Inspiration: Mac Stevenson

One of my new favorite landscape artists is Mac Stevenson. His work appeals to me as an animation artist because of it’s soft look and simplicity. I also love paintings that strike you with their color, and Mac’s work does that for me.

 

He’s obviously mastered color theory because his landscapes pop out at you no matter what color scheme he’s using.

This one is predominately warm, with a skilled use of cool purple to attract the eye. More than half the composition is almost the same red, but it works beautifully. I love it!

In this one he contrasts warm and light against dark, muted, and cool. Giving most of the painting to the sky makes for a beautiful composition.

This one is basically the same except he favors the land more. He also uses an analgous color scheme that’s mostly warm. It still has the same appeal as the image above as Mac’s skillfully placed purple and green (cool colors) at the horizon line.

Don’t you just want to be here?

Here’s my favorite. I love the swirling clouds, and the morning light. The oranges and purples, mixed with the muteds yellows and greens of the landscape really give it some punch. I’m also a sucker of wide format landscapes like this. I can see myself working like this if I ever get into landscapes.

I came across Mac’s work at a frame store in the mall of all places. I saw one of his pieces (not shown here) called, “Morning Light II”, and I had to find out more about the artist. I asked the store owner, and she gave me an artist bio. Mac’s been at it for about 20 years. Which just proves to me once again that I have a lot of work do. And seeing this kind of stuff just inspires me to get working.

Check out Mac’s website: http://macstevenson.com/

Inspiration: Michael Mentler

This guy is a figure drawing genius. He’s a master of color and experimentation, and is one of my current biggest inspirations as I learn to draw through life drawing.

I love the use of color in this one below and how he breaks the figure down. Incredible composition too!

I love the color and distortion in this one:

Droidmaker

I just got back from, Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution. Michael Rubin is on tour promoting his latest book of the same name. Droidmaker is essentially the first true and complete account of how Lucas and Coppola basically revolutionized not just the film industry, but our technological generation. After watching the presentation I was reminded of just how many of todays modern luxuries can be attributed to these two film makers.

It was a good show, and Rubin was very energetic and entertaining. He’s a great storyteller, as he ought to be, promoting a book and all. He was accompanied by Dr. Alvy Ray Smith, one of the founding fathers of the Lucas Film Computer Division that eventually became Pixar.

The best part about these presentations is learning about personal relationships and stories of struggle and adversity, with pay offs. That’s an understatement in the case of George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, not to mention Smith, Catmull, Lasseter, and all the rest of the Pixar founders. It was quite an immersing experience, and I recommend you take a look and see if Rubin is on his way to your home town in the near future.

I was already familiar with about 80% of the content of this presentation, which is why I didn’t buy the book (which you should buy if you are not familiar with this story as I was). But a couple of things I wasn’t aware of was the survival of Pixar (financially) because of Steve Jobs inability to admit failure publicly, how Dr. Smith and his colleagues came up with the name Pixar, and how they reluctantly ended up giving their new company (separated from Lucas Film) the same name. And can you guess how Ross Perot is connected to all this? Check out the book and you’ll find out…

Take a look at Rubin’s blog, and the official website for more information.