style 11.1

the look of the city has changed over the last centuries, some of them grew from small marketplaces in medieval times to huge sizes with tens of millions of people. the once atmospheric cosy environments turned into concrete jungle, with architecture not for people anymore. artists all over the world have captured these changes through their eyes in very different styles. this incredible variety is fascinating for me and it might influence your work as well, in case you need to get some ideas about URBAN LIFE.

the painter poet

that’s what CARL SPITZWEG was called, he lived from 1808 – 1885 in munich, germany, where he portrayed the daily life in humorous scenes, painted cartoons. you can read more about him in my earlier post from january 6, 2009. below some more of his artwork

© carl spitzweg

maritime 3

some more powerful marine paintings created by one of the leading marine painters – MONTAGUE DAWSON, 1895 – 1973. go – here – for the earlier posts of his work.

© montague dawson

style 10.6.1

the change of seasons is something I am missing since I live in this part of the world close to the equator, where you have only one season all over the year. I put together some paintings from around the world and from the last five hundred years illustrating that amazing change of colors and mood in very different styles.

style 10.5.3

more stylistic variations, looking at people in ART

style 10.5.2

some more people in art…

style 10.4

storytelling and the visual arts are very close connected. look at the stories on the walls of the caves of lascaux. or most religious art throughout the middle ages, like the illuminated manuscripts or the stained glass windows of the christian cathedrals. art helps us to perceive aspects of reality we could not see otherwise. a chinese proverb says – one picture is worth ten thousand words, or – what ivan s.turgenev wrote 1862 in his novel ‘fathers and sons’ – ‘the drawing shows me at one glance what might be spread over ten pages in a book.’
in the compilation of artwork below I have collected some stories from all over the world. note besides the content their composition, the way the artists lead your eyes through their story. and study how the color is used to support the atmosphere, to help the viewer develop an emotional feeling.

style 10.3

here are some more landscape and architecture style studies in classical paintings of the past…

style 10.1

it is a challenge to develop a special style for an illustration, an animated movie or just a character. the goal is to create something that nobody has done before. for that reason and of course for inspiration I recommend to gather all reference that is available. usually the amount of information we have is not sufficient, information not just about the designwork in illustration and film of the past few years, but information about what has been created in ‘the arts’ over the past 12.000 years. starting with the cave paintings of lascaux, early highly stylized egyptian art as well as greek- and roman sculptures and mosaics, and the whole medieval art from byzanthine to gothic. further in more recent centuries baroque, rokoko, romanticism, impressionism, art nouveau, expressionism and of course all the modern art of the past 70 years. not to forget russian-, oriental-, persian- and indian-, southern american-, african-, eskimo- and aborigine art.

the knowledge about all these different ‘styles’ is helpful. in the past it was pretty difficult if not impossible to find all the right publications or visit enough museums to study the vast amount of art that has been created all over the world. today it is much easier to research through the internet, with a bit detective work everybody interested enough can do it.

most of the above compiled artwork in figurative art was created over the past 500 years. the series will be continued, I want to concentrate on some more unusual and lesser known art. hopefully that will encourage you to start your own archives.

ludwig richter

a while ago I posted some woodcuts of the german painter and etcher ADRIAN LUDWIG RICHTER, 1803 – 1884. he was very popular in his lifetime and is probably the most typical german illustrator of the romantic era. here now some of his paintings. you might notice how much his work influenced the art directors and background artists of the early disney films but as well later the style of SLEEPING BEAUTY.

© ludwig richter

eugene galien-laloue 8

© eugene galien-laloue

the orientalists

after NAPOLEON had invaded egypt with his army in 1798 and was driven out by the british after one year, a lot of artists followed, writers and painters – to become well known as the ORIENTALISTS. the movement lasted about a century and many of them were pretty famous. some of the painters specialized in landscapes, archeology or in people, others in biblical or historical themes. but one thing they all had in common – the experience changed their lives, the journey affected these artists deeply.
I was introduced to the ORIENTALIST-painters when I worked on disney’s ALADDIN and was searching for reference of the middle east. following is a small selection of watercolors from four wellknown painters – CHARLES ROBERTSON, 1844-1891, cairo – WILLIAM WYLD, 1806-1889, algier harbour – AUGUSTUS OSBORNE LAMPLOUGH, 1877-1930, nile – CARL HAAG, 1820-1915, cairo.
the next post will be about the tales from this area.

rowland hilder

he was described as THE TURNER OF HIS GENERATION, – ROWLAND HILDER, 1905 – 1993. you probably see the similarity between HILDER’S landscapes and the backgrounds in disney’s 101 DALMATIANS, together with RONALD SEARLE his artwork was used for inspiration. HILDER was born in long island in the US, but returned with his parents in 1915 to england, where he lived most of his life in a kentish country village. he illustrated numerous books and was a professor at goldsmith’s college school of art. someone described his style and technique as so recognisable that there are parts of England which, in tribute to his skill, seem to have grown physically like his paintings. he shares with JOHN CONSTABLE the distinction of having seen an entire region of England identified with his name and art. The description ROWLAND HILDER COUNTRY evokes a landscape as distinctive as CONSTABLE’S COUNTRY along the Suffolk Stour. That is as generous a tribute as any man could wish.

© rowland hilder

landscape

PEDER MORK MONSTED, 1859 – 1941, was a danish landscape artist, well known for his romantic, poetic painting of nature. he depicted the grandeur and monumental aspect of the landscape, with a remarkable eye for detail and color. the entry on MONSTED in the Weilbach Dansk Kunstnerleksikon characterises the artist’s achievement – MONSTED’S great success was largely a consequence of his ability to develop a series of schematic types of landscape, which could each individually represent the quintessence of a scandinavian, italian, or most frequently danish landscape. in motifs, built up around still water, trees and forest, he specialised in portraying the sunlight between tree crowns and the network of trunks and branches of the underwood, the reflections on the water of forest and sky and snowladen winter landscape paintings with sensations of spring, often all together in the same painting.  insofar as MONSTED included figures in his paintings, these were principally used as ornaments with a view to emphasising the idyllic character of the motif; and only rarely were the figures and the anecdotal element given as prominent a role as in traditional genre paintings.

© peder mork monsted

sir william russell flint

SIR WILLIAM RUSSELL FLINT, 1880 – 1969, is probably one of the best known english watercolor artists. in the early 1900s he illustrated for the ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS, following were book-illustrations like SOLOMON’S SONG OF SONGS and a four volume edition LE MORTE D’ARTHUR. in his later work he concentrated on oriental themes. besides his beautiful watercolors he was a passionate drawing artist and published several books with studies and sketches that reveal his love for art and stunning models. he was member of the royal academy, president of the royal watercolor society and was knighted in 1947. below is a small selection of some of his watercolors.

© sir william russell flint

style 9.3

today I will compare the different looks of trees throughout the world of classical art over a period of about 600 years. when you look at these trees you have to separate the different elements – the ROOTS, the TRUNK and the CROWN. sometimes parts of the ROOTS are above of the earth and create nice curvy shapes against the usually pretty straight TRUNK. the TRUNK with its BARK can have a smooth or very textured surface. the CROWN is sometimes shown just as a shape or with the FOLIAGE, with all the different leaves on smaller branches. you have to differentiate as well if they are DECIDUOUS TREES ( leafs ), NEEDLE- or PINE-TREES or tropical PALM-TREES. then the SEASONS make a big difference, in shape and color. in winter you only see the tree skeleton in case of the leafy trees with a lot of thinner branches, in summer you have a big mass of foliage. in spring the leafy trees develop blossoms first, very important in japanese and chinese art. autumn adds some bright red, orange and sienna brown colors, spring shows juicy yellows and greens. as you can imagine and see in some of the paintings as well, all that creates already an incredible variety. the early paintings in the western world were done for religious reasons, the figures were more important. that’s why the backgrounds are more the idea of the environment. throughout the medieval times that changes, the worlds becomes more and more realistic. then in more modern years it develops again the other way, portraying and abstracting the idea of nature, this development is similar in all different cultures. the paintings I combined show you how rich our world of art is, how beautiful and very unique the artists from around the world and through times painted what they saw. this time I wanted to concentrate just on TREES, in some future chapters I will do the same with different elements.

eugene galien-laloue 7

© eugene galien-laloue

style 8.2

EYVIND EARLE wrote in his autobiography – HORIZON BOUND ON A BICYCLE -

‘I knew I was going to style SLEEPING BEAUTY, as well as paint all the key backgrounds, and all I had to do was to do it in my own style. how utterly simple it was going to be for me. at home I began practicing doing SLEEPING BEAUTY’S forest scenes. after all, my favorite artists were ALBRECHT DUERER and VAN EYCK and BRUEGEL, and all GOTHIC ART, and the HOURS of the DUKE DE BERRY. the whole project fit me like a glove. AL DEMPSTER told me it wasn’t fair of me to practice on my own time at home, but after all, I had been trying to get into disney for fifteen years, all during which AL DEMPSTER, CLAUDE COATS and RALPH HULETT had been making a good living while I struggled and struggled. now it was my turn to show them what I could do…

…JOHN HENCH had just about finished two masterful drawings in black/white of two forest scenes. they were given to me to paint as I wished. JOHN HENCH’S renderings were renaissance rokoko to my mind. I wanted stylized simplified gothic. straight tall perpendicular lines like gothic cathedrals. the figures should be straight and tall and thinned out and elongated like gothic sculpture…

…I took JOHN HENCH’S masterpieces and straightened up the curving, bending, winding trees. I used one-point perspective. I rearranged the bushes and trees in geometrical patterns. I made a medieval tapestry out of the surface I possible. all my foregrounds were tapestry designs of decorative weeds and flowers and grasses. and since it is obvious that the gothic style and detail evolved from the arabic influence aquired during the crusades, I found it perfectly permissible to use all the wonderful patterns and details found in PERSIAN MINIATURES. and since persian miniatures had a lot in common with chinese and japanese art, I felt it was ok for me to inject quite a bit of japanese art, especially in the close up of leaves and overhanging branches…

…and then, since everything came from nature in the first place anyway, I started taking close-up photographs of every different bush or tree I could find in the san fernando valley, and then took VAN EYCK, and PETER BRUEGEL, and ALBRECHT DUERER, and BOTTICELLI, and THE HOURS OF THE DUKE DE BERRY, and the PERSIANS and JAPANESE and GOTHIC ART, and on top of that I injected a little piece of EYVIND EARLE. wherever my taste lead me is where I wandered in my search for the perfect styling of SLEEPING BEAUTY.’

tomorrow the final chapter.

© disney enterprises, inc

maritime 2

some more of MONTAGUE DAWSON’S beautiful, powerful paintings. I quote from an article about his work – DAWSON’S quick, controlled brushwork gives life to his paintings, and combined with his rigorous attention to nautical details makes them instantly truthful and appealing. he researched carefully for a painting and never knowingly left an inaccuracy uncorrected even for the sake of artistic effect. the rigging, for example, is painted with minutest care, not merely in physical detail, but also in the relative tension of the ropes and intricate shadows and patterns. he would often work quickly on a picture, completing in one session a work, which up until that point might have occupied many weeks. to him, marine painting combined the freedom of landscape painting with the disciplines of portraiture. the elements may be imaginatively painted but the ship must be a likeness both in detail and in character. ‘you must be quite certain that she is sailing with the wind in the proper quarter – if she is on port tack, you must make sure the sails are filled from the port tack.’
the strong narrative elements in DAWSON’S work are especially appealing. his paintings recreate, often with deep affection and knowledge, moments of drama and history, which seem to leap across the intervening centuries. he ranged widely for his subjects, recording the BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR, moments from AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE, the return of the CUTTY SARK, and very often the races between the tea clippers returning to london from china.

© montague dawson

eugene galien-laloue 6

some more paintings from the ‘BELLE EPOQUE’, 1890 – 1900, from two of the PARISIAN PAINTERS – EDOUARD-LEON CORTES and EUGENE GALIEN-LALOUE.

© edouard-leon cortes / eugene galien-laloue