WHILE WE'RE ON THE SUBJECT OF HAIR...

Many comic artists draw hair in a kind of shorthand. They select from a menu of 3 or 4 basic styles they once learned, and modify the color or hairline for a little variety. Highly regarded artists such as Alex Raymond, Milton Caniff, Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby were all guilty of this timesaving practice (and as for George Wunder's Terry and the Pirates-- let's not even go there).



One reason I admire Mort Drucker so deeply is that he didn't take such things for granted. In each of these pictures, he looked with fresh eyes for the best way to capture hair with line. It's hard work-- the essence of traditional drawing-- but it really pays off.







Obviously, Drucker isn't relying on any formula here. In the pictures below, Drucker has analyzed and mastered the 3 dimensional structure of each hairstyle. Once he understands it, he can rotate it on an axis in his brain just as if he was born with a CAD CAM software program.





Drucker did not just haul this approach out for wild, eccentric hair. In the following picture, notice how he captures even plain, straight hair with a master's sensitivity.



Although Drucker is justly famous among professional caricaturists who recognize the measure of his achievement, in my view he remains the single most underrated comic artist.

Two self-portraits

created through the apparently famous automatic net art generator...

THOSE LITTLE MOMENTS OF FREEDOM

My eye is always drawn to those little places in a picture where the artist takes the liberty to play with abstract design. Sometimes you'll find artists indulging themselves when they depict folds, or water. Often you find them sneaking it in when they portray hair.



In this Joe De Mers picture (which I borrowed from Leif Peng's excellent Today's Inspiration blog) contrast De Mers' tight, disciplined treatment of the face and hands with his wild treatment of the hair.



The hair in this "realistic" picture is as abstract as any Jackson Pollock painting. It enlivens the whole picture.

Similarly, in the following wonderful illustration, Bob Peak has carefully constructed a picture with many intricate figures, but when it comes to the hair, Peak returns to the freedom of kindergarten fingerpainting.



This must have been fun to do.



Frank Frazetta is another illustrator who created realistic, highly detailed pictures but when it came to hair, he stopped worrying about the rules of anatomy or perspective or shading. He completely unleashed himself and let design have free reign.



Somehow, all of his figures seemed to be standing in small cyclones.



Frazetta's wildly flowing hair not only added important vitality but also served a major compositional purpose.



Robert Frost once wrote: "The moments of freedom, they cannot be given to you. You have to take them." Artists employed to create pictures have to satisfy many masters: art directors, clients, audiences, printers-- even the subject matter imposes its own compromises. The artist is not free to fling paint or blend colors solely to create primal beauty. Yet, working within all these constraints, the artist can usually find little moments of giddiness in the hair, or the folds, or the clouds.

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Obligatory art-is-like-life sermon for those younger readers who might not have figured out this part yet: everyone operates every day under lots of constraints, but if you are good at what you do, and you care enough, you can seize back what Frost calls those "moments of freedom" and, like De Mers, Peak and Frazetta, make them meaningful to your overall picture.




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Two African portraits

found on Artthribe:


Mustafa Maluka, I've decided my fate (2007, oil and acrylic on canvas)

Marlene Dumas, Portrait of Kendell Geers (2004, watercolour)

Is it just me, or is the skin a haunting issue? This transparency, this impossibility of getting there, of touching, of having it as a given. This need for nuance, and nuance, and indefinition, redefinition, something other than definition. The color. The need of color. And the need, especially in the case of Maluka (which, by the way, in colloquial Portuguese means 'crazy'), to give skin a depth that surprizes in the flat world around it... And the calm, but not happy, look.
What is color? What is left of color? Isn't it impressive it can still cream, after all this history, after all this art?

Flexible sofa

(via)

Doorways

random insanities

Art for all - and vice versa

If you bring it in, we'll hang it, said the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, which is about to move to another space. The reaction to the initiative, called aptly Free For All, was overwhelming: dozens of people cueing up in the cold weather with their works. The only criterium of selection was having actually brought the work oneself. One may have doubts whether it was really a sign of 'support for the gallery' on the part of the people waiting in line, as one of the gallery workers suggests. After all - the fine arts are a finely guarded institution that isn't easy to break in. But it is a great and courageous initiative indeed. Chaos? Oh, please, let's not treat every single initiative so dead serious, as if it were the Great Finale of Art. I wonder how the catalogue looked. Nearly 3000 works by about 1300 artists.

Now that's what I call a great social art installation.