2009.

There’s no particular prize other than inclusion in the slide show of the 12 winners, which will be chosen by the New Yorker’s art editor, François Mouly; and, of course, the fun of creating your own variation of the character.

You can see the submissions to date for the 2009 contest here, the winners of the 2008 contest here, and a Flickr gallery of all 170 entries from the 2008 contest here.

You can also see a gallery of some of the variations on Tilley that the magazine has commissioned as covers from various artists, including Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, Charles Burns, Roz Chast, Robert Crumb, Anita Kunz, Carter Goodrich and others; and an article about the history of the character by Louis Menand, Mystery Man: The many faces of Eustace Tilley.

I’ll write another article when the contest results are posted in February and we can all see the new round of thoroughly modern Tilleys.

[Via Kottke]

This depiction of the Nativity by Petrus Christus (large version here) strikes me as one of the more interesting and unusual interpretations of the event.

We view the scene through a framing trompe l’oeil arch, likely inspired by the influence of Rogier van der Wyden’s similar compositions, such as his Miraflores Altarpiece (and interesting to compare to this “framed” walk-through composition by Antonello da Messina). The arch portrays a series of Biblical events, including stories from Genesis, and places the current event in the context of fall and redemption.

The figures, including four seemingly disinterested onlookers behind the ruined stable wall, are dressed in contemporary Flemish costume, and are viewed against a Flemish town, albeit with domed structures from Bethlehem and set amid rolling hills that might be neither location.

The event is attended by four angels, presented about one third human size, with strikingly bird-like wings, and dressed as sub-ministers of a 15th Century Northern European Mass.

The baby Jesus lies doll-like on the ground in the folds of Mary’s garments, central to everyone’s gaze, but otherwise not emphasized by the composition.

It’s interesting to compare the painting with Christus’ earlier versions of the Nativity and Annunciation here, here and here.

Petrus Christus was associated with early oil painting master Jan van Eyck, and may have succeeded him as master of his studio when he died in 1441. There is discussion, however, about whether he was actually Van Eyck’s student, as he shows as much influence from painters like Robert Campin and Rogier van der Weyden.

This painting of the Nativity is in the collection of the National Gallery in Washington.