Locomotive breath

Recently I went to the Springfestival of the Dampflokfreunde Berlin e.V. (steam train friends Berlin) and took a trip back in time.

photo by Joachim Neu

I did two coloured sketches of these old engines and learned a bit about their past:

the52 series was originally developped during WWII by the army as a heavy war machine. After the abatement of the Nazi regime it was still in use and throughlived slight modifications. In the former GDR it was still in use till the late 1960's.

 

The small Diesel light rail tractor Kö 5734 was built in 1942/43 and was sorted out as recently as 1994 (!).

Here you can see me draw the 52-engine.

photography by Joachim Neu

It's possible to book extra tours with the 52 series in the outskirts of Berlin.
An overview of the tours can be viewed here.

Thanks to Johannes Neu for the photographs.

sketching Dinos in the wild...

If it comes to sketching animals I rather prefer to sketch from life than anything else.
If you have the possibility to draw animals in their natural surrounding you should always give it a shot.
Luckily we do have a couple of dinosaurs in the outskirts of Berlin, it's not really hard to find them.

Although I really love the silhouettes of ceratopsians they are a quite delicate subject and can become easily aggressive, especially in the springtime when they are having their young...

giant crocodiles are better to be sketched from a distance...

And I told the kids not to get too close...

Next to that we learned that as a matter of fact Spinosaurus wasn't as dangerous as he is generally depicted...

Experts assume that there is a correlation between vegetarianism in spinosaurs and the growth...errmm...of trees.
Two years ago Spino was still carnivorous...;-P


Today we had a blast at the Tier- und Freizeitpark Germendorf.

The laws of physics...

...ye cannot change....


Yesterday I finished a comission late at night (or better: early in the morning...it's that shocking moment when the birds start to sing outside and you realize what time it is already.)

Happily I turned around to clean the brushes and by doing so unintentionally knocked over the water glas...the least thing I needed. *Arrgh!*

But instead of spilling the water all over the room or to break the glass it just fell perfectly upside down, with just a few drops spilled around it.
I never saw something like this:

The water remained allmost completely inside the glass.

Today I left it like that; I'm just too curious to see how long the glass can hold the water this way...

anatomica draconis - part I

I guess this is going to become a series of blog posts since hence I feel not capable to sumarize a vast theme like this in one post.

One of my art students, Miriam Häusler, approached me with a most crucial question within Fantasy-Art and I am ever so happy and thankful about that question because it helps me to thoroughly think over a theme that seems to have become common sense within Fantasy and that is why, in my point of view, it is necessairy to have a closer and conscious look at it over and over again.

The question was of how to approach the anatomy of dragons.

I postponed our lesson and arranged an expedition to the natural history museum one week later to set out for our queste for Draco.
There are several reasons why I chose the natural history museum as a starting point to approach dragons:

1) the impression of size. 

Looking at pictures of reptiles, birds, other paintings of dragons etc might be helpful to get a first idea but to me only if one is confronted with the true sensual sensation of the size of  existing creatures we get a better notion of what inches, metres or cubits look like in "real bones".

2) anatomical diversity and possibilities within nature

If you look at the skeletons of real creatures it helps you a lot to gradually develop an eye for specializations of anatomical features and starting from there to begin to develop your own ideas of anatomical possibilities for a creature, we see in front of our inner eye.

Here are some examples:

Dicraeosaurus, a smaller sauropod, specialised in feeding on low growing plants.

Notice the extended vertebral notches to keep his presumably rather stiff neck close to the ground unlike other sauropods, with which he shared the same environment.

Diplodocus, who's long neck and tail equal in it's functionality the construction of a modern suspension bridge.

Allosaurus' impressive skull, the chambers in the skull helped to keep it light weighted

skeleton of a sea eagle in comparison with Allosaurus' arms and claws

3) if we limit ourselves to the two points mentioned above in my point of view we reduce ourselves rather by practicing "Science Fiction" and will not touch the mythological/archetypical nature of the dragon sufficiently.

the mythological aspect of fossilised bones

I am always in awe when I approach the real skeletons of extinct creatures, the fossilised bones which represent the immense span of time which symbolically resembles to me as well the immortality of the dragon, emblem of the forces of nature in their unpredcitability.
To me they are in fact like sculptures in their sheer beauty and the purest inspiration.


recommended readings:

John Howe - Forging Dragons *

John Howe - the Fantasy Art Workshop*

Daniel Falconer - Smaug: Unleashing the dragon

Joseph Reichholf - Einhorn, Phönix, Drache


* Forging Dragons and the Fantasy Art Workshop in German language

Renée Sintenis

The Special exhibition on the life and work of Berlin based artist Renée Sintenis comemorating her 125th anniversairy can still be seen at the Georg Kolbe Museum till the end of March.

The english Wikipedia article on Sintenis unfortunately is a stub, so here's the text from the Kolbe Museum:


"Renée Sintenis (1888–1965) was one of the major sculptors of the first half of the 20th century. Her best-known work is the Berlinale Bear, the highly symbolic icon awarded annually at the International Film Festival. The Georg Kolbe Museum is dedicating a comprehensive retrospective exhibition encompassing over 100 sculptures to the Berlin artist on the occasion of her 125th birthday: animal figures cast in bronze and silver, striking depictions of athletes and expressive portraits, some of which portray such close friends as the writer and cabaret artist Joachim Ringelnatz who composed a series of touching tongue-in-cheek poems for Sintenis. A number of historical photographs additionally convey a vivid picture of the emancipated protagonist from Berlin’s pre-war art world who was the epitome of the frequently invoked feminist ideal of the “New Woman.” The exhibited works lent largely by the Knauf Collection, Berlin, are supplemented by pieces from the holdings of the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Georg Kolbe Museum.
The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive scholarly catalogue presenting the sculptural work of Renée Sintenis."

I was visiting the exhibition together with the local urban sketchers, which was a fun experience.
The Kolbe museum with it's small park, filled with Kolbe's sculptures is truly an enchanting place with a small Café in his former residential building and the museum in his atelier.

The Sintenis exhibition does not only showcase the equisite animal sculptures of Sintenis (including the "Berlinale Bear" for which she presumably is best known for internationally) but as well her selfportraits and the portraits of artist colleagues as a lot of photographies on her and her life.

 That's the famous bear, but there's much, much more to be seen.
Especially her miniatures of sportsmen, kids and horses are of an incredible dynamic:

Here is a great article on her in the ART-magazine (in German language)

This picture shows Sintenis together with Aristide Maillol, Albert Einstein and Max Liebermann in1930:

nature as a painter

The fly orhid ophrys insectifera uses an extraordinairy form of mimicry:

It does not only mimic the scent of female flies but also the appearance of the shape and color of a fly:

By doing so it "uses" a rather painterly approach by incorporating even the highlight on the chitinous exoskeleton of an insect.
The bluish spot that you see is the actual local color on the plant itself but it clearly mimics the highlight in the middle and the bluish skylight around it (as described in Gurney, "Color & Light", pg 28).

Seems to work out fine.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Peace and Health in the Year of the horse!

2014 is the year of the wooden-horse, as the Chinese say it's a year of sudden victories, unexpected adventures and unforeseen romance (article on the "Year of the Horse in the Epoch Times)

My dearest personal associations with Horses:

It's one of my Dad's memories he often told us when we were kids:
When he was a young man he worked on a farm and he was responsible for driving the horses from the farm to the grazing lands.
Like a cowboy he would ride himself on a horse chasing the herd over the fields.
As children he encouraged us to draw and would sit together with us drawing the most amazing galopping horses on huge tapestry paper-sheets that we would then fill with dinosaurs, whales, anything that we could think of.

I later received Rien Poortvliet's book on horses for Christmas which is still one of my all time favourite books and which inspired me to take riding lessons myself (my efforts were stopped though by the time the heaviest horse in the stable would land her hoof on my foot...).

My favourite musical piece related to horses is James Horner's "Ride of the Firemares" and in the days before Howard Shore's Soundtrack for "The Lord of the Rings" it would be our substitute for a musical theme for the riders of Rohan that we put on mix-tapes with an imaginated "Lord of the Rings" Soundtrack.

A most inspiring year of the horse for all of you!

Concert in the Natural Historical Museum

An event I very enjoy is the still very young tradition of the annual new year's concert in the dinosaur hall of the natural historical museum in Berlin.

The mounted dinosaur skeletons are lit with coloured light in a tight atmosphere accompagnied by the play of the awardees of the Orchesterakademie of the Staatskapelle Berlin e.V.

This year the opus 7 by Georges Enescu from 1900 was played by an octet of the Staatskapelle.

I did a quick sketch of Allosaurus' impressive skull.

The big Christmas wrap up

... a wonderful Hoiday season to all of you!

Christmas and me started a race this year...I guess I made it.
:-D

Happily wrapping the presents in. Deck the halls!

Love and peace!
Yours,

Christian

100 ways to paint a bird...

Happy, proud and thrilled about my portrait of the golden eagle Arras of the falconry Rudolph Pauels being published in Felix Scheinberger's latest book "Illustration - 100 Wege einen Vogel zu malen" ("Illustration - 100 ways to paint a bird")

The 328 pages containing book gives an encompassing survey of the field of illustration covering strategies for inspiration, different techniques as well as themes as selfmarketing, selfesteem, portfolio, pricing and negotiation strategies.

It is lushly illustrated, featuring illustrator's like Klaus Ensikat, Wolf Erlbruch, Tomi Ungerer, Moebius and Gary Baseman, broadcasting the diversity of different illustration styles through the connecting theme of birds.

 

I'm deeply impressed by the outstanding quality  of the book, published by Herrman Schmidt, Mainz 

and am convinced that this book will become the state of the art reference book for illustration in Germany.

(To be reviewed soon ;-D)

Thanks again, Felix! Chapeau!

"We went on an adventure!!"

there and back again - holiday adventures of a bunch of hobbits.

We've been to the Odenwald in Hesse and stayed on a medieval castle, Burg Breuberg, next to Höchst. An excellent point to start out expeditions for the bones of Fafnir the dragon, stonetrolls in the felsenmeer of Reichenbach and other questes.

Here are some of the sketchbookpages:

I'm not a real Hobbit: I still need my boots....

Burg Breuberg with it's 12th century Bergfried

view from our room

view from the castle's original kitchen, today a study room

the "blockfield" or "Felsenmeer" in Reichenbach

the bear was very close at the animal's enclosure in Weilburg...he made a run after i layed in the first washes >Alas!<

 The signature in the lower right is by wildlife cameraman Andreas Kieling,  who I bumped into one week later at the bookfair in Frankfurt

Capricorn in Weilburg

finally extensive drawing at the Senckenbergmuseum in Frankfurt; Triceratops

asian Elephant (left) and northamerican Mastodon (right)

cavebear

smilodon

oviraptor

I love the ancient elephants...

and one guy shouldn't miss...although....it's a cast

Interview with Les Edwards

I feel honoured that legendary Fantasy and Science Fiction Illustrator Les Edwards  put his brushes aside for a moment to answer some of my curious questions.

Here they come:

When and why did you make the decision to become a professional illustrator in the field of Fantasy and Science Fiction?

I don't think I ever made a positive decision to become an illustrator. It was a chance that came along and I thought I'd give it a shot. It was believed at my Art School that it was impossible to make a living as an illustrator and so I didn't expect it to last. Then, suddenly, it was twenty years later and people began to talk about my "Career in Illustration"

Les Edwards, "Lovecraft in Britain"

Which themes (e.G. sword and sorcery, weird fiction, Science Fiction etc.) do you enjoy most working on?
What is it that attracts you about them?

Generally I feel most at home working in Horror but the specific genre is not terribly important so long as there is a high level of weirdness. I've always been attracted to the strange and grotesque and I suppose you could say that I've never grown up.

  "Black Charade", Cover for the second book in the Dr. Caspian series by John Burke. Published by Coronet. Les' interpretation of Dr. Caspian inspired German Fantasy author Wolfgang Hohlbein to create victorian researcher "Robert Carter - the warlock of Salem", published with the same cover by Bastei Lübbe, Germany.

When you look back on 40 years of experience in Fantasy-illustration:
what would you say has changed in the meantime within the Genre?
What were the most important twists in the industry from your point of view?

Of course, the introduction of digital technology had a huge effect but the real change is in the success of the genre itself. When I began illustrating there was no "Fantasy Industry" as there is now. You could not describe yourself as a "Fantasy Artist" because no one would understand what you meant. Comics were for kids, Science Fiction was for weirdoes and very few people in the UK had heard of Conan the Barbarian. Michael Moorcock was writing his books about Elric and Dorian Hawkmoon but that was about it. Now Fantasy is everywhere, TV, movies, games and of course endless books about teenage vampires. It's hard to remember that at one time this kind of material was rare. I expect there will eventually be a backlash and Fantasy will fall out of favour. After all, does the world really need another Superhero movie?

There's a huge discussion going on whether young artists should offer traditional painting techniques as well or whether to use right away digital tools to produce their artwork. What's your opinion towards that issue?

You can't escape the digital world and I would expect any young person coming into the field to use digital media. I think it's a shame because my love is painting and, whatever anyone says, there is really no comparison between working with real paint and using a computer. That's just my opinion though, because I have spent a lifetime learning to paint. The reality is that the world is now digital and there is no going back.

"Caverns of the snow witch", Commissioned by Puffin for one of the Fighting Fantasy gamebook series

To research your material, do you use models, maquettes or photographs as visual back up?
I read that you did some of your pieces completely from imagination.
How do you train your visual vocabulary, your imaginative muscles, to do so?

I use a lot of photographic reference. It's very important, if you are painting something that does not exist in reality, to give it a sense of conviction, so photography can be important for lighting, anatomy and real-world details. What I never do is photograph something and just copy the photo. What's the point in that? The most important thing is to draw, and keep on drawing; that's true even for digital artists.

"Heroquest", Copyright © MB Games, 1988. Heroquest was a fantasy role-playing game aimed at kids.

What is your most important advice for aspiring artists and students who want to break into the field? 

Don't expect to get rich.


Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer my questions!

"Triple Zombie", Les Edwards

All picture material in this blog post is courtesy of Les Edwards.

Official website of Les Edwards