Greg Manchess Scores Again

Greg Manchess paints everything from murals to sci-fi and fantasy book cover illustrations. And he has developed into a master of the bold-stroke school of oil painting. I have dozens of images of his work stashed away on my iMac for both inspiration and regret that I could never be as good.

He blogs on Dan Dos Santos' Muddy Colors group blog, which is well worth following if you are interested in contemporary illustration. Not long ago Manchess posted about a demonstration piece he made for a class he was giving. I found the work astonishing.

This is the image he posted. It shows Elsa Lanchester in her "Bride of Frankenstein" movie role. Note Manchess' bold use of blue-green as the main facial color and the contrasting orange-brown on the hair and part of the background (this is not far from normal skin color when toned with white). But the feature that really grabbed my attention is the small areas of warm color below Lanchester's right eye. Without that, the composition would fall apart.

Color is one thing. But what about value (dark-light)? I ran the image through iPhoto to create a black-and-white version. Sure enough, it works well too, which is another factor in creating a satisfying painting. Plus, having colors express values isn't always easy to do, yet Manchess dashed off this painting in less than two hours, including time to fix an area that got smudged by (of all things!) a cat.

As a final test, here is the photo Manchess probably used for reference. His color-based values scheme holds up well when compared to this.

Francisco Pons Arnau's Women

There's not much information available on the Internet about Spanish painter Francisco Pons Arnau (1886-1953). Charley Parker on his Lines and Colors blog corroborates this. A Spanish-language site devoted to him is here, but featured images of his works are blown up from their source sizes resulting in blurring. And it too offers almost nothing in the way of biography.

Pons painted landscapes and formal portraits, but his favored subject matter was beautiful women. Here are some examples.

Gallery

Clotilde tomendo te

Confidencias - 1925

Esquiadoros

Flamencodansös

Mujer sentada

Retrato de mujer

Automobile Facial Expressions

Because the front ends of most automobiles have two headlamps and an opening to send air to the radiator, they can be said to resemble a human face -- the headlamps as eyes, the grille opening as the mouth.

Ordinarily, the notion of a car having a face is simply a mental construct. But in some cases, front ends seem to be faces with expressions. At times, this might have been the intention of the stylist, in other instances it could have been accidental.

Let's take a look at some examples.

Gallery

1949 Lincoln Cosmopolitan
Although I missed it, a number of observers have pointed out the "sad" look on 1949 Lincolns. Indeed, the outside of the grille was squared off for the 1950 model year apparently because potential buyers were put off the the '49s expression.

1950 Buick Special
I've never encountered a consistent set of reactions to the 1950 Buick's grille (that too was quickly changed for the following model year). Mostly observers found it outrageous. As for analogies to human expressions, the notions of "buck teeth" or "drooling" might apply.

1956 Oldsmobile 98
Oldsmobile sported a grille theme that evolved from 1946 through 1958. The endpoint versions are considerably different, but if one looks at Oldsmobiles year-by-year between those dates, the progression is noticeable. For the 1956 model year the cars had a fish-faced look because grille opening resembled mouths of certain fish.

2010 Acura TSX
The facial expression of this Acura is ambivalent. Seen on the street from certain angles, it seems rather harsh and sinister. But in the view in the photo above it looks like there is an odd, angular sort of smile.

2010 Mazda 3
On the other hand, the Mazda 3's face is clearly smiling.

Sir James Gunn

Sir James Gunn (1893-1964, he eventually dropped his first name, Herbert, in favor of his middle name) successfully practiced representational painting in an era when it fell out of fashion. Perhaps this was because he made his living as a portraitist with the Royal Family among his prime clients. Information about him is scarce on the Web, though this site has a biographical note along with a slide show of many of his works.

Gunn was born in Glasgow, son of a tailor who apparently owned a successful business, given the support James received. He studied at the Edinburgh College of Art and the Académie Julian in Paris. During the Great War he served with the Artists Rifles and later as an officer with the 10th Battalion, Scottish Rifles. He was gassed, which resulted in lung trouble for the rest of his life.

He married Gwendoline Hillman, widow of Captain G.S. Thorne, in 1919. They had three daughters, but divorced in 1927. He married Pauline Miller in 1929, that marriage lasting until her death after a long illness in 1950. They had a son and daughter. Pauline was the subject of numerous paintings. Gunn lived in the London area from 1925, but spent some time in Paris 1935-36. He painted many portraits of members of the British establishment including Prime Ministers Chamberlain and Macmillan, plus a group portrait of George VI's family and others of the Royal Family. He painted British officers, including Montgomery in France following the D-Day invasion.

Gunn was elected to full membership in the Royal Academy in 1961 and knighted in 1963.

Gallery

Gwendoline Hillman - 1925
Gwendoline was his first wife. Their marriage might have been heading for the rocks when this was painted.

Pauline, Wife of the Artist - c.1930
Painted not long after their marriage.

Pauline Waiting - 1939

Pauline in the Yellow Dress - 1944
Two more Pauline portraits.

Gracie Fields - c.1940
Fields suffered from cancer around the time this was painted.

July by the Sea

Roman Forum - 1929
Two outdoor scenes, the first probably from the early 1920s. Gunn also painted some sensational nudes not quite modest enough for this site.

Conversation Piece at the Royal Lodge, Windsor - 1950
The Royal Family supposedly at ease (though the posing is stiff).

Queen Elizabeth - state portrait - 1953-56

My take on Gunn is that he was highly competent, but lacking the additional trace of spark or flash needed to make him and his works memorable and his reputation stronger.

Thomas Anshutz

Thomas Pollock Anshutz (1851-1912) was a painter and art instructor who studied under and later worked with the better-known Thomas Eakins. Anshutz's Wikipedia entry is here.

He became the lead instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts after Eakins left. His students included Robert Henri, George Luks, John Sloan, Everett Shinn and John Marin, all of whom are better known than him today. Nevertheless, Anshutz was a skilled painter whose lack of acclaim might in part be due to his not buying heavily into modernist artistic ideology (if his paintings are any evidence).

Gallery

The Ironworkers at Noontime - 1880

Woman Writing at a Table

Figure Piece - 1909

Lady with Bonnet

The Incense Burner - c.1905

A Rose - 1907
These last two paintings seem to feature the same model.

Ultimate Airliner Stretch

"Back to the drawing board" has become an extremely expensive option for airplane designers and manufacturers, given the complexity of modern aircraft. Rather than coming up with an entirely new model to meet customer demands, builders nowadays routinely modify existing designs until technological advances demand an entirely new product.

The Douglas company was following this strategy as far back as the 1940s and 50s with its series of four-motor prop-driven airliners ranging from the unpressurized DC-4 through the DC-6 and DC-7 models. So when turbojet-propelled airliners came on the scene near the end of the 1950s, Douglas was careful to plan its planes to have most of the fuselage as a uniform-width tube. If airlines demanded more seating capacity, it was comparatively easy to add sections to the fuselage to increase length. This was done with the DC-8 jetliner and carried out to an even greater extent for the DC-9. I don't have statistics handy to prove it, but I strongly suspect that the DC-9 was stretched relatively more than any other airliner over its production run and name changes.

Shown below are the original DC-9 and the MD-90 which exemplifies the ultimate stretch (final-production Boeing 717s were about the same size).

Information regarding the DC-9 series can be found here. The DC-9-10 pictured above was designed as a short-haul airliner with a moderate seating capacity of 70 to 90, depending on whether a first-class section was available. Fuselage length is 92.1 feet (28.07 m) and range was around 1,000 miles on average. The first flight was in 1965.

The MD-90 first flew in 1996, more than 30 years after that of the DC-9. Its length is 152 ft 7 inches (46.5 m), though this statistic might include part of the tail as well as the fuselage itself. According to the Wikipedia link, its capacity was 153-172 passengers depending upon availability of first-class seating. Range was around 2,500 miles.

The MD-90 was in many respects a different aircraft than the original DC-9-10. It had larger, more powerful engines and a different wing. Similarities centered on the fuselage. The cockpit window arrangement was essentially the same for all versions and all featured five-abreast seating for coach class with three seats on one side of the aisle and two on the other.

Note that the strongest visual difference is the length of the fuselage forward of the wing, the MD-90 having wings set seemingly ridiculously far aft. The arrangement was necessary; the long nose was needed to balance the weight of the large, heavy engines at the rear.

Lilias Torrance Newton: Canadian Portraits

Lilias Torrance Newton (1896-1980) was a Canadian painter specializing in portraiture. Her career overlapped those of the Group of Seven, and some of them even sat for her.

Biographical information on the Internet is sketchy, but her Wikipedia entry contains the basics.

Here style is the slightly simplified naturalism favored by some artists in the 1920s and 1930s who either felt they had to adopt a little modernism for commercial reasons or maybe simply liked that particular look. Below are some of her portraits.

Gallery

Self-Portrait - c.1934

Elise Kingman - 1930

Louis Muhlstock - c.1937

Ethel Southam (Mrs F.H. Toller)

Lawren Harris - 1938
Harris was a leader of the famous (in Canada but, alas, not elsewhere) Group of Seven.

Edwin Holgate
Holgate became of Group of Seven member not long before it disbanded.

Frances Holgate
I have no documentation, but assume for now that this portrait is of Holgate's wife.