Artists of the Month: Nielsen & Bauer

Well. I finally enough time to work a bit more on this (this, for the uninitiated, is my bi-monthly study of the artists Kay Nielsen & John Bauer -- search for their names on my blog searcher to find previous posts on them). I spent part of the afternoon working on putting color into the Bauer sketch I had done last time. I was pretty pleased with the sketch and so I was relatively amazed to find that I made an utter dog's breakfast of colorizing it. Seriously, it looks like a three-year old drew it -- and I have one on hand to prove it (a three year old, not a dog's breakfast). And no, I'm not being modest, it really is awful.

Part of the problem was that I did the sketch on drafting film, which is amazing and greasy and buttery feeling for drawing outlines on -- and very tricky for subtle color.

Well.

Moving on. I decided that, rather than agonize over that sketch, I'm going to try an entirely new one on either pastelbord or paper. Phooeey on drafting film this time around. I also decided that instead of going with something subtle, I was going to try something completely wild and in the style of Nielsen & Bauer. I've had a composition in mind for awhile now and I think this project is the right one to try it on.

So this week, I paid particular attention to Bauer and Nielsen's use of pattern. I also wanted to focus on the elongated forms and the Hiroshige wave that Nielsen makes such effective use of. See the nice wave Nielsen used on his queen's and dancer's butts? (Nielsen's work on left) And look at the patterns of the two dresses that Bauer uses on his queen and his pining swan-woman. I also liked the way that the dresses weren't just a part of the composition -- they were the composition.

I wanted to try something like that. In my head, I had this idea of a stylized queen looking over her shoulder with a dress that looked as if it was stained glass. I desperately wanted to put one of two profoundly beautiful crowns into a piece of 2D art (links to discussions on them here and here, for those of you who are into history); both of them are from the medieval era and both made me catch my breath when I saw them (this from a non-jewelry person)(yes, I am a medieval geek). Sounds like me, right?

So I stared at the Bauer and Nielsen women and tried to determine what made them unique. For one thing, they all had these lovely, Gwyneth Paltrowesque long necks. Man, while I'm going hog-wild with the photos, I might as well show you Gwyneth's neck. See, there she is with her mom. It's obviously genetic.

And fabulous hair! Check it out -- long locks, or major up-dos -- the hair is important. Important, but simplified. Note to Maggie, who likes highlights: simplify. Flatten. SIMPLIFY.

And the faces are delicate, understated, careful. Hmm, I thought, unwisely. I can do this. Of course, by the time I had done all of this work, I had completely used up my study time . . . so it's going to have to wait until next time for the sketches. But I think there's some exciting source material here, and it's something I've wanted to do for awhile . . . so maybe I'll actually finish an entire project next Sunday.

Is anyone else doing this project, or am I by my lonesome?

Kay Nielsen - Artist of the Month Part I

As promised, it's Sunday and I'm dutifully posting about one of the artists of the month (well, of the months as I'm probably going to stretch this over January and February). Today I focused mainly on Kay Nielsen, after discovering that Bauer's going to be a bit tricky. Most of the material on him is in Swedish and he also inconveniently drowned in his 30s, leaving behind not a lot of info for us to study. So we'll save him for later in the month. Plus, I think I'll need to get my sketching skills back up to par to do his style justice.

Okay. So onto Nielsen. I was asked by two people in the comments section how I studied artists. I come at it from a couple of different angles:

• how they learned. I scout out bios to find out what sort of schooling they had.
• who influenced them. No point reinventing the wheel.
• composition. Do they have rules they always follow? Maxfield Parrish's adherence to Dynamic Symmetry was fascinating.
  
• palette. What colors do they tend to use? I learned an amazing amount about mixing colors when I studied Waterhouse. I had no idea I could use that much blue and red-brown together in one composition.
  
• technique. Sometimes, like Sargent, they leave behind journals and students who describe their process for us. This is like gold.
  
• overall feel. Romantic, like Waterhouse? Aggressive, like Van Gogh? Dark, like Sargent?

So I'm not (usually) looking for something very specific, like "I want to paint women like the Mona Lisa." I look at their whole body of work and try and take something away from it as a whole. It was that method that first really drilled into my head that I should be striving for a cohesive style. Our style is what we leave behind, not one specific piece.

Anyway, onto Nielsen. If you follow the link above, it'll take you to a pretty good bio page. I prefer this page for examples of his work, because it's a bunch of them in one place. So, I gave myself over to reading and looking for awhile, and this is what I got to:

• His work is highly stylized, after the manner of Japanese prints
• They are for the most part flat, using colors and patterns to give them depth rather than any particular sense of foreshortening or recession
• His figures are elongated and androgynous, pale and idealized
• He uses color to attract attention, like the warm red in these three primarily cool images.
• Aside from red, his colors tend to be muted -- dusky pinks, gray-greens, sea-foam blues.
• Compositionally, he uses a lot of vertical elements, especially parallel elements, and he breaks them up with arches. Curiously, I was noticing a lot of the exact same curve in his work (do you see the curve in each of these three examples?), and then I read that he made frequent use of the "Hiroshige wave." Well, that took me a bit more research, but I found that Ando Hiroshige was a prominent Japanese artist. One of his most famous images (one that I realized I had seen before) was one of a wave:
• 
• Finally, Nielsen did a lot of images where most of the compositional interest was in the lower third of the painting. His skies and upper thirds are fascinating examples of compositional support systems, active backgrounds to support the subject.

I'm hoping to find out more about his technique (all I know at this point was that he used watercolors and that he was slow enough that Disney kicked him to the curb), but I think I'll have to go for printed material to get that info. And my library is rather coy on the subject of Swedish illustrators, so I might have to - gasp - buy some books.

Anyway, by this point I was dying to have a go at some sketches, so I got out my new sketchbook (and yes, I will also be giving this one away to a blog subscriber, once it's full). Since I began last year's projects by illustrating a scene from one of my novels-in-progress, I thought it would be fitting this year to illustrate a scene from my current novel-in-progress, Still Wolf Watching.

So the first thing I did was tackle the long, high composition with the subject down at the bottom. My first effort was sort of satisfactory, but to me, it looks like a cheesy calendar image. It might be different once I did it full size (this little sketch is only 4 inches tall or so), but I was missing that stylized pizazz.

I can't believe I just used the word "pizazz."

Anyway, so I decided I needed to work on my wolf, both poses and anatomy. Next page was wolf sketches, stylizing and cleaning up and making edgier.

And then my second effort was supposed to be a grand culmination of what I had learned from the first sketch and the wolf sketches, but I think I still like the first one best. Maybe put my stylized wolf in the first one. Hmm. See how I'm using the Hiroshige wave in the shape of the wolf's back? I'm sooo proud of myself. Still, these aren't the amazing creatures (the sketches, not the wolves) I was hoping for. I'll see what you all think and maybe try my hand at more sketches next Sunday, using more of what I've learned.

January/ February Artists for Study

"The Twelve Dancing Princesses" - Kay Nielsen.

Long-time readers of this blog will remember that I began 2007 by studying John Singer Sargent for the month. In 2007 I also studied Van Gogh, Maxfield Parrish, J. W. Waterhouse, and Whistler, but none of them influenced me quite as much as John Singer Sargent. For a month, I immersed myself in his work and finally produced an image based on what I learned from him. His use of darks and lights completely changed the way I looked at my art and sent me miles ahead on my journey.



I'd love to do that again this year, and I think I may have some time in the next two months to devote to studying. So my goal again is to immerse myself in an artist's* work for the time alloted, produce a piece of work based upon what I've learned, and put links to any other artists reading this blog who are also participating in the project. *A safely dead artist.



I have an unhealthy fascination with illustration and fantasy, so for January and February, I'll be looking at two Nordic illustrators from the beginning of the 20th century: Kay Nielsen and John Bauer. You might be looking at their work and saying holy cow, batman, that looks nothing like maggie, and you would be right. But my goal is not to look like them -- it's to take what I like of their work and incorporate it into my own.



So what do I like? I like that the pieces are dark, which makes the light more meaningful. I like that they are simple, but say a lot. I love the high, tall compositions of Kay Nielsen. I like the limited palette and the clever use of both 2D and 3D effects to draw the eye. I like the fanciful compositions that are entirely from the artist's head. I think I could learn from them. Nay, I know I could learn from them.


So what I'm going to do is work on my studying every Sunday. That makes it manageable for me and gives me a goal to shoot for (there I am again, on about these goal-things). Anyone who wants to join in can feel free to comment on this blog and leave the link for their blog-post on the subject. It's a great way to share the blog-traffic around, make new friends, and learn more about what we love: art. And little girls kissing bears.


So who's with me?! Raaah!!