Attila the Hun

Art, right? Been awhile since I posted some. Stuff is in the pipe to be published, is all. One company however, Imagine Ltd., a small publisher out of France, has been very kind in allowing me to publish some art done for them before their product gets released. Such is the case with today's image. In those other two instances, the pieces were straight-up fantasy. This time, it's kinda historical fantasy. I can't tell you why, as I don't know a ton about the product. I'll be interested to see the context, too!

I had begun work on this a bit before going to IlluXCon in November. I had done most of the charcoal study that underlies the study at left, and gotten approval. The study at left is a composite of that charcoal drawing, a second pencil drawing, and some digital. While at Illux, I had a little time away and realized I didn't like the original torso pose of the figure, so when I came home I redrew it and Frankensteined it in. So you can see the upper body is not like the lower half in texture. The Art Director had approved an earlier version, so I emailed these changes to them and got them approved, too.

I then passed it around to a couple of trusted artist buddies, among whom we sometimes swap critiques. I was pretty happy and it had been approved, so I was looking for some polish ideas. I tweaked the drawing a bit more here and there, based on comments, prepared a few other elements, and went to work.

Hitting the Books

From there it was a straightforward paint job. Really a lot of the fun of doing historical fantasy is doing some of the research part. With the Huns, it's problematic because many military history works barely touch on them. As they were nomadic, it's not like we have a lot of remnants of their culture in archaeological town digs or anything. As well, they trafficked in and among other tribes of the Russian steppes like the Scythians, Alani and other Sarmatians. Not only traveled among, but intermarried as well, Attila himself having many wives, including among the Scythians.

When doing historical works, an illustrator runs into a problem. Within gaming and the like, it's not like historical stuff necessarily pays any more than usual. But the prep-work for a historical piece is considerable, before one even begins thumbnailing. And it all depends of course on how detailed one wants to get. If this were National Geographic, it'd have a whole other caliber of research on top of this, but their budgets are bigger, too. The go-to for illustrators are Osprey Books' Men at Arms series, many illustrated by the late Angus McBride. And yeah, they covered these groups, too. It's decent, but I was finding info and small details slightly at odds with it through other research. When I did, I favored the research I had done. I took for granted the intermingling of cultures, the ransacking of enemies and so on, so there's a hodgepodge of sources, some of which might be stretching it here and there. But then, this is also a fantasy illustration. The pose itself was requested to hearken back to David's famous portrait of Napoleon, which dictated the overall mood.

Research notes chickenscratched on the back of another job's brief

Though a few ancient historians wrote about the Huns, I favored Priscus of Panium, who actually met Attila and wrote the only known first-hand account of him. It was a fascinating read, from which I learned about his inter-tribal polygamy, his hairstyle (which I would have loved to have portrayed--sounded like a bowl cut), also that he had a dignified quality about him (as opposed to savage), and dressed very simply, preferring a lack of ornamentation both on himself and his horse. Those last two points were critical for me, since the temptation is to lay it on. I supplemented this with other folks' second-hand accounts.

(L): "Attila the Hun" 18x24" Oils on Masonite

For his horse, I sought out some native breeds and settled on Przewalskis, which have lovely coloring and a slightly unusual shape. As Attila was known as "The Scourge of God" in his time for his army's fierce combating and destruction, I placed him within the ruins of a church or cathedral of some kind. Crows added a bit more narrative and doom to the image.

The image, when finally printed, will probably have a few tweaks to it, which I added digitally. I gave it to the publisher layered to give them some options, and we'll see what they go with, but this is the painted version here. You can see it more up-close if you'd like here.

The thing with historical fantasy is you want to do some diligence in researching, but you've often got considerable budget and deadline constraints to worry about as well. And no matter what you do, real history buffs will come around and point out your errors. That's a shame, too, since if I had my way I'd have done even more research than I did. As it stood, I ate through the budget so fast on this one, given the detail and all, that it became something of a labor of love by the end, out of pride for one's work.

Magic Grand Prix: Kuala Lumpur Mar.24-25

I first visited Kuala Lumpur 10 years ago in 2001, for a Magic Grand Prix. Had a great time (but man was it hot). My wife came along and we had a great time seeing some sights off-hours--we stayed a couple days extra beyond the event and did some touring. Oddly, we didn't get up the Petronas Towers. Well, I shall remedy that!

I've been invited to be the Artist Guest at 2012's Grand Prix in KL once again, this March 24-25th. Ok, so 11 years ago.

Get all the info you need on Wizards' website here. I'm looking forward to seeing some folks there, and will be curious to see if anyone in the scene 11 years ago is still in it. Shoot, by now some of their small children then could be players now. :-|

Howard Pyle: American Master Rediscovered

Last week, I was a bit audacious in critiquing an acknowledged master. Part of why it was audacious is because Pyle was truly a wonderful illustrator, and a powerhouse of a paint slinger.

Howard Pyle's "So the Treasure Was Divided" 19x29" oils on canvas

The Delaware Art Museum has the largest collection of original Pyle artwork anywhere, Pyle having lived, taught and worked in Wilmington, where the museum resides. It was already on my list of museums to visit, for its Pyle collection, before this show. Learning that such a retrospective was going up, however, popped this up the list of things-to-do immediately. The show runs through March 4, 2012, so you have a couple of months left to get out there. And if it's in any way reasonable to do so, and you love this stuff, do so.

Pyle was known as a remarkable historical-fantasy painter, illustrating stories and writing and illustrating others. The above shows a bit of that: multi-figured, costumed narrative. Pyle is one illustrator that definitely benefits from seeing the originals: his work is incredibly subtly colored, tending towards mid-to-low color saturation, with an astounding sensitivity to grayscale value. I often go on about the importance of value, even over color. Pyle was one of those who mastered both.

His work is mainly tied to two main genres: pirates and colonial history painting. The more you look, the more you realize that movies like Pirates of the Caribbean drew heavy inspiration from Pyle's work. His pirate work has therefore remained popular, even as pirates themselves are a perennial subject of fascination in the culture. But his Revolutionary War era work is wonderful in equal measures.

Pyle's "The Fight on Lexington Common" (detail)

Is that John Kerry at left?

Pyle had a wonderful ability to be both loose and tight at the same time, thick and yet detailed. The scumbling of smoke at right reveals a heavy impasto from either the priming or from under layers.

Interestingly, these two pieces shown so far aren't even from the retrospective show! They are part of the museum's collection and currently hung in a separate show which runs all of 2012. Visiting now gives you a double helping of Pyle!

The show itself features a number of Pyle's masterpieces, ones you will have seen posted everywhere else. And if you don't know Pyle's work well, then these should simply be considered appetizers for that stuff. What struck me most was the size variation of his work, from these roughly 24x36 -range pieces, which are typical sizes for illustrations even today, to ~40x60" for some of his more popular pieces, which benefited more from space than detail, since those largest pieces are often much simpler than the above. There are also a number of smaller paintings, even down to maybe 10x10" or so.

Back in the day, it was common to find black-and-white reproductions in publications. Often, these were simply painted in black-and-white, and the show highlights a few of these. I haven't worked much in that format, but every time I see it it looks like fun.

These black and white (or limited palette pieces) are lessons in value structure. At left, the values are stuctured so as to make you work a little, the opposite of much illustration these days, which needs to be instant-impact. And yet, the piece does have instant impact due to strong contrasts, filigree, and a halo/sun framing the head. Added to the billowy drapery, it immediately resonates as an "angel" painting, which makes you wonder where the wings are, and then you see it. It then dawns on you that it is neither a sun nor a halo behind the head, as such, but simply the shape of a bright light or sky that is peeking through the gap between two spread wings. Lovely, a trick I'm likely to steal at some point.

The great thing about good monochrome art is that you can imagine the color palette as almost anything, and it still works. The painting below, for instance, could just as easily be a moody deep night scene, lit by moonlight, or an early morning light, bright yellows and purple in the shadows. Or evening, with oranges and blues. Or whatever, it doesn't matter.

Perhaps equal to his reputation as an illustrator, possibly even greater--certainly of even greater lasting influence--was the private school he ran, bringing in students, teaching them, sending them out. The lineage here is astounding. Artists such as Frank Schoonover and Maxfield Parrish studied with Pyle. Other entire branches of lineage were launched through training N.C. Wyeth, father of Andrew, who became one of America's most celebrated fine artists. Student Harvey Dunn went on to train other celbrated illustrators as well, including Dean Cornwell, both of whom ended up training Mead Schaeffer. The cascading effects of Pyle's influence on contemporary illustration are astounding, and this is without naming the many talented illustrators who worked in their day after training with Pyle or his students, but whose names have not become so well-known.

That influence has not ended, to this day. Whether directly influenced by Pyle, or by one of his artistic progeny, today's illustrators working within this genre are direct inheritors of this genius. No one denies it, and all celebrate it. The amount to which I or another directly embody the influence varies, but it's inescapable. You cannot see a painting like the one at top, and then see Mark Zug's work and not see Pyle and Wyeth all over. The Hildebrandts, too, in their earlier fantasy years.

Sometimes the influence is subtle, sometimes overt, other times it's direct homage, as with the late Darrell Sweet below:

 

Howard Pyle (L), Darrell Sweet (R) Not a coincidence.

"But I live far away, Randy, and can't get to Wilmington DE!" Well, the show catalog will have to suffice. It's good, overall, although Pyle's work in particular always suffers a bit from skewing to dark, or being overexposed. Many of the color plates however are good enough, a few excelllent. If possible, I'd like to take another 3-hour drive down myself to see it again before it ends.

Calling Out a Master

I recently had the wonderful opportunity of heading down to the Delaware Art Museum to see the "Howard Pyle: American Master Rediscovered" exhibition, in honor of the 100 year anniversary of the famed illustrator's death. I of course chuckle at the "Rediscovered" part of the title--who lost track of Pyle? Not I! But, I know what they mean--despite being the grandfather of American Illustration and the fountainhead from which poured forth some of this country's greatest painters directly or indirectly, he's not someone you run across in Art History courses. No, you'll spend much more time on any number of -isms of the period but you'll never hear Pyle or his school discussed. But illustrators know. Particularly, fantasy and children's illustrators know. We're inheritors of his school, after all.

I'll be doing another post that gushes about Pyle's work, with more photos--because no book yet does the paintings justice. But this week, I'm going to do something unusual--I'm going to call out the Master on a blunder. That's pretty brazen, right? I mean, I could only hope to be as good, can only dream of having a fraction of the impact of Pyle. But, while there are some painters who seemingly can do no wrong (at least, technically), perhaps because Pyle was an illustrator, there are a few pieces that evidence some surprising oversights. I can only blame them on his being an illustrator with deadlines. Still, though, they did leave me scratching my head a bit, amid all the awesome.

Here's today's exhibit:

This was not part of the show mentioned, but part of another exhibit featuring his work in another context (the museum is the chief repository of Pyle's work). Already, this piece exhibits a lot of Pyle's excellent qualities. The composition is gorgeous, with the massed darks being relieved from claustrophobia through wonderful use of filigree in the upper left, which the composition launches upwards toward. The foliage rises from lower left to upper right. Just at the woman's bosom, and again above her left shoulder, the branches jut left. This new angle is picked up by the branches behind her, leading out of the image in the direction she's rising. The intense red and green contrast works because while he's chosen colors that are exactly complimentary to where they at times exhibit visual vibration--usually a bad thing--he's limited the amount of red. Had the piece been equally both, it would have been visual chaos. The peppering of red down the image, through the leaves, is wonderfully done--it's enough so the figure continues to read, it keeps the foliage from becoming an impenetrable wall, but doesn't distract from the top half.

So after admiring it from a distance, something started calling out to me as odd. I began to walk closer.

 

Despite all the lovely painting, composition, and color, this piece, right in the heart of it, in the woman's face, exhibited some really funky drawing. Have you caught it yet? It's not a hard mistake to make, if one is rushed. But Pyle? What you're looking at is the woman's eye--it's completely off. It's too low and too far to the right, towards the outside of her head. At an angle, the features should all be on the same horizontal axis (in this case, now a diagonal due to the tilt of the head). Now, unless this particular story describes such a woman (doubtful), this is one of those pieces that could've easily been repaired. But it was not. Probably after delivering it and receiving it back, he simply tossed it in his closet and moved on, busy with things. Let's fix it up to show what I mean:

 

L: Photoshopped adjustment R: Original painting

By repositioning the eye, it now basically matches the same diagonal axis that runs across the lips and the nostrils, and headband about the forehead.

I will say that despite being overwhelmed by the exhibit, there were a couple other places in other paintings where some figure--usually a small background figure--was just poorly drawn. No two ways about it. Sometimes not even poorly as in wrong, but just lazily drawn in for someone of so mighty an ability, who in other multi-figure pieces could work with complete authority.

The important thing to remember is that the Masters are not gods. Most had off days here and there. Because something is hanging in a museum does not mean you should look at it uncritically. And to point out an error is not hubris on your part, rather to not notice errors in your own work but to see them in others' is the dangerous trap. I hope I catch many of my errors after the fact, even if I miss them immediately. I know I have a long list of them that I hope no one else notices, some of which I've gone back and fixed either before handing them in, or sometimes even after getting a painting back.

Whiteback Sketches, pt.8

Have a happy Christmas and New Year everyone! I'm taking a break from the blog as I tend to this time of year, and will see you on the other side. As I pre-blogged this particular post months ago, I can only hope I actually made it this far, otherwise this will have auto-posted as a creepy message from the grave or something....

(Update 12/16: I made it!)

It's been a busy year for sketched whitebacks. Raising my fee on them a bit did allow me the freedom to stretch out and get a little more involved. It's too late in the year to get any in time for Christmas, but as always you can get your own done here.

Be well, and hopefully we'll see each other in 2012!

Magus of the Tabernacle / Uba Mask

Caretaker Mooncrier / Jaedan Sunshot

Goodbye, Darrell

© Darrell K. Sweet

I was saddened to hear that Darrell K. Sweet passed away yesterday. As I have done from time to time, when a particularly influential illustrator dies, I like to sit and reflect on their work and how it moved me.

I spoke a little about Darrell's work a year ago, when I had the pleasure of seeing something of a retrospective show of his at the World Fantasy Convention, and also purchased a small color study acrylic painting. I am of course doubly glad I bought that piece, and only wish I could've picked up more of these studies when I had my two chances. The first was at SiliCon in San Jose in the 90s sometime. I'm also very glad I got to hear Darrell's career-retrospective talk last year, in which he went through a slideshow of artwork and discussed aspects of his long career. For some reason, though I had opportunities to meet him twice, I didn't ever introduce myself.

Despite having done something like 3,000 illustrations over the course of his long career (a number I'm not likely to meet if I live to 77, at my current pace), it was always amazing to me that he never won any of the three main professional awards for this genre (Hugo, World Fantasy, Chesley). Rather, Darrell's work was simply always just in the atmosphere, perhaps taken for granted a bit. I don't know if this ever bothered him, but one could only hope to live as long, have that kind of career, and in the end have even the amount of influence he exerted.

And though he didn't really spawn any followers that I'm aware of, as some superstars do, he certainly was influential. Most of the fantasy guys in my generation grew up with his covers. For me, that dates back to High School, when I first started really reading a lot of fantasy and science fiction. And though I read multiple books with covers by Sweet, it was his work on Piers Anthony's Xanth series that really got me interested in his work. I think I stopped reading about book 13 or so, but he managed to retain Xanth as a perennial gig up through today (book 35 just released). Darrell's work had a quality that even in the late 80's/early 90's felt...not dated...but more like from another era. More classic, somehow.

I've always felt a kinship between what he did and many of the late 19c. German Romantic school of painters. Perhaps it was the architecture, which was generally so solidly rooted in European medieval, something which has fallen out of favor these days, being increasingly replaced by European medieval + dark gothic, raised to the power of "badass." As well, his costuming retained that same historical flair, which by and large is frowned upon in many quarters of the industry now.

Beyond all that, Darrell was a fantastic landscape painter. I always got the feeling that Darrell could have gone many directions for a career, and found success in all of them. He could have easily focused on landscape work. He could have turned to wildlife art (which he did do some pieces in), or western / native american (also worked in). He could have done a lot of things, but he spent the bulk of his career in fantasy and science fiction. In so doing, he helped shape a lot of today's illustrators. He also inspired me quite a lot, and for that I'm very thankful.