Gurney Journey

We're on our way to Colorado and Wyoming, ready to cover events as they unfold. Our little car is packed full of gouache, casein, watercolor, fountain pens, coffee, and peanut-butter-flavored granola bars.

Here is the cover of the sketchbook I'm currently traveling through. I called it "Rest Stop," following my custom to title the sketchbook with words that appear on the first page. The sketch on the first page is captioned the 'Heavenly Rest Stop Café.'

I'm dreaming about the road, because Jeanette and I will be leaving next week on a car trip from New York to Wyoming and Colorado. As much as possible, we'll be taking the old highways through small town America, sketching as we go.


I'll be one of the guests at the SKB Workshop in Dubois, Wyoming, September 14-19. There will be a lot of plein-air, landscape, and wildlife painters there in an informal setting.

On February 21, I'll be presenting a lecture in Massachusetts at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The lecture, Q&A and book signing starts at 7:00. Contact Professor Brian Moriarty for more information. Photo US News.

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From April 10-14 I'll be one of the featured guests at the 2nd Annual Plein Air Convention and Expo in Monterey, California. I'll be doing a talk on composition, as well as painting in oil outdoors in the picturesque environs, alongside the rest of the faculty and participants. It's a great opportunity for shop talk while practicing in the field.
April 10-14, Plein Air Convention and Expo, Monterey-Carmel, California
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Later in April, over the weekend of the 25th, I will be one of the guests at the Art of the Portrait Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. This event brings together many of the top portrait artists from around the world, painting side by side from live models and explaining their process. My lecture will will be about drawing portraits "in the wild" from candid models, and I'll be on a panel talking about blogging. (Photo Charles Walls) 
April 25-28. Art of the Portrait Conference, Atlanta
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In June I will be one of the guests for a couple of days at Illustration Master Class in Amherst Massachusetts. The spaces are filled for this year, but there is a wait list.

June 12 (or so) 2013 Illustration Master Class, MA

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Illustration Master Class was in full swing in Amherst, Massachusetts, when we arrived yesterday.


Here's student Mark Helwig with his dragon reference maquette, made of Super Sculpey. He told me that it's his first time using Sculpey. There are about 100 students from all over the world, some using digital, some traditional, and some combining the two.

The workshop lasts a week, and at this stage the students have already gotten their sketch approved, gathered reference, and transferred the drawings onto the painting surface. Many of the students are professionals themselves, but everyone is trying something new, sharing techniques with each other, and staying up late hours.


IMC is team-taught by a faculty of guests and regulars, so students get plenty of opinions (not always agreeing opinions) about their sketches. I'm here for a day and a half as a guest speaker.

Back row: me, Greg Manchess, Dan Dos Santos, Irene Gallo, Scott Allie, Jeff Mack, Donato Giancola. Front Row: Adam Rex, Scott Fischer, Iain McCaig, Rebecca Guay, Julie Bell, and Boris Vallejo (Peter d.S. was away on a phone call).

 
Here's a sketch of Mo Willems, who did a slide show, explaining the anatomy of a children's picture book.


Peter de Sève did a wonderful presentation about his life in caricature and character design. Later on, Rebecca (left) treated us to a faculty supper at a Chinese restaurant, where Peter and Mo showed us other ways to think about those take-out containers.

Here are some little portraits of some of the amazing people we had supper with in Lucca:

1. The incomparable comic artist Massimiliano Frezzato, creator of I Custodi del Maser, 2. Terry Brooks, author of Sword of Shannara, 3. Emanuele Vietina, vice-director of Lucca Comics and Games, and 4. Steve Perrin, game designer for Dungeons and Dragons and RuneQuest.


Also: 1. Skippy, 2. Mandy, 3. Athos, and 4. Andrea. These sketches were all made with water-soluble colored pencils, and all were drawn around the supper table (except the one of Skippy, which was a workshop demo).

Lucca Comics and Games

I painted for another two hours on the charity auction demo, here at the festival of comics and games in Lucca, Italy.

The changes are mostly corrections in the drawing: fixing the windows, and tinkering with the placement of the dinosaur’s legs.


My reference was this colored pencil sketch, and I hope to do more of these tomorrow after the rain clears.


It was a great pleasure to meet and paint next to an artist I’ve admired for many, many years, Phil Hale. He painted a whole series of images based on rubbing out of black oil paint.

Lucca Comics and Games

Jeanette and I have been mooching Wi-Fi from coffee shops like everyone else does.
She did this sketch of a cafe patron using a Micron brush pen.


I guess we’re part of an alarming trend. In one Starbucks, we noticed 14 patrons. Eleven of them were busy with laptops, two were interested in hand-held devices, and one was a kid playing quietly with an empty coffee cup.

Nobody spoke, except to say, “Do you mind if I plug this in?”

What better place for a double-deck hamburger than Bob’s Big Boy family restaurant in Burbank?


And what better person to enjoy it with, than Mark Frauenfelder, the guy who launched BoingBoing and Make magazine.


Built in 1949, this is the oldest Bob’s still standing. According to a bronze plaque out front, “it was designed by respected architect Wayne McAllister, incorporating the 1940s transitional design of streamline modern style while anticipating the freeform 50s coffee shop architecture.”
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More about Mark Frauenfelder at BoingBoing, Make Magazine. His new book is Made by Hand.
More about the history of Bob’s Big Boy. and on Wikipedia

Tomorrow we’ll return to sea monsters.