Shy the Sun, the South African animation production company formed around the talents of Ree Treweek and Jannes Hendrikz from the Black Heart Gang, has produced a new animated TV spot, this one for Bakers Precious Biscuits.

See my previous post on Shy the Sun’s Sea Orchestra spot for United Airlines.

The new spot dovetails live shots into the computer animation and seems to rely a bit less on drawing, but brings to bear the quirky visionary talents of the Black Heart team in a short tale of dropped cookies that waken a forest populated with storybook characters.

Little Bo Peep, the Owl and the Pussycat, the Dish and the Spoon and a host of others come out to indulge in the cookies in the midst of a delightfully oddball fairy tale forest.

It might be fun just to go through and see how many references there are to particular fairy tales, fables and children’s classic storybooks like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. (See if you can catch the dish making a face and hat for himself out of cookies.)

See my previous post on the Blackheart Gang’s Tale of How and illustrator Ree Treweek (also here). You can also see the Tale of How on Vimeo now.

This is obviously a group effort. Some of the credits are: Client: Bakers, Agency: Ogilvy, Johannesburg, Animation Directors: Jannes Hendrikz and Ree Treweek (Shy the Sun)
Production House: Blackginger, Live Action Director: Bruce Paynter (Cab Films); and the full credits are listed on the Shy the Sun project page along with the video.

[Link courtesy of Shy the Sun producer Nina Pfeiffer]

Back in 2005 I found myself writing an arts oriented blog; partly because I enjoyed writing it, and partly because in the process I was discovering terrific artists I wouldn’t have sought out or encountered otherwise.

One of them was Duane Keiser, who had originated the “painting a day” blog concept; painting daily postcard-size paintings, mostly still life, and posting them to a blog called A Painting a Day. At the time, it was a novel idea.

I then discovered Julian Merrow-Smith, who was pursuing a similar process; but much to my delight, was painting not only the intimate still life subjects that lend themselves most readily to that discipline, but also beautiful small landscapes of the Provence countryside. He was posting these to his aptly named blog, Postcard from Provence.

I wrote articles on both artists; and in the subsequent years I watched the painting-a-day blog phenomenon grow from two to hundreds of daily painting blogs; many of them named for variations on “a painting a day” or “postcard from wherever”.

Over that time I’ve written articles on many of the best daily painters, as well as hundreds of other artists and topics, but I find myself coming back to Merrow-Smith’s site more frequently than the others.

I’ve tried to pin down why, exactly. Merrow-Smith is an excellent painter, but the potential subject matter of Lines and Colors encompasses a wide range of visual art, and virtually all of art history, so it’s not like I would favor him over Sargent or Vermeer.

For someone who has been to Provence just enough to respond to images of the area with a wistful desire to return, there was an element of personal identification and visual pleasure in his interpretations of the Provence landscape; and perhaps a projection into the imagined life of a painter in the rural French countryside, evoked by his simple but intensely observed still life subjects; but there was something else that kept me checking back more frequently than to most other sites.

I knew that I particularly enjoyed looking back through his archives, noticing the sequence of his subjects, how long he would pursue a series of still life subjects, then move to landscape, interject a striking portrait, and then return to still life and then back to landscape.

Within each avenue of subject matter there were fascinating smaller cycles of variation in approach, in the type of still life, or composition and choice of landscape; each with recurring themes, like his wonderful shadow-crossed rural French roads or his shimmering views of the Rhone.

In thinking about it, and looking back over his work, I finally realized that what makes his paintings particularly compelling for me is that they represent a story.

There’s a narrative here, a chronology of artistic discovery, perseverance, discipline, economic survival, and the ongoing effort to continue to grow and learn as an artist. Postcard from Provence represents several years of the living of an artist’s life, encapsulated in a series of small paintings, each one of which seems to be a penetratingly direct and honest observation of what the artist encountered as he met his daily joining of brush and paint.

Merrow-Smith has just reached something of a landmark, posting his 1,000th Postcard painting, a beautiful still life that seems to sum up the rich contrasts of value, color and texture that have marked his study of the simple and small (image at top), followed by his 1,001st, a landscape without land, the crown of a lime tree, bright against the Provence sky, not far from the door of his home (image at left, top). I’ve added a few more of my favorites, including two portraits; the one on the left is a self-portrait.

You’ll find his archives can be viewed chronologically by month, sorted by subject; or, if you’d like to see the thumbnails of all 1,001 paintings, viewed by full archive, which gives you an overview and sense of the story that I’ve found so expressive.

The process of writing my (almost) daily blog posts has taught me a few things about creative discipline, and also; after many fallow years, inspired me to take up painting again. And there I find my other fascination with Merrow-Smith’s process and progress — as a terrific example for painters, and other artists, of how to pursue art as a daily practice.

Addendum: The other portrait shown is of Merrow-Smith’s wife, cellist Ruth Phillips. (See this post’s comments.) I wondered if that might be the case, but wasn’t certain.

Katherine Tyrrell has a nice post about his 1,000th Postcard painting, including past comments on several of his pieces and an interesting interview with him about his work and his daily painting process. (See my post about Katherine Tyrrell.)

Also, there is a nice article about Merrow-Smith and his 1,000th Postcard in The Guardian.

David Cox is best known as a superb watercolorist during what was considered the “Golden Age” of watercolor (or watercolour, if you prefer the English spelling); though he also produced many drawings, and later in his career took up oil painting in addition to watercolor.

Cox was the son of a blacksmith, and would have followed his father into that profession had he not been too frail for the work. Sent to work making toys, his skill in painting miniature scenes on lockets and boxes got him noticed and sent to work as a scene painter in theaters. He went from that to landscape watercolors, moving to London the year before the Water-Colour Society was formed.

He was a prolific artist, he produced hundreds of works per year for may years, but was never paid what they were worth until late in his career, often selling them in bulk. He made his living for the most part from teaching, insisting on leaving his demonstration paintings to the students (many of which were sold in later years for high sums), and according to a biography, would frequently destroy or throw away many of his pieces, sometimes by stuffing them down storm drains.

Cox’s watercolors are now looked upon as some of the finest of his time, a time when watercolor was coming into its own as a medium, particularly in England; and he is sometimes compared to Constable as a highly regarded landscape artist who was particularly concerned with the visual effects of weather and atmosphere.

His landscape drawings in chalk and pencil have a wonderfully loose, gestural quality, almost Rembrant-like in their confident execution; and his oils show some of the light, color and attention to atmosphere that would later characterize the Impressionists.

Sun, Wind and Rain: The Art of David Cox is the title of an extensive retrospective at the Yale Center for British Art, running from now until January 4, 2009. A press release is available here.

[Exhibition link via ArtDaily.org]

Björn Hurri is an artist who, according to the sparse biographical information on his web site, will “soon live in the UK” and work for the gaming company Creative Assembly.

Hurri also does freelance illustration, and indulges in imaginative exercises for his own amusement; one of which is his series of steampunk versions of Star Wars characters, which he has been recently posting on his space on Gorilla Artfare (see my previous post on Gorilla Artfare).

“Steampunk”, for those unfamiliar with the term, is the fictional concept of a world in which Victorian technology is projected against modern concepts, e.g. mechanical analog computers instead of digital electronic ones, airships instead of jets, and, of course, steam power in place of internal combustion engines and electricity. (Steampunk is a literary sub-genre, in some ways related to “cyberpunk”.)

Steampunk offers a rich vein for graphic playfulness, and Hurri has obviously had fun with the mechanical apparatus, belts, hoses, valves and gears in his fanciful interpretations of Star Wars characters like C-3PO and Boba Fett (above).

If you go further into his pages on Gorilla Artfare (via the numbered navigation at the bottom of the page), you’ll find a variety of sketches, drawings and more finished works, often of imaginative designs for monsters, creatures and alien figures.

You’ll also find similar subjects in the Illustrations section of his web site. There is also a Sketchbook section, arranged by year.

Pose Maniacs, which I wrote about in 2007, is a Japanese web site that features 3D models of human figures, rendered with superficial musculature, for sketching and drawing reference.

A high percentage of them are in an interface that allows you to turn them 360° on their vertical axis for a complete rotation of point of view (image above, original here).

Others are animation sequences that can be stopped in a particular position, say, in the middle of a run cycle, which can be very helpful for animators.

They have continued to add to their considerable catalog of hundreds of poses; and the site, which was originally only in Japanese, has been translated into English.

Born in Shanghai, China during the “Cultural Revolution” (a time in China that could more accurately be called the “Cultural Wasteland”), Lucong (Cong Hua Lu) moved with his family to the American midwest at the age of 11. [Correction, he grew up in the period just after the Cultural Revolution, see this post's comments.]

He was always interested in drawing and art, but in following the expectation that he would go into the sciences, his BA in art was earned at the University of Iowa while simultaneously pursuing a degree in Biology.

Lucong followed his desire to be an artist first on leaving school, moving to Denver and teaching himself to paint in oil, and achieving recognition relatively quickly.

His oil portraits have a fascinating feeling of delicacy in their Ingres-like attention to line, and the use of muted value and hue relationships within the faces. His faces are often set against a subdued background in similar tones, leaving the subjects’ hair in striking, almost graphic, contrast.

At other times, he uses more dramatic value contrasts between the face and background, but still keeps the color carefully restrained. He sometimes poses his subjects in front of other works of art.

I noticed an almost Gothic simplification of the shapes of eyes; which, along with the sometimes formal poses, gives the portraits some of the penetrating stillness found in pre-Renaissance art.

The portfolio of works on the site is divided into painting and drawings. The drawings, though apparently drawn from life, are more interpretive, almost caricatures, with heads large in proportion to bodies and a pleasantly cartoon-like handling of line.

On Lucong’s blog, you will find the works described in more detail, with dates and sizes. Clicking on the blog images reveals larger versions of the images (lacking in the regular portfolio) that let you appreciate the handling of the surface and marvelous details of the work. There are also pieces there that are not in the portfolio section.

There is a wistfulness to the expressions of his sitters, perhaps exemplifying what he describes in his statement as a longing for something undefined that can never be fully obtained.

[Contains some images that could be considered NSFW]

[Via startdrawing.org]

Noteboek, an animation by Evelien Lohbeck that recently won the prize for best NOFF-film 2008 a the Netherlands Film Festival, is one of the cleverest and most amusing animations I’ve seen in a while.

Taking off from the notion of a sketchbook in which a computer keyboard and screen have been drawn, it goes on to self-referentially show a hand-drawn YouTube interface on which a series of Lohbeck’s other short animations, also very clever and amusing in themselves, are shown. Several of them feature the sketchbook in other whimsical roles.

Lohbeck studied animation at the Academy of Arts, St. Joost in the Netherlands (Breda), and also studied interactive design and 3D design.

Her web site, which, in keeping with her award winning film, is designed as a hand-drawn computer interface, features her short films as well as other work. She also has a blog on which she discusses her projects and other topics of interest.

Unfortunately, the films aren’t available on her site at the moment, but you can see many of them on YouTube, including an earlier version of Noteboek.

[Via Articles & Texticles]

I’ve been writing about the “painting a day” phenomenon for about three years now, along the way looking at a number of painters who aren’t trying to maintain the strict “one painting a day” routine, but are instead painting on a regular but less frequent schedule. Often, these painters can devote themselves to larger and more elaborate works than the small (usually postcard-size) paintings favored by those keeping the daily routine.

A case in point is Mick McGinty, who I wrote about early in 2007.

McGinty has a blog called Twice a Week, on which he posts new paintings with about that frequecy. These are larger, and brought to a higher degree of finish, than the pieces by most of the daily painters, including many of those who are also posting on less than a daily basis. This is partly because of the less frequent schedule, and partly because of the impressive painting skills McGinty developed in his years as a professional illustrator.

His subject matter is also more complex than the often simple still life compositions that lend themselves most readily to the daily routine, varying from complex still life subjects to dramatic landscapes from the Rocky Mountains, and more intimate urban park scenes from his trips east to New York.

McGinty has a terrific command of value and atmosphere, and his tonal contrasts give his landscapes an inviting dimensionality. He also has a great ability to render and suggest textures, whether of the rough edged rocks of mountain passes, the sunlit waters of streams and lakes, or the concrete and cobblestone paths of Central Park.

Texture plays another part in painting, of course, not only the suggestions of texture in the image, but the actual texture of the painted surface. McGinty is one of the few painter/bloggers who posts images large enough to actually see the texture and brush strokes, something I’ve been recommending to other painters for a while. I think it adds considerably to the appeal of a painting to a prospective buyer, who must judge a painting without being able to see the original in person.

As with most painters offering their work for sale directly through a blog or website, McGinty places each work up for auction, in his case (as with most others) on eBay.

I recently did something I haven’t done before and bid on a painting online, one of McGinty’s landscapes, Wandering Creek (image above, with detail below, blog post here, larger version here). To my surprise, and delight, and I won the bid.

I was surprised in that my budget was quite low, as was my winning bid. Like many other painter/bloggers, McGinty has apparently decided on a relatively low minimum, perhaps with the thought that keeping the paintings selling is easier than trying to offer them for sale a second time, or leaving a backlog on eBay.

On receipt of the original, I was again surprised, as I would expect a painting of this size and quality to sell in a gallery for at least three times what I paid for it. (Some of this may also have to do with differences in expectations of gallery prices for art in different parts of the country, I don’t know. I’m on the East Coast, McGinty is in Arizona.)

I was delighted with the surface quality and painterly nature of the piece and very pleased with the color. (Though McGinty’s photographs are good, it’s always difficult to match color in an image. In this case, McGinty has balanced the tone for Windows gamma, which means that for those like myself viewing the image with a Mac, the image will appear lighter and less saturated than the original.)

I was also pleased with the little touches that often not as obvious in the online images; in this case nice little accents of red-brown on the edges of the creek and the underside of the trees where reflections from the sun picking up the color of the creek bottom throw light up under the branches and exposed roots, the subtle blue greens in the background and the varied colors in the stone of the bridge.

Even though McGinty is one of the best at presenting his work online (many suffer from too-small images or make the mistake of offering only a link to eBay, without the advantage of a preview image hosted locally on the blog), I’m still struck by the difference between an online image and the much more immediate charms of an the original work.

It makes it all the more interesting to me how artists like McGinty are to a large extent bypassing the traditional gallery structure and taking their work directly to their buyers through the web.