May Artist #2: Louis Comfort Tiffany

Okay, maybe I'm being self-indulgent here by choosing Louis Comfort Tiffany as my second artist to study, because I've known I've loved him for a long time. I can't help it. He was an amazingly versatile artist that, aside from some quite hideous lamps, had an incredible grasp on palette, form, and style. I definitely have stuff I can learn from him.

I had always drooled unabashedly over his stained glass pieces, but I didn't know about his regular paintings until I bought the book Louis Comfort Tiffany by Jacob Baal-Teshuva, which is full of gorgeous photos of both his stained glass windows and his paintings (and also his hideous lamps, but we'll pass over that lightly).

So what is it that draws me to Tiffany's work? Well, man -- first of all, I really encourage everyone to follow the links at the bottom of the post to find out more about his life, because it's really fascinating stuff, and also to see more of his art, because it's impossible to represent it well in just a few pieces here.

Tiffany's work is diverse enough that I could really do two posts: one for his paintings and for his windows, but I'm going to only talk about his stained glass for now.

Why I Like The Works from Tiffany Studios:

• Clever use of limited palette. One of the things that I find appealing about these windows is that he used an amazing amount of neutral tones and colored grays/ lavenders/ browns so that the color he did use popped out -- or to create a contemplative mood when the "color" of emphasis was pure white.
  
• Use of strong, simple compositional design rather than color to create interest.
  
• Powerful overall shapes. Stained glass tends towards a certain 2D-ness -- sort of like the layers of 2D cutouts that make scenery on a stage -- and I get the feeling when looking at a Tiffany window that he is embracing that effect and using it to lead me to a very definite focal point.
  
• Strong structural elements. By necessity, he has the edges of the windows giving him strong verticals and horizons, but does that faze Louis? Not hardly. He rocks those strong geometrical shapes with diagonals that constantly guide our eyes where they need to go.
• Recession. I'm not talking about what our economy's doing. I'm talking about how Tiffany pushes those dramatic elements of the composition back by placing bold, intricate shapes in the foreground.
• Application of color. I love that no color in a Tiffany window is single color. Every petal of every iris is three different shades of purple; every brown is streaked with a green in the same value. Strong, simple compositions marked by insanely detailed glasswork and complex, beautiful colors. Lovely.
  
• Idealism. These aren't real places. Well, actually they are. Oyster Bay is, for instance (the top right image). I saw a photograph someone had taken of Oyster Bay from the same angle. Can I tell you it did not look like that window? Tiffany's windows drip with a sort of understated idealism only made tolerable by his beautifully muted palettes.
  

Links:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Artcyclopedia Images
Ye Olde Wikipedia
And of course the Tiffany book I mentioned above is really the best I've found for luscious images.

Maggie on Art Materials, Part III

"Thursday" - set of sketches in my sketchbook.
copyright 2008 Maggie Stiefvater.

Remember, the sketchbook will be given away to a random blog subscriber when it's full, so sign up for the blog even if you don't read it through your e-mail if you want to have a chance to win it! (I'm about half-way through the current sketchbook at the moment)


Sorry about the delay! My brother whisked my computer away to HighSpeedInternetLand to get updates downloaded and so I was without computer access. However, it did give me a nice long day to get other things done, especially since Sunday is my lazy day. After drinking four glasses of sweet tea, I decided it was time I try a fun looking project that my friend Vivien Blackburn mentioned to me. It's a comic strip of your day done in twelve panels, done from memory rather than observation. Hers is rather prettier than mine but it was a lot of fun regardless. The hardest part was trying to figure out how to illustrate novel-writing! All the exciting stuff having to do with writing a novel goes on in my head . . . to the uninitiated, I'm just staring blankly at a computer screen.

Anyway, Vivien has captions for hers but I think I'll let you puzzle out what mine is without. I'd love to see any of my blog readers tackle this -- if you do, be sure to let Vivien know on her blog.

Okay, onto the questions from the last posts. There are just a few -- let me know if I missed you.

1. About solvents. Have you tried "eco-house extra mild citrus thinner #115?" It is as you described the British solvent that you order. This is made in Canada, and I think I got my last batch from Dick Blick. Smells nice. For even lower toxicity you can't beat Gamblin's Gamsol. It just doesn't smell quite as nice.:-)

I've had this mentioned to me quite a few times but I've never gotten around to ordering it. I think I've now been officially pushed over the edge, however (my husband would argue that happened a long time ago), and I'm going to give it a try.

2. Hi Maggie, which retailer do you trust to place your overseas order with?

I don't really have too much call to order overseas except to order Zest-It, as mentioned in the solvents post, and the few times that I ordered from Canadian super-art-store, Curry's, which went off without a hitch. Other than that, I haven't had much experience with it . . . I think if I were choosing an overseas retailer, I'd be tempted to google their name to find out if there is anyone talking smack about them online (that's slang, did you catch it? I'm so hip) and then I would decide between the final two by determining which company's sales representatives had the most charming foreign accent.

3. I have a question related to the pastelbord (although I suppose this could apply to any support) and solvents: Do you find that the application of solvent limits the number of layers that you can apply?

I actually find the opposite to be true. If I'm really between a wall and a hard place (which, um, really are the same things, did you notice?) layerwise, I'll usually add some solvent, because it'll let me get another layer down on top. Now -- layers on top of solvent do behave completely differently than layers pre-solvent, so that's something to experiment with. I don't think I'd go around adding solvent to a portrait commission before I had tried it on something that I wasn't afraid to make Excrutiatingly Ugly.

4. have you ever tried working on metal? as a metalsmith i haven't tried it yet, but it is all the rage right now. the metal has to be sandblasted so the pencil can grip, but its quite a neat effect. i think its rachelle thiewes that has done it best, especially in her sculpture pieces.

Metal is something I hadn't thought of -- I can only imagine that layers must be a thing of the past working on a surface like that, because there's nothing to absorb the layers. I tried googling her but didn't find anything immediately accessible.

5. I like Colourfix alot and was just wondering how you choose a background/support color to use. Sometimes I use a color that is in the subject alot (like cream or tan for a drawing of a yellow lab ) and sometimes I use a complementary color for the punchy contrast. Is there any color you prefer/would order a bunch of?

I always use the dark colors of Colorfix, because I prefer working on darker supports (my work tends to be mostly dark with elements of light, because I am Wednesday Addams). I also prefer the warm colors -- the brown and the red in particular -- because my work tends to be warmer. I would just keep in mind when I was ordering that colored supports are supposed to save you work. If you're doing a dark piece, you want a dark surface. If you're doing a warm piece, pick a warm color, etc. If you're doing a cool piece on red, you'll kill yourself trying to beat back that red. Colored papers should be a time-saver, not an ulcer-causer.

Okay! I'm hitting the sack. Let me know if I missed you and if there's anything you'd like to see me tackle as a series post for next week. Otherwise, I'll be announcing my next one Monday night.

Getting an Art Education Online, Part II

You may be wondering why there is an alien baby in today's post. Well . . . I wanted to show you what I looked like before I started my online art education. This alien baby is actually a drawing I did of my daughter back when she was about six months old. And I thought it was good.

Ugh. Anyway, do the math. This drawing is a little over three years old. How far I've come!

As if you need any more encouragement about online education, right? I've decided this is such an important topic to me that I'm going to do an additional post about it tomorrow and hopefully attack the questions as well.

Today I want to post on the online resources I've made use of in the past three years. There are hundreds more that I'm sure I've not encountered yet, and I encourage you to post the ones that were actually useful to you in the comments. Not the ones you ought to post. Not the ones you thought about reading. The ones you did. The ones that really made an influence.

Now, as a bunch of the commenters noted in the last post, art education in any form is what you make of it. Essentially, all artists are self-taught -- it's just whether or not you have a professor to guide you. Online, you have to be your own professor, your own study-guide. You also have only you to be accountable for, which can be a problem. No deadlines mean lackluster study habits. So it shouldn't be a surprise that the first and absolutely best resource on my list is an artists' forum. Surround yourself with people who know what you're working on, because then you'll have an excuse to get your work done and to strive harder.

Without further ado, my top five resources:

WetCanvas: http://www.wetcanvas.com/
Hands down, this is the best resource in my arsenal. There are other artists forums out there -- ScribbleTalk, ArtPapa, etc. and I'm certain they're also useful -- but WetCanvas just happened to be the first one I ran across and the one that became my home. Why was it useful? First of all, there were a ton of struggling beginners just like me, posting their works in progress for all to critique. Even if I couldn't work up the nerve to post my works for critique, I learned shovel-loads from observing how other people laid down color and attacked their artistic problems. Plus, as mentioned above, suddenly I had accountability. If I posted a work in progress, I felt motivated to finish it and post the next step. I'm Piper1 on WC and you can see just how far my work's come since I began posting on the colored pencil forum. It's a huge site -- plan on taking a while to get familiar with how it works.

Making a Mark: http://makingamark.blogspot.com/
The blog of art maven Katherine Tyrrell is a veritable haven for beginning and advanced artists alike. She covers a huge range of art subjects and writes about them sensitively and intelligently. I would say I'm biased because I'm also a close friend of hers, but we met on WC and became friends precisely because we approach art-making in the same way. There's always more to be learned.

Gurney Journey: http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/
This is the blog of James Gurney, the artist who created Dinotopia. Don't let that throw you. His blog is a wonderful resource for color theory and art techniques -- my mind boggles at how much time each of his intensely useful blog posts must take to write. I highly recommend it for intermediate and advanced artists -- beginning artists might find it a bit overwhelming.

John Singer Sargent Virtual Gallery: http://jssgallery.org/
Ironically, the painter who had the most significant influence on my work is dead as a doornail. John Singer Sargent's work still hits me everytime I look at it, and I spent literally hours going through this site. I don't think everyone has to idolize JSS, however, I do think having an artist mentor, alive or dead, is useful.

Endless Summer Art Fair: http://summerartfair.blogspot.com/
This is one of clever Casey Klahn's blogs -- this one is full of tips on setting up art booths and generally not making an idiot of yourself when you're displaying your art in public. A must for working artists.

More tomorrow . . .