ROGUES continued

My illustration for "Tough Times All Over",  Joe Abercrombie's jaunty tale of thieves who stalk one another dog-eat-dog through the dark alleys of tomorrow.

ROGUES

I'm illustrating another book for Subterranean Press.  This one will be the most ambitious project they've ever undertaken: a big, lavishly illustrated collector's edition of ROGUES edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozios.

My illustration for The Rogue Prince, GRRM's newest addition to A Song of Fire and Ice, appears on the cover.  It features Prince Daemon Targaryen in a story set generations before the dramatic events of A Game of Thrones.

Forty illustrations (five full color paintings and thirty-five black & white drawings) are required to illustrate this anthology of stories by twenty-one of today's top authors. The ROGUES gallery of characters includes thieves, knights, Nazis, necromancers, monsters, grifters, gangsters, zombies, high-school teachers, temptresses, time-travelers, bounty-hunters, warriors and wizards -- a smorgasbord of subject matter for any illustrator.

Each illustration, whether painting or drawing, is being conceived, designed and rendered for graphic beauty, forceful characterization and drama. 

I'm deeply gratified to know that ROGUES quickly sold-out in pre order, as did the copies that I will remarque. We're sparing no effort to make this very special volume one to be cherished by those who love and value illustrated books.

Art Renewal Center 2013-14 Salon

I am proud to report that A Moorish Man-at-Arms (blog post from September 15th) has won the distinction of inclusion as a finalist in the figurative category at the 2013 - 14 ARC Salon.  ART RENEWAL CENTER is the world's foremost advocate for appreciation of realist painting.

A hi-res image is featured on their website at:  http://www.artrenewal.org/pages/salon_winners.php?contest=2013-2014%20Salon&page=Figurative (please scroll halfway down the page). 

Black Hat Jack

Recently, I completed the book illustrations for Black Hat Jack: The True Life Adventures of Deadwood Dick as told by His Ownself, JOE R. LANSDALE's rip-roaring western novella published by Subterranean Press.

                    

African-American Nat Love (aka Deadwood Dick) was a real life Texas plainsman.  In Black Hat Jack, master storyteller Lansdale introduces a new generation of readers to Nat's thrilling adventures as a buffalo soldier, hide-hunter, Indian fighter, cowboy and lawman in the Old West.

The adventures continue in Joe R. Lansdale's Paradise Sky to be published by Mulholland/ Little Brown in 2015.

The Arms and Farms Expedition / part 2

Art talk and sketching around the breakfast table at The Westborough Inn.  Topics ranged from the John Singer Sargent Watercolors show to Viking sagas to art education to Norman Rockwell to J.L.E. Meissonier to illustration then and now (from left to right): Chad Smith, Richard Scarpa, James Gurney, Ken Laager, Jeanette Gurney.

Bedouins, my personal favorite John Singer Sargent watercolor.

The breathaking Santa Maria della Salute

  We learned that the textural effect seen on roofs, stone and gravel patches in Simplon Pass Chalets was achieved by wax resist applied by drawing with a candle.

Garin Baker contemplates An Artist in His Studio one of several oils included in the exhibit.

James Gurney, Garin Baker and Jeanette Gurney discuss Sargent's masterful evocation of sunlight in Dolce Far Niente, another oil.  Photos courtesy of Greg Shea.

The Arms and Farms Expedition / part 1

Artists "armed and dangerous" in front of the Higgins Armory Museum, Worcester Massachusetts (from upper left):  Sean Murray, Ken Laager, Marc Holmes, Greg Shea, Richard Scarpa, Chad Smith, Garin Baker, Jeanette Gurney, Joe Salamida, John Caggiano

Last week I joined a remarkable group of fellow artists for the Arms and Farms Expedition to Massachusetts. Activities included seeing the John Singer Sargent Watercolors show at the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, sketching at the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester and Old Sturbridge Village, impromptu roundtable discussions of art and plenty of good fellowship.

 At work in the Higgins Armory Museum blocking-in my en grisaille study of a mounted crusader knight.

James Gurney produced this video of our sketching trip to the Armory Museum.

With grateful acknowledgement to the Higgins staff, I want to offer special thanks to Greg Shea, Senior Museum Preparator at Yale Center for British Art who coordinated this great event.

(Photographs courtesy of Greg Shea, Laurel Holmes and James Gurney)

Autumn

Autumn Hillside   Franklin Carmichael

No season of the year stirs my blood like autumn.  I welcome it's bracing climate, so invigorating after months of summer's indolence.

Among all our senses however, it is the eyes that are most richly rewarded by this climax of nature's cycle.  The fiery colors of hardwood foliage here in the northeast are legendary, but at "the golden hour" when the setting sunlight raking through clear dry atmosphere transfigures those trees...

Albert Camus described it best:

L'automne est un deuxième printemps où chaque feuille est une fleur.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

Here are more splendid celebrations of the fall season painted by Canada's Algonquin School impressionists -- also known as The Group of Seven

 

Guide's Home   Arthur Lismer

Serenity: Lake of the Woods   John Johnston

Falls of the Montreal River   J.E.H. MacDonald

October Gold   Franklin Carmichael

The Jack Pine   Tom Thomson