Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Windmill Maquette

Maquettes can be made roughly and quickly, and still provide plenty of useful information.

Here’s an architectural maquette made of foam core board assembled with a glue gun. It only took about two hours to cut out and stick together. The whole thing is about six inches long, with toothpicks for the windmill spars. As a maquette, it's no beauty!

I spray-painted it gray to make it photograph better. White tends to bleach out in the photo. You can see how the bumpy texture of the paint and the ragged inner surface of the foam board really shows up in the “halflight,” or the area where the form is turning into shadow. The textural effect is strongest on the tail fin and on the side plane of the tower.

There’s also an interesting cast shadow to the right of the cluster of buildings, with cool upfacing planes, and little slivers of light on the edges of the buildings and the terraces.

This is the kind of information I needed from the maquette as I developed the final painting, even though the form and design ended up quite different.

Please check back again tomorrow, and I'll explain more about texture in the halflight, because it's the key to painting dinosaurs convincingly in direct sunlight.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd never thought of using maquettes for reference, this opens a lot of resources for paiting. maybe a 3D mesh with painted textures could replace this, for I can't make these myself.

I know there's a P.O box adress where I can send a letter to james, but is there any way to send you something via email, that can be read for you?

I'm starting as illustrator, but I always consider Dinotopia as the one thing that made me fell for art since a child, and I've Gurney as one of my greatest influences in art, I wanted to send a letter as a child when I read Dinotopia, I didn't do it, but I willing to do it now, it will mean a lot to me.

Anonymous said...

Hi, Carlos,
You can reach me via this email address: jgurneyart@yahoo.com. Thanks for you generous words, and good luck with your work.

Frank Gardner said...

I am always impressed with the amount of effort you put into making your art the best it can be James.
I hope it is not a bother, but I will have to "Tag" you to post Five random or weird things about yourself.
I was tagged by Ambera and I am chosing you as one of the bloggers that I give thanks to on this Thanksgiving.
You can see my five and the list of rules, along with the reasons I chose you, on my blog.
frankgardner.blogspot.com
Happy Thanksgiving

Andrew Glazebrook said...

Truly superb work. Fabulous finished painting.