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.

This year’s post about Santa Claus (or suitable Santa Equivalent) is Old Kris by the great American illustrator N.C. Wyeth (more on N.C. Wyeth in a future post).

I had the pleasure of seeing this painting in person recently, as it is in the permanent collection of the Brandywine River Museum and currently on display as part of their Scenes of the Season exhibit (runs until January 11, 2009).

Here we have Wyeth basically doing his take, as did Norman Rockwell, Haddon Sundblom and a host of others, on a version of Santa Claus as most emphatically refined by J.C. Leyendecker; though the characterization of the Jolly One in slightly different form goes back to Thomas Nast and beyond (see my post on Illustrators’ Visions of Santa Claus.

Wyeth’s wonderfully textured characterization of Kris Kringle, with his star and moon studded sack, slightly trimmer waistline and nice details like the mouse perched on the grandfather clock, was a cover for Country Gentleman November 1, 1925 (Country Gentleman was published by Curtis Publishing, publisher of the Saturday Evening Post.)

Perhaps his slightly trimmer waistline and tighter belt makes him a Santa for our times.

Our picture of art history, including the relative importance we assign to individual artists, is always changing; and a good thing too, as inaccuracies and jaded opinions often need to be corrected.

This is the aim of an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, called Jan Lievens: A dutch Master Rediscovered.

Lievens was a friend, rival and studio-mate of Rembrandt, and despite acclaim and popularity in his own time, has for many years been lost in chiaroscuro darkness of that master’s considerably voluminous shadow.

The exhibition seeks to correct this and bring Lievens, whose talent in many areas rivaled or even surpassed Rembrandt’s own, into the light he so adeptly painted.

You will see in Lievens many of the same subjects, influences, techniques and approaches as Rembrandt, as in the costumed portrait above (more detail here); and scholars are in dispute about which of the artists, who shared models, materials and studio space for a time and may have even collaborated on each other’s works, originated what methods and practices.

Even their approach to graphics, and their skill with the process, were comparable.

There are differences as well, of course, and the two artists diverged in style and approach as they got older and went their separate ways.

It’s interesting to compare Leiven’s self-portrait (above, bottom left, larger version here) and his portrait of his friend Rembrandt (above, bottom-right, larger image here) with the slightly elder (by one year) artist’s own self-portrait from about a year earlier. Either Rembrandt was harsh in his own self-image, or Leivens was adept at artistic flattery; I suspect the truth is a little of both.

Jan Lievens: A dutch Master Rediscovered is on view at the National Gallery until January 11. 2009. It then moves to the Milwaukee Art Museum from February 7 to April 26, 2009, and then to the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam from May 17 to August 19, 2009.

The National Gallery has an interactive feature about the exhibition. You can also download the exhibition brochure (PDF 3.2 mb), and an excerpt from the exhibition catalog (PDF 478k). The catalog itself is available from the Museum Shop or from traditional sources like Amazon.

The Wall Street Journal also has a slideshow and review of the exhibition.

The tides of art history haven’t been as kind to Leivens as to his compatriot, but perhaps this is the beginning of a resurgence of interest in an unjustly sidelined Dutch Master.

Addendum:The show will be at the Milwaukee Art Museum from February 7 to April 26, 2009.

Reza Dolatabadi studied at Edinburgh College of Art and the University of Dundee, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, from which he is graduating with a Bachelor in Animation and Media Art.

As a student project, Dolatabadi spent two years creating over 6000 individual paintings as frames for a five minute hand-painted animation called Khoda.

The film is a wordless story that is described as a psychological thriller, directed and art directed by Dolatabadi, written by Dolatabadi and Mark Szalos Farkas, with animation by Adam Thompson and music by Hamed Mafakheri.

Dolatabadi also has a web site on which you can see that film, and others, as well as his concept art and sketches.

He also maintains a blog, largely focused at the moment on the reception and accolades that Khoda is receiving, including Winner of the Best Animation Canary Wharf Film Festival (London) Aug, 2008, Award Nominee, Bacup Film Festival (Rossendale) Oct, 2008, Official selection for the “Best Short Film Program” at Waterford Film Festival (Ireland) November 2008 and selections for several other film and animation festivals.

[Via Digg]

Occasionally artists will become particularly fascinated with the work of one of their predecessors, and study the work of that artist in depth. Such is the case with Jonathan Janson, and artist originally from (if I’m not mistaken) Seattle, now living and working in Rome.

Janson has a deep and abiding interest in the work of Johannes Vermeer, one of the most enigmatic and fascinating figures in the history of art. The result of that fascination is twofold.

One happy result is that Janson has gifted us with Essential Vermeer, an astonishingly extensive and beautifully crafted web resource on Vermeer and his work, that is the high mark for any web resource devoted to a single artist (see my previous post on Essential Vermeer). The only close second, in fact, is Janson’s other, somewhat similar, site: Rembrant van Rijn: Life and Work (see my previous post about the site under its old title, Rembrandt: life paintings etchings drawings and self portraits).

In addition, Janson has created an extensive sub-site devoted specifically to the study of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, and has recently started a blog called Flying Fox, focused on Vermeer, exhibitions and loans of his works as well as other related topics. (The name Flying Fox is from an inn in Delft that was likely central to Vermeer’s world.)

I liken Janson’s Vermeer and Rembrandt sites to the 21st Century equivalent of artist monographs, but bringing to bear the advantages of web technology to extend the lines of information deep into the resources of the web.

Another difference between these sites and traditional monographs is that monographs on artists are usually written by art historians, who study art from a certain perspective, but rarely the perspective of a working artist. The advantages of the latter viewpoint are particularly evident in Janson’s study of Vermeer’s Painting Techinque.

Janson not only brings the perspective of a painter to his writing and research on Vermeer, but moves the knowledge in the other direction, to the second result of his fascination with that artist, in the way it has transformed and informed his own painting.

Many of Janson’s recent works are in-depth and in-practice explorations of Vermeer’s techniques, some of which he has codified in a book, How to Paint Your Own Vermeer: Recapturing materials and Methods of a Seventeenth-Century Master.

Janson’s own explorations of Vermeer’s approach even extend to humorous recasting of some of Vermeer’s famous compositions into his own modern counterparts, a practice that can be simultaneously hilarious and poetic, as in his Girl Playing a Guitar, in which a purple Stratocaster takes the place of Vermeer’s more demure instruments in Woman with a Lute and The Guitar Player.

You can see the same humorous but beautifully painted approach in Janson’s adaptation of Vermeer’s composition from A Lady Writing (see my post on A Vermeer Comes to California), as Young Girl Writing an Email (image above, larger version here), in which Vermeer’s elegant box (perhaps a music box?) has been replaced with a boom box and his quill and inkwell with a laptop. Janson has retained the pearls on the table, and, of course, that wonderful earring.

Vermeer can be surprisingly painterly at times, belying the apparent “realism” of his paintings, and can also be remarkably “soft”, despite the perception he gives of intricate sharp detail. Also, perhaps because of his use of a camera obscura, Vermeer seems in general preoccupied with matters of focus, both in terms of degrees of visual sharpness and compositionally. Janson explores both of these aspects of Vermeer’s work in his own compositions, the soft edges and painterly touches being particularly evident in Girl Writing an Email (details above).

On Janson’s site you can see other examples of his Vermeer inspired interiors as well as his contemplative Seattle landscapes and watercolors.

There is currently a show of Janson’s work at Galleria dell’Incisione in Brescia, Italy until January 30, 2009.

Janson’s fascination with Vermeer has put him on a path of exploration that reaches into the past and future at the same time, in the process throwing a contemporary light on the master’s approach, and giving us a unique perspective from an artist who has done his best to look at a great painter from the “inside”, while revealing his own sensibilities and unique artistic vision.

Doug Chiang is best known in concept art circles as the design director for Star Wars I and II, for which he also did some terrific concept art. Some of it is featured in the books The Art of Star Wars, Episode I - The Phantom Menace and The Art of Star Wars, Episode II - Attack of the Clones.

Chiang’s career actually started as a stop-motion animator for Pee Wee’s Playhouse. From there he moved into commercials, then to concept art and art direction for Rhythm and Hues and Industrial Light and Magic, and then to Lucasfilm.

At the time I wrote about him in 2005, he had produced his first book, Robota, co-written with Orson Scott Card, a sort of proto-movie/game that was never fully developed.

His web site, Doug Chiang Studio, is a left over from that time, not having been updated since late 2005, but it still has artwork on display from that project.

He then went on to found Ice Blink, a studio that brought together some of the best names in film concept art, including Marc Gabbana, Bill Mather, Mark Sullivan, Josh Viers, Dermot Power and others. Ice Blink ceased production in 2007, but the site still has galleries for the artists.

Chiang has since become part of ImageMovers Digital, a production company headed by Robert Zemeckis, whose first release will be A Christmas Carol with Jim Carrey, due in November of 2009.

In the meanwhile, Chiang has a new book out, Mechanika: Creating the Art of Science Fiction with Doug Chiang.

You can find a nice review and overview of the book on Parka Blogs (see my recent article on Parka Blogs).

Rather than a portfolio, it’s a how-to book with tutorials on various aspects of sci-fi themed art, emphasizing Chiang’s specialties in robots, vehicles and spacecraft.