Starting from a sketchbook drawing, which is revised and refined as it is scaled up, sometimes to wall-size, Alison Elizabeth Taylor creates her images (which she calls “paintings”) out of wood veneer.

Using different kinds of wood, sometimes 100 or more varieties in an image, she applies the sections in ways that allow the natural color and grain of the wood to contribute to the image, like a cross between brushstrokes and mosaic tiles.

The process is called wood marquetery, a form of decorative art that was developed to a high degree during the Renaissance, but hasn’t exactly been a household word or staple on art school curriculums since.

Taylor, a graduate of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, took her original inspiration from a whim to make a portrait out of cheap wood-grain contact paper.

After moving to New York to go to graduate school at Columbia University, she encountered the Studiolo from the Ducal Palace in Gubbino at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Studiolo means room or cabinet, and refers to small rooms that royals would use as studies or sitting rooms, that contain their books, papers and works of art. The piece in the Met is a wood marquetery version of the interior one such room, its faux cabinets and trompe l’oiel books and lutes arranged around the interior of a small room in life-size approximation of the actual room, in what is perhaps one of the earliest examples of virtual reality.

Taylor was immediately struck by the process and inspired to begin working earnestly in real wood, a painstaking process.

Taylor sets her pieces into position in her intricate representational images and holds them there temporarily with a tacky plastic film used in sign making, until they can be glued into place with a press.

For a new installation called “Room” that is her modern take on the Studiolo, the pieces were too large for her own studio and she had to enlist the facilities of a architectural woodworking firm with a commercial veneering press.

Unlike her Renaissance counterparts, but in keeping with her other work, Taylor’s images are not of nobles and their rich belongings, but of the everyday and mundane, even the ugly, but represented with captivating beauty of the grains, colors and textures of wood.

There is an article on the New York Times site, with a slide show of her work. She has a show currently at the James Cohan Gallery in Chelsea until June 21, 2008.

[Link via Kottke.org]

Illustrator Boris Artzybasheff was born in the Ukraine, emigrated to the the U.S. and was active during the mid 20th Century.

“Unique” may be a mild word to describe Artzybasheff’s approach to illustration. maybe if I add adjectives like “idiosyncratic”, “eccentric”, “bizarre” and “off the wall”, I can get a little closer; oh yes, and throw in “wonderful”.

Artzybasheff is most noted for his graphic images in which he indulged in his fascination with anthropomorphized industrial machinery — glaring cauldrons pour bright molten metal into seeming surprised ingot molds, steel rollers feed the ingots through their “teeth” with conveyor belt hands, rods or wire ropes are extruded through the noses of forming machines, electro-mechanical calculators, heads full of vacuum tubes, use their intricately wired and gimbaled arms to perform calculations on themselves, and hydraulic presses, grommeted eyes bulging with exertion, slam down their plates with muscular arms (image above, left).

The always amazing ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive has posted another of their series on great illustrators with a feature on these images from the Machinalia section of Artzybasheff’s long out of print but newly reprinted book As I See: The Fantastic World of Boris Artzybasheff.

The above link is to the hardcover on Amazon, which lists a release date in October, but it looks as though you can order the softcover now through the site of publisher Ken Steacy. The Amazon link is worth exploring, though, because you can see some of the many other books he illustrated (and wrote) over the course of his career.

His most widely seen illustrations were for big magazines like Life, Fortune and Time, including over 200 covers for the latter. He also had a number of large commercial clients, including Parke-Davis, Parker Pens, Xerox, Pan Am, and Shell Oil, for whom he did some remarkably weird and wonderful illustrations (above, top right). You can see some of his advertising and commercial illustrations on the American Art Archives.

[AISFA article link via BoingBoing]

I’ve long been fascinated with the cross-pollination of ideas and styles between the artistic traditions of Asia and Europe. Even though they are technically on the same continent they were effectively separate worlds for much of the time their artistic methods and traditions were developing.

Now, of course, the world is melting together, connected by strands of optic fiber and jet contrails, but the traditions are being maintained in some quarters and mixed in others

Tang Wei Min is an artist from Hunan Province in China who applies the painting styles and techniques of the European masters to subject matter drawn from the traditional costume and ceremonial dress of historic China.

In paintings that carry the feeling of Baroque era European painters, particularly Rembrandt, Tang Wei Min paints rich, incisive portraits of people in decorative robes and head dress (something Rembrandt himself was quite fond of), and at times, gives a nod to his inspirations by mimicing the composition of particular paintings by Rembrandt and others, including the pose from Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring (above).

I really enjoy his Rembrandtesque chiaroscuro and great chunks of impasto white highlights, combined with the fascinating clothing and intensely portrayed faces of his sitters.

I couldn’t find a dedicated web site for the artist; I came across his work on the Art Renewal Center, and with a little digging found that he is represented by a number of galleries in China and the U.S.

Matte paintings are paintings that produce the illusion of a background or part of a background in film. They can also form part of a foreground.

Matte paintings are almost as old as movies themselves, and were originally painted on glass, and positioned in front of, and/or behind the actors (or stop motion creatures), creating the illusion in the camera of a complete scene.

Modern matte painting is composited, and usually created, digitally.

Tim Warnock is both a matte painter and a concept artist, and some time ago retired his paintbrushes in favor of a Wacom stylus.

I wrote a brief post about Tim Warnock back in 2005; since then his online portfolio has been redone and, of course, there is much new work.

His portfolio is divided between matte painting (image above, top and detail, bottom left) and concept art (above, middle and detail, bottom, right).

Warnock brings a talent for crisp realism, characteristic of matte painting, to his concept art. In both cases he uses sharp value contrasts and carefully controlled color relationships to give his scenes high definition and visual drama.

Here’s a great idea, started as a simple notion by webcomics artist and blogger Dave Valeza, and now snowballed into something of an internet meme.

The suggestion was simple: “challenge: draw yourself as a teen“, supplemented with “if you are still a teen, draw your future post-teen self”.

Word has gotten around, as people have participated and posted the results on their own sites and blogs, and the list on Valeza’s blog is now of over 400 links and growing.

Some of the participants have done “then and now” versions, in which their teenage self is contrasted with their current identity, complete with notations on hairstyle, clothing choice and attendant paraphernalia like sketchbooks, music players and reading matter.

Some of the drawings are more accomplished than others, of course, but many are quite well done; and even the less sophisticated drawings are often enlivened with wry observations and remarkably self-confessional critiques of former (and present) selves.

The list is too long to explore all at once, but it makes a nice diversion to bookmark and revisit occasionally. It would be nice if there were a more formal arrangement with thumbnails and such, but that’s a lot to ask. Valeza has marked off the list at increments of 50, which can help you keep track.

On many of the images, you have to click through several links, and various interfaces (LiveJournal, Flickr, deviantARt, etc.), to get to the full size images.

Some of the drawings are essentially condensed tales of growth, angst and self-awareness, worthy of more filled out short stories. Others are simple drawings of a past self-image, but there is much food for thought here, both in terms of stories and artistically.

(Image at left, left to right, top to bottom: Kennon James, Jacob “Gil” Paul, “buttface makani”, Steve Wolfhard, “lokabrenna” ,Viki Nerino)

[Link via Drawn!]

Though most of the horrors you’ll see in the art on these pages are imaginary, like movie monsters and fantasy creatures, some horrors are quite real, and we occasionally need to stop an remind ourselves of them.

For those in other parts of the world, I’ll mention that today is Memorial Day here in the U.S. Though it’s a day associated with barbecues, trips to the beach and the unofficial start of Summer; it is a holiday created to honor those who have lost their lives in military service over the course of the nation’s history.

In recent years, much of that observance has focused on World War II, the surviving veterans of which are at an age where those who remember the war directly are rapidly shrinking in number.

It occurred to me to look back at another generation to the previous large scale conflict, World War I, from which there are fewer surviving witnesses, mostly those who were children at the time, but enough to remember that the horrors of war don’t diminish with distance in the past.

Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson was a British artist, associated with the Futurist movement and the less well known Vorticists, who became an official war artist in 1917. The Vorticists were a short lived but influential group of British artists who took the geometric latticework of Cubism and Futurism and sent it whirling through their interpretation of motion in the painted image.

Nevinson brought the fractured dynamics of the group’s style to the portrayal of scenes from “The War to End All Wars”, at first in service of the image the government wanted to portray; but eventually, from his experience as an ambulance driver, in a revulsive response to the atrocities of war.

His painting Paths of Glory, in which the stylized angles of Vorticism are abandoned for a more direct approach, (above) was initially banned by the military censors, but Nevinson managed to display it during the war outside of official channels.

Nevinson was one of the artists chosen to paint large works for the Imperial War Museum’s Hall of Remembrance; where his painting Harvest of Battle hangs along with John Singer Sargent’s famous Gassed (see my post on Art of War).

Art depicting the horror or war is not often brought to the fore, even in museums where major pieces are part of the collection, so it often falls to places like the Hall of Remembrance to keep it on display.

Actually, it’s up to us to look up and remember the images with which artists have tried to impress on us the inhumanity and tragedy of war, particularly when we are asking our friends, neighbors or sons and daughters to face it for any reason.

As an antidote to yesterday’s scary monsters, I take you this morning to the tranquil beauty of a water garden, alight with the brilliance of water lilly blossoms, in botanical watercolor paintings by Alexis America.

America has a series of paintings of water lillies, lotus and related water plants, their bright blooms, colorful stalks and delicate floating pads rendered in fresh, crisp watercolor (image above, top). These are presented in a web site gallery called Alexis America botanical paintings.

The site provides little background information, but with a little digging I was able to find that America, originally from Connecticut and now living in Hawaii, also has a series of Water Paintings created as aqueous monoprints (image above, bottom).

Aqueous monoprinting is a process closely related to traditional Italian book marbling, in which oil based paints are floated on water, taking advantage of the old adage that oil and water don’t mix, and the colors are stirred or moved around with delicate wands or by blowing air through a tube to create intricate marbled patterns. A sheet of paper is then gingerly laid atop the paint, and carefully lifted off, preserving the pattern in a single unique impression.

I had a chance to see traditional marbling done when some Florentine artisans participated in a cultural exchange here in Philadelphia a few years ago, as part of the little known “Sister Cities” relationship between Philadelphia and Florence. If you ever get a chance to see the process demonstrated, it’s fascinating and quite demanding. In America’s monoprints, she has used the process in a more representational way that I have seen before, in images suggestive of rolling and breaking waves.

Both her botanical and water paintings sites offer limited edition prints, though there is no indication of whether the originals are for sale or have gallery representation (or the size at which they’re done). Oddly, neither site mentions or is linked to the other; leading me to wonder if she has other sites of themed paintings, though these are the only two I turned up with a quick search. I also found a mention of her on the Tiki Art Gallery, that includes a small bio and offers prints some of her older figurative work.

[Link and suggestion courtesy of Ocean Quigley]

Chet Zar’s site has a subtitle of “Painter of Dark”. In addition to being a good sendup of a certain franchise gallery painter, it’s a pretty concise description of the tone of his work.

In his gallery work, Zar paints monsters, gruesome, grotesque and deliberately disconcerting. His eerie “portraits” glare out at you with glazed, bloodshot, and sometimes absent, eyes; grimacing, grinning or open mouthed in apparent shock, perhaps from looking at the preceding or following monster, each more gruesome than the next.

He creates his monstrous faces with highly defined textures. High-contrast areas of light and dark combine to suggest leathery, wrinkled skin, sometimes dark and weathered, at other times veinous and pale, as if insufficiently protected against some caustic environment. His palette for each piece is controlled within a limited range, but rich with subtle variation.

Zar has also applied his talent for creating monsters, and other characters, to a career in movie special effects, creating sculptural prosthetic make up and effects for films like Planet of the Apes, The Ring, Darkman, Hellboy and X-Men 3.

There is also a gallery of Zar’s work on the beinArt Surreal Art Collective, and his work is included in their Metamorphosis collection (see my post on Metamophosis and the beinArt Collective).

Zar is an instructor at the Gnomon Workshop and their site includes a brief bio and a gallery of his work. It also features an instructional DVD, Digital Creature Painting with Chet Zar.

His most recent show is at the Copra Nason Gallery in Santa Monica until May 31, 2008. There is a gallery of image on the gallery’s site.

Wikipedia has a post on Chet Zar, through which I learned that he is the stepson of James Zar, a fascinating fantasy and still life painter who will undoubtedly be the subject of a future post.

My wife and I were in New York City on Saturday; and while walking through Columbus Circle we came across Daniel Hauben, his French easel balanced on the edge of a fountain, painting a complex and large scale pieln air painting of a view down Eighth Avenue.

Most often, plein air painting is associated with relatively small paintings that can be finished in one session, and a short session at that given the degree to which light can change a scene in a matter of a few hours. Presumably, Hauben works on paintings of this size and complexity over the course of perhaps several days, but I was still surprised to see an artist taking on a painting like this in such a busy public space.

I asked Hauben for his card, but didn’t distract him beyond that with questions, and looked up his web site when I got home. His confidence in taking on this kind of challenge comes from over 25 years of plein air painting, largely in the Bronx, but also in other states in the U.S. as well as several other countries around the world.

Hauben paints primarily in oil for his cityscapes, both plein air and in even more complex studio works that often depict large scale panoramas of the city.

Some of my favorites, though, are his richly textured and strong-hued pastel landscapes of more rural scenes. There is also a section of landscapes in oil, easy to miss as it’s only linked from the bottom of the page of pastel landscapes.

Likewise, it’s easy to miss the section of street scenes linked from the bottom of the cityscapes page, and more street scenes linked from the bottom of that page.

There is also a section devoted to Puerto Rican Life in the Bronx, others for portraits, world travels and September 11th, and section for graphics as well as work in bronze and oil relief paintings.

There is an interesting section outside the gallery, linked from the main navigation, for Inches From My Easel, excerpts from a series of anecdotes and stories of Hauben’s experiences over the course of painting on location for 25 years, and a section called Artist @ Work, with photographs of the artist painting on location across the Bronx and around the world.

I’ve long been a fan and advocate of European comics, a field in which I think some of the most exciting work in the comics medium is being done.

Japanese comics (”manga”) have made significant inroads into the U.S. market, becoming something of an obsession in some circles, but European comics have been slow to find acceptance, partly because it’s still difficult to find European comics albums here, and even harder to find translated versions of comics produced in French or Italian.

There have been attempts over the years to bring over some comics from France, Belgium, Italy and the UK (including Marvel’s very nice reprints of material from Jean “Moebius” Giraud in the 1980’s), but they never really captured the audience they might have.

To Marvel’s credit, they are trying again to import and translate some comics from France, this time in partnership with French publisher Soleil. They’ve started with one of my favorites, Sky Doll by Alessandro Barbucci and Barbara Canepa.

If you don’t have access to the French originals, and missed the quick reprint in Heavy Metal, here’s a chance to pick up on the series anew. (See my previous posts on Alessandro Barbucci and Barbara Canepa and Sky Doll in Heavy Metal, in which I post additional images from the series and describe it in more detail.)

I give Marvel extra credit here, not only for bringing French comics to the American audience, but also for starting out with an adult title, in both senses of the word. Sky Doll, though not as overtly sexual as some comics, is labeled with a Mature Content advisory and contains nudity and sexual situations.

Don’t be put off by what might look at first glance like a cheesecake sci-fi story; the series is actually mature in the real sense, and deals with those very subjects, the objectification of women as sexual objects, personal freedom, societal control, and individual resistance to unacceptable social norms. On the other hand, don’t let me give you the impression that the story is high-handed and preachy, it actually manages to deal with those subjects in the course of a fun adventure story, amid wildly imaginative settings and striking design work, rich with detail and sparkling with ebullient color.

The first issue of Marvel’s Sky Doll (a three issue limited series) reached the comic book specialty stores last week, and may still be on the shelves in those stores adventurous enough to have ordered it. If not, you may be able to order it directly form Marvel or from an online specialty store like Mile High Comics.

I also give Marvel credit for doing a good job with the reproduction, capturing the intricate details of Barbucci’s drawings and often subtle tones of Canepa’s colors despite the reduction in size from the original French albums to American comic book format.

There is an article on Newsarama about the series, that includes some pages from the story as well as some of the pages in this issue that preview upcoming Marvel/Soleil projects, Universal War One, Samurai and Scourge of the Gods.

The official Sky Doll site, that was up for several years, has gone offline. There is an unofficial site (FR) that contains a lot of art work if you click around a bit.

Barbara Canepa, writer and color artist for Sky Doll, keeps an active blog (in French, Italian and often English), in which she talks about Sky Doll and other projects. Likewise, Alessandro Barbucci now has a blog as well.

Note: Some of the sites linked here contain material that is NSFW and not suitable for children.