Charles Burchfield

I often use the term, "Burtonesque" when discussing imagery that has a dark, distorted, almost surreal feel to it, mostly due to the fact that in our modern culture, you would be hard pressed to find someone not familiar with the likes of A Nightmare Before Christmas, Batman or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I have no doubt that Burton was influenced by a number of things, including art that preceded his time. Charles Burchfield would seem could have been one of those individuals. I was actually unfamiliar with this artist except for a 2 inch picture in a first year art text book of mine. But in doing some research, I have found that Charles Burchfield was an American painter that lived at the onset of the 20th century, was friends with my first blog artist, Edward Hopper, and in fact painted in slightly different styles based on different times of his life. I chose this painting "The Night Wind" as it was the first piece of his work that caught my attention. However, he will not be one that continues to go unnoticed by this constant art student. There is definitively a pattern in my aesthetics when it comes to art. I like earth tones. Check. I like dark, moody imagery. Check. I like pieces of art that ultimately are greater than the sum of its parts. It becomes obvious why this piece was chosen. Again, like Crospey with its strong abstract underlying composition and Inness with his more openly abstract composition, Burchfield goes one step farther on his trek to abstraction, yet, still maintains a connection to reality through his use of subject matter, a house, the type each one of us has seen, visited or grew up in. The circular focal points, windows in this case, lead the viewer to look inside the house. There is more going on inside than we know and we are invited in due to warmer tones used in those areas than in any other area of the painting. Even with its darker mood, I still feel a warmth from it, partly because of my preceding statement on the windows, but also because, and I may be dating myself here, the fact that it evokes in me images of my childhood watching old Disney cartoons on the Disney Channel. One particular cartoon comes to mind of a night scene in a graveyard where skeletons are dancing on gravestones. Frightening imagery in and of itself, yet it was presented in a childlike way, a way that was more comforting than disturbing. Burchfield has captured this as well. Mr. Burton should be thankful.

George Inness

So, I had this thought when I started this blog that I would choose a different artist everyday rather than choosing the same artist over and over again. I felt that it would widen the breath of my exposure to players in this game we call artistry. I am finding however, that after 30 or so artists that I admire, it is becoming difficult for me to find artists that really inspire me. Don't get me wrong, there is not a lack of artists out there, it is just, who wants 20 of the same type of images reviewed. I am telling you this because it may start taking me longer to find images that I deem exciting and worth analyzing and if that be the case, I may not get to posting everyday. I only planned on spending 15-20 minutes a day on this and if it begins to exceed that, other areas of my art may start to be affected. I know, I am whining. Forget what I just said, I will just try harder.

Here is an image called "Home of the Heron". I chose this particular image for its simplicity, its mood and its color scheme. This is oil on canvas representative of Inness' later works. There is an ethereal feel to this piece. Anyone who has been in the woods in the early morning or late evening will understand the misty, foggy effect that occurs when the sun is rising or setting. This painting is damn near abstract except that there is a heron on the water at the focal point in the lower left quadrant. This heron grounds this piece in recognizable reality for the viewer rather than leaving it as a blotchy pattern of colors and textures. Once we recognize the world that this painting is creating, our eye moves up to the horizon and we see the roof line of a house or cabin, smoke eminating from its chimney. I tend to lean toward realism in what I paint and what I like, but "realistically", what I am interested in is naturalism, portraying an image as it relates to the natural world that surrounds us, whether it is realistic, or more impressionistic. For those of you that are staunch realists out , tell me this painting doesn't create an impact on you in some way. go ahead, I dare you.

Eric Deschamps

I am pleased to be sharing this image with you today. This digital painting called "Tucked Away" was done by a contemporary illustrator, a fellow student of mine at the Illustration Master Class 2008 and friend named Eric Deschamps. Eric is a young up and coming artist and has done work for Wizards of the Coast, Activision and Upper Deck amongst others. This particular image appears to be in bookcover format based on dimensions and the space left for text that typically is designed into an image to be used for that purpose. Obviously a fantasy piece, this image portrays a young girl, who with her friends and "alien" companions have made a trek through some near earthlike (if not actually earth) forest and have found a mystical bauble of unknown origin and purpose to the reader. The imagery alone, assuming it is to be a bookcover affectively gives the browser alot of information about the contents of this book.
In analyzing the composition of this piece, it is worth noting that the color palette is bright and vibrant and it is obvious that Eric chose it due to the subject matter which relates to young adult fantasy. This genre is often illustrated with this type of palette which help emphasizes youth and youthful vibrance and energy. There are a number of compositional things that make this a very strong image. There is movement created by the diagonals made by the creature's wings, the top of the log and line of the water. A worm's eye viewpoint helps to increase to size and depth of the background space while allowing for a direct focus on the main figure considering she is at ground level. Movement is also created by the curves of the creatures wings, the water rings expanding from the point where her arm meets the water, the floating leaves in the foreground falling to the water and the girl's hair which is being affected by gravity. Eric has used another compositional technique relating to color in which the girl is associated to her creature pal and the glowing bauble by color, a color that is not used anywhere else in the painting. He has also chosen a loose split complimentary color scheme of orange, blue-green and blue violet which in addition to a few analogous colors to this frame color scheme adds strength to the design. Ultimately, this is an extremely strong image due to Eric's obvious attention to design detail and fundamentals. If this image is or becomes an actual book cover, I'll buy it. And I would like to also thank Eric for allowing me to analyze a piece of his art.

Jasper Francis Cropsey

The Spirit of War. This image has such a mythical feel to it, from the castle tower in the setting sunlight to the immense mountain in the left. There is so much color and movement in this piece, the greens, the complimentary reds, blues in the clouds, oranges in the sky and on the ground outside the gate. There is a great amount of detail it is hard to analyze, especially since I am brain dead at the moment. I think I will let this one settle in my psyche and pick this up tomorrow. To be continued...

Monday: Ok. Now that I am a bit more lucid, I feel I am able to look at this image more analytically. I have been taking these images and setting them as my computer wallpaper in order to not only look at them, but to let them affect me subconsciously. What I was able to determine was that the strength of this painting is in its underlying abstract composition. I have attached two other images, one of the detail blurred out and another of the value patterns in this image. When the detail is removed, the image still retains and interest abstract pattern of shapes and colors that are contiguous, interlocking and interesting. Looking at the value image, again we see an interesting set of values with darker values at the bottom for weight, lighter values on top and the highest value smack dab in the middle of the heavy dark values creating a focus point due to the high contrast area. Adding the color and detail to these two immensely powerful compositional characteristics simply makes the image better. But the in underlying composition is the key.

Herbert James Draper

The first oil I ever did was a reproduction of Herbert James Draper. It was for me Painting like the Old Masters class in school. Of all the artists in history, I choose Draper. Draper was friends with Waterhouse, a student of Leighton and Bouguereau and an instruction at the Royal Acedemy. Many people are familiar with his painting, the Lament for Icarus, but not many of his other works seem to be known. This one is called Calypso's Isle. I had to send away to the U.K. to get a book on his works. I was not able to find an image of this painting on the net, so I took a lackluster photo from the book. It is a beautiful painting of which I am very familiar. I also did a master copy in oil of this piece which I have attached at the bottom. It is slightly cropped from the original, but showssome of the detail to a slightly clearer degree. I have attached two studies that Draper did as well, showing that his process was textbook acedemic, doing sketch studies of figures and value studies before ever getting to painting. This piece brings to mind illustions of Penelope awaying the return of Odysseus. Classical mythology was often the inspiration to the Pre-Raphaelites of whom Draper was one. Draper has beautifully rendered the alabaster skin of his figure which holds a mirror which she does not look into. She is holding pearls and jewelry in her other hand, covered in linen or silk, sitting atop a finely rendered draper (of which I am sure there was a study). She at the edge of the bay and gazes out into the empty waters. The limited palette on this painting was a joy to work with as it fits my aesthetic interests. Ochre and umber colored rocks and stones surrounding a prussion blue/green waters surrounding the lovely alizarin crimson drapery. Warm shadows on her arm and face contrast the coolness of the waters. The sensuality of the figures bare neck and back are extraordinary. I love this painting. I love Herbert Draper's work.

Fabian Perez

Ok. I have no idea if anyone has seen Fabian Perez's work before. He is a contemporary painter, born in Argentina now living in Los Angeles. While doing research for a painting idea I had, I stumbled across his work. This one is called El Paseo. I do recommend taking a look at more of his work as he does capture a certain sense of romance with a touch of noir feeling. This piece depicts a woman walking away from the viewer down a street or alley in someone anonymous city. She wears a black cocktail dress, high heels and is smoking a cigarette. There are some compositional things that I am noticing about this painting. There is a channel in the road the bisects the painting in half. But rather than running straight away from the view, it curves at the end towards the lighted area of the painting on thr right. It also separates the woman from the light and the warmth on that side. The warmth on one side though is balanced by the weight of the woman on the left and the weight of the cooler tones surrounding her. You d get a sense that if the woman follows the channel in the road, it will lead her to the light and the warmth, yet we have no indication that this is the choice she will make. I love the big painterly brush strokes that are evident in Mr. Perez's work that are balanced with a slightly more rendered treatment of his figures. The sheer effect that he achieves in the woman's dress is a nice touch as well as the organic feel of the hardscape that he has achieved with the previously mentioned brush strokes. And I do love noir.

John Maler Collier

I am awestruck by this painting, yet I am unsure as to why. This type of painting is reason why I started this blog. I heard Charles Bernard, fastasy illustrator state that people may have trouble expressing why they like an image because they don't understand what makes an attractive picture. I am trying to understand why the aesthetic of this piece is pleasing to me. On a visceral level, I love the female form. It is one of the most beautiful things ever created in natural in my opinion. Ivory skin with red hair was always attractive to me as well. Those same reds in Lady Godiva's hair are mirrored in the horses bridal and blanket (I am sure there is another word for that). The streets are empty as the story tells, the doors closed and locked. Godiva has a look of defeat and shame as the only way to help the people was to deal with this indignity. Her indignity though is offset by the noble look of her steed, it's head held high in opposition to her head hung low. There are wonderful details in this piece such as the embroidered lions on the tapestry (is that what it is called?) and shields on the bridal. Then there is the gold bit and the chain links meticulously rendered as well as the iron bolts on the door, whose wooden texture is only surpassed by that of the texture of the town's stone walls. There is a wonderful flow and path for the eye to follow starting at the steed's head, down along the bridal, up Godiva's arm to her face.

No this, I would hang on my wall...

Gustave Caillebotte

He was a French Impressionist. The name of this piece is Le pont de l'Europe. I have done some studying of the French Impressionist, the movement, the historical context of the art and the artists living in that period and have chosen Gustave Caillebotte today, not because he was known to me, but rather because he was relatively unknown to me. His style was lsightly more realistic than his counterparts like Monet and Renoir. From what I have quickly researched, Caillebotte had interests in photography and this possibly influenced his style more than the other in the movement. This piece is a genre piece which reminds me a bit of the works of Norman Rockwell and depicts a dog and people on the street going about their business. The points of interest in this piece for me are the use of one point perspective and the repeating geometric pattern created by the bridge rafters and railings. Another point of note is the use of purple shadows which was commonly used by the Impressionist painters. Some Impressionists also used straight black on their palette which seems to be an ongoing debate as to whether to use black or not, but my guess would be that the darks of the walking couple's clothing were actually created with black rather than a neutralized dark value mixture.

Would I hang this piece on my wall? No. But it is a strong example of the shift from romanticized narrative images to that of creating images of everyday life during this period.

John Banovich

So, I have been spending time analyzing artworks from the last 30 centuries, trying to get a good mix from contemporary and classical artists. My interests are generally naturalistic or realistic rather than abstract. I am a fan of most styles of realism which may actually embody 90-95% of the art throughout history. My hope is that anyone reading this blog would agree that I am displaying a good mix and variety, but feel free to tell me otherwise.
Today, I would like to return to the present and take a look at a piece call "Eye of the Raven" by contemporary animal painter John Banovich. I first saw Mr. Banovich's work in the Artist's Magazine and actually fell in love with this painting. I never really thought about why, so now I am going to take the time to try to determine why. Obviously this is a simple subject, a raven on a branch. Nothing flashy about the pose or positioning, yet still, John's treatment of the subject is attractive and compelling to me. He seems to have used a classical portrait approach to the lighting, having a 3/4 front lit approach. Nothing too innovative there either. Yet it is compelling to me. As I look at the background, I see large and energetic brush strokes, daubing greens and ochres, siennas and umbers; I determine the color palette is in line with my aesthetic tastes. One reason for it to be compelling. On to the treatment of the raven itself. It is more refined than the treatment of the background. That sets up some contrast, wild and energetic background to more defined and stoic foreground subject. That is compelling. The color palette chosen for the raven is intriguing, with the prussian blue perhaps midtones and starker cool white highlights. Each feather is render as if they were painted individually and place into this painting. Variation in feather texture, size, and direction are all skillfully composed. There is also a warm reflected light hitting the belly of this bird, helping to define its volume in space. Lost edges on the tail feathers with sharper edges on the head and beak help to bring the focus on face of this animal, facial focus being crucial to many good portraits. It would seem that all of these items working together take this piece from mundane to exciting.

John Atkinson Grimshaw

Elaine is the name of this piece. I could only image that this is the name of the dead girl in the boat. This image could be portraying the ferryman who shuttles the dead across the river to the underworld, but I do not know for certain. What I do know is that this piece has a bold sense of mood. It's dark shadowy silouettes of the boatman and the boat are in sharp contrast to the distant city skyline. The buildings have a warm glow to them, indicating the warmth of the living, whereas the cool tones of the death are at the forefront. I had done a painting personally where I was required to make the warmth of a fire recede into the backup and keep cooler tones push forward and it was indeed a daunting task, yet, Grimshaw has achieved this task masterfully. A relatively simply image in composition and form, the mood that is created here is indeed intriguing.

John William Waterhouse

This image from Waterhouse illustrates the story of "St. Eulalia". Not being familiar with this story, I googled it and apparently it is the story of a young virgin who was beat, tortured and eventually crucified for not renouncing Christianity. As the story goes, she was finally decapitated and a dove fly from her neck. Analyzing Waterhouse's treatment of the central figure, it is obvious that he did not intend to illustrate the horror of this girl's tribulations, but rather decided to depict the "aloneness" of her situation. You see the girl centrally located in the foreground, surrounded by a mass of white which brings your attention to her, yet all the other figures in the piece are removed from her, being either held at bay by the roman guards or having the guards themselves disregarding this site. Doves has been added as details being the only living things sharing her space in the frame. I also noticed the positioning of her legs which seemed odd to me at first. I think this was done for two reasons. One, if they were postioned straight, a symmetry would have been create which creates more stability and less drama. Also, having her feet point towards the people would have connected her to them and diminish the the feeling of solitariness. Therefore, I have learned from this picture that figure positioning itself can be used as a tool to create drama.

Joseph Mallord William Turner

Turner. What can I say about Turner? If you have ever stood in front of an original Turner, you will understand. I have had the please of seeing the Burning of Parliament in the Philadelphia museum of Art. It was huge, 8 feet by 6 feet perhaps. The paint was so thick in spots that it was almost hard to image how he was able to manipulate that much paint and still have it flow the way he wished. So then, I upgraded my Dish Network to HD and got free HD channels for a month. There was an HD Art channel and I was exposed to an hour long program of Turner art on my widescreen in HD. Unbelievable. I was a fan. What I learned from that TV program was the extend of the body of work or Turner that I was unfamiliar with. So in searching, I came across this painting today. It is called "Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus - Homer's Odyssey". I found two versions of this image and not having seen it in person, it is hard to know what the original looks like. However, based on my Philadelphia experience, I would tend to believe that the first image is more accurate. The colors and vibrancy of the Burning of Parliament seem to be mirrored more closely in the top image. It also teaches me that the images found on the internet cannot be trusted for accuracy in color or intensity, so I am grateful that I have seen an original Turner for comparison. The thing that attracted me to this particular image, I believe is that it has a certain illustrative quality to it due to the boat details and the vibrancy of the colors. I brings to mind my childhood and watching Fox's Peter Pan and the Pirates on TV. It evokes those memories for me. Turner has a nearly unparalleled ability to create an illusion of light in his works. He is able to generate a huge amount of warmth in the wood, sails of the ships and reflections on the water and then contrasts that warmth with the coolness of his clouds, water and rocks. My recommendation is that everyone should spend more time studying Turner, especially in person.

Alan Lee

Alan Lee is probably best known for his illustrationsof J.R.R. Tolkien's, the Lord of the Rings. In looking through his work in order to choose one to analyze today, I found this scene in which I believe Gandolf is the one on horseback and he is speaking to or leading a band of Hobbits or dwarves. Something about this image felt familiar and I realized that it reminded me of a painting called "The serpent and the Rose" by one of my IMC instructors, Donato Giancola. In that piece, Donato used the shape of the tree limbs to frame the action in a circular fashion, that subject being figures on horseback. It seemed to me that Alan Lee was using a similar composition, in his case, having the tree limbs encircle the figures at the center of the image. In addition, the atmospheric effect of the figures in the distance add a value contrast to the darker foreground, reinforcing the mechanism that leads your eye to the subject. I have learned that this circular geometric form in a composition is very powerful and can very effectively draw the viewer's eye to wherever it is located. I have actually employeed this element in my last two paintings. And on a side note, look at the foliage detail in the foreground of Alan Lee's painting here. The texture is wonderful pronounced, let with all that detail, the eye is still focused on the center of that circle.

Caspar David Friedrich

Graveyard Under Snow. 1826. Caspar Friedrich is a very interesting painter to me in that I always describe him to people as "Tim Burtonesque". In reality, Tim Burton would have been more "Friedrichesque", but I think the comparison is illustrative. I am familiar with some work by CDF, but this piece is one that I came across today for the first time. Something grabbed my attention, so I spend some time looking at it to try to figure out why. I have touched on this topic before and I image that I will see characteristics repeated in many paintings, but I believe that the idea of narrative is what is attractive to me in this piece. We see what appears to be a graveyard marked by the stone wall in the background and the freshly dug grave. Two shovels are in the grave and the psyche begins to want details to fill in the blanks. Questions are asked, where is this graveyard. Who is being buried here. Where are the two people that were using the shovels. Is this a fresh grave or once frozen over from a time when the ground was able to be broken. It seems to me that the power of this piece is not what is pictured here, but what is actually absent. Like a monster movie where the creature is scarier when it is unseen and unknown, mystery can also be generated by the unseen. I may have to ask myself when next at my easel, "What shouldn't I paint today."

Henry Fuseli

This is The Nightmare. Fuseli painted in the late 1700s and was a teacher of Edwin Landseer for one and was a big influence on William Blake. He was a German born painter, schooled in Italy and eventually became an instructor at the Royal Academy. This piece is very indicative of his work and has a very dark quality to it. We have a woman in the throws of a dream being visited by a "mare" and a goblin. I am not really sure how to analyze this painting as it is attractive to me on many levels. I think what what best bet on this on is to try to identify the things I like. I like the limited palette. Yellow ochre, white, alizarin crimson seem to be the major hues and are not very saturated which adds to the night-ish feel. The high contrast between the gown of the female and the black background darkness adds alot of drama to the piece. The manical grin on the mare and the odd way the goblin seems to stare out of the painting at the viewer adds a level of discomfort to the viewer while intiguing them to look more closely. The handling of the drapery is exquisitely done from the sheerness of the gown to the folds and shadows of the drapery. This is an artist that merits deeper study.

Greg Horn

After returning from the cluster that was ComicCon, I am focused on what had been one of my favorite comic illustrators, Greg Horn. I stopped at Greg’s booth and briefly spoke to him about his art and subsequently, purchased a book of his work. There is a piece in it that jumped out at my due to the drama which I would like to discuss. It is Spiderman/Daredevil (I don’t know if there is another name.) There are dramatic darks in this piece and a color palette in the subdued red-yellow-orange range of the color wheel. It is noteworthy to mention that this is a digitally painted image over a fully rendered pencil drawing which is the typical way Greg Horn works. The glowing sun in the background against the dark Spiderman figure is a great draw for the eye. The diffused light from the sun is masterly rendered around the figures filling in parts of the shadow areas to add depth to the piece. The one thing that I am actually going to criticize, and this is purely a subjective viewpoint is that I dislike Greg’s usage for red-purple hues for the shadow areas on Daredevil and on the building in the mid-ground. They seem out of place and conflict with the color palette in my opinion. Otherwise, this is a beautiful image that conveys a great depth of emotion.

Thomas Cole

Thomas Cole, one of the Hudson River Valley painters, did a series of 5 paintings named "Course of the Empire". The one displayed here is called Destruction. The HRV painters in my experience tended to be landscape painters primarily, however, Cole stands out to me due to the narratives evident in his work as opposed to some of his peers. I have been much more interested in the use of narrative in paintings over the last year and have begun to understand the use of narrative as a tool to develop an image for the sake of storytelling rather than for simply conveying imagery. The complex story depicted here shows a civilization destroying itself. Soldiers burning ships, murdering civilians, destroying building and killing each other give insight into this age in history as well as the artist viewpoint on the history. There is a role to be played by each figure, statue, archway, building, cloud of smoke and mountain in this piece. No subject is randomly or haphazardly placed in this, but rather used to help convey the narrative and thereby express the emotion of the destruction man brings upon himself. I have begun to apply this narrative thought process to my work, thinking about purpose to any composition elements I add, not just for aesthetics, but to advance a story.

Maxfield Parrish

I decided to change gears today because I, until recently, had studied more of the old masters work than more modern painters/illustrators. One of these is relatively unknown to me illustrators is Maxfield Parrish. Once I heard the name, I kept hearing it over and over again and today I decided to give this man a better look. I was really interested in his work as it seems to be a more modern version of a combination between the Pre-Raphaelites and the Hudson River landscape painters. I found this image, Cinderella, and would like to discuss it further as it seems to have been able to distill the idea of warm light, cool shadow into an almost geometric simplicity. The figure here which is the centerpiece of this painting is illuminated with a very strong warm light, which also is used to render the form of the steps and pillars on the steps. It also illuminated the tree leave adding texture and interest to the upper right portion of the painting. Almost modeled as I have done with value paintings of spheres, the light rolls away over the edge of the figure into neutralized grey tones and then over to darker cool tones. These cool tones also act as a backdrop for the leaves and floral pieces making the warm foliage pop away from the canvas. I am truly amazed at the effect that can be attained by simply working warm against cool.

Norman Rockwell

Today I am going to look at The Art Critic by Norman Rockwell. The first time that I saw a Norman Rockwell original was at the Society of Illustrators in NYC. I was amazed at the size of the piece for one and the other was the thickness of Rockwell's paint in conjunction with the light leaks he left which allowed the canvas to show through. As I look at The Art Critic, three more things jump out at me which I would like to comment on. The first, being an artist myself, is that the man in the painting is holding a palette. How Rockwell lays the colors out on the palette in the image says somethign to me about how he used his own palette and the way that he arranges his colors. He seems to have them laid out in a modified color wheel setup with white at the apex and what I don't see is black. This is just an interesting point to note. The second is that the paintings on the wall in this piece are very reminiscent of Frans Hals. (If they actually are Hals, I am not familiar with them, however, maybe I will look at Hals tomorrow.) Hals was an alla prima type painter as was Rockwell (I believe), so it is noteworthy in that apparently, Hals was admired by Rockwell. The third is the fantastic texture that Rockwell has created in this piece. The great textural effects on the frames, the wall texture, the texture created through the color choices in the floor tiles...amazing. My belief (based on the original I saw in NYC) is that these textural effects have been created in large effect by the thickness of the paint. I know that Turner also used thick paint as this to create textural effects (but more atmospheric in nature). In order to gain a better understanding of this effect, I will definitely need to view more of Rockwell's work in person.

William Bouguereau

The Lost Pleide by William Bouguereau is the painting that I will be looking at today. Beyond the fact that this is a beautiful painting and a wonderful example of his work, I am always astounded at the supple realism of Bouguereau's skin. Since there is a full nude in this painting, I feel that it is a great example for analyzing these skin tones. The academic artists of Western Europe at this time in history had the tendency to paint skin tones (especially women's skin tones) a very pasty whitish color. This is most likely due to the attire of the time, having women generally covered from head to toe getting no sun and powdering their faces. That being said, Bouguereau had the uncanny ability to use color and tone to make these vampiric individuals look aliv, full of life really. He has a wonderful ability to mix warm tones with cool tones in order to mimic light and shadow. Subtle greens and purples are used in shadowy areas in spot appear to approximate in 2 dimensions, the translucent characteristics of skin. The light areas with their warm thick application of paint model the body with a sclpter's precision. There are lovely pink areas showing warmer blood filled areas of the body as well as veins and blue-green areas such as on the back, butt and leg areas. One could probably look at the skin tones in this painting for hours and still be baffled at how he accomplish this task. Next time I am at a museum where I am blessed enough to see one in person, I will be taking note of how he applied these paints to achieve this marvelous feat.