See, tracing is not a crime [Robert McGinnis process vid]

[FlipMcgee]

Direct link. Perfect anatomy all the time.

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[Seedling]

Traced from what?

[edit] Oh, I didn't see the link, silly me.

[fedezz]

Niiice, awesome find Flip. Thanks for sharing!

[Elwell]

Excellent video. Notice how McGinnis uses the projection as part of his creative process, taking things from it where they are useful and deviating where he needs to for artistic effect, emphasizing the planes, shifting the drawing to elongate the figure, etc. I'll say it again at the risk of sounding like a broken record, if you can't draw you can't trace.

[Flake]

Cool site and vid, thanks.

btw, I'd always assumed those figure paintings were a couple of feet high at least, anyone know if that's typical of the scale he works at?

[Dizon]

man...the vid doesn't load.

[Flake]

Patdzon the vid is only 3 megs, if you pm me your email addy I can mail it to you if you want. It's a .wmv file so you need to be on Windows.

[Elwell]

It's a .wmv file so you need to be on Windows.

No, there is a WMV add-on for Quicktime:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...omponents.mspx

[Flake]

Cool, I did not know that.

[NoSeRider]

Those Bastards!

Why do artists fill my head with grandiose BS and make me work too hard?

Keep in mind I'm referring to the tracing.

[Craig D]

Nose,
besides not always being able to trace, and it taking longer sometimes, Elwells quote says it all. (I think you were just joking but I thought I'd point out the obvious anyway)

..., if you can't draw you can't trace.

[kev ferrara]

That was guache?

Does anybody know what projector machine he was using? Looked quite impressive and expensive.

Anybody have any ideas about the interesting textures on the background wall near the right and left edges of the picture? I mean besides, spatter.

kev

[rpace]

There was a projector like that at the high school I attended -- it looked as old as the one used in the video. I suspect thet they don't make ém like that anymore.

I think you're referring to the water resist and cracking on the picture. When I used to play with gouache I'd use some water resistant fixatives then paint with very diluted media. It beads up and dries when it's a wash, or cracks when it's thinly coated.

~Richard

[Stoat]

Opaque projector. I just threw one in the rubbish, actually (though it was modern and not as cool as that one). You'll shell out a few hundred bucks for a good one.

[Stoat]

Man. I just lost my nerve and fished it out of the trash. The extra closeup lens I bought for it has already vanished, though. This is the one I've got. Dude selling it on eBay with a current bid of $35.

See, I was going to eBay all my art stuff, but I realized I wouldn't make all that much, and what with the packing and shipping and hassle...I just lost the will to live partway through. I picked everything out of the studio that I wanted, then had my handyman guy come take the rest while I was away for Christmas. I get back, and he'd stowed it all in the garage. I guess he couldn't believe anybody would deliberately throw away thirty year old crappy self portraits.

[stephen]

i think mcginnis usually uses egg tempra no?

[Elwell]

i think mcginnis usually uses egg tempra no?

He uses tempera, gouache, acrylics, and oils.

[Grief]

i love opaque projectors. i used to trace old Marvel superhero cards when i was a kid, unbeknownst to me it was really helping me understand how scale plays a role in the mark making used and how you have to adjust the method to maintain the same feel.

i see them periodically at yard sales, and they always look like they are battle tanks from an art-world-war long passed. they tend to be heavy, cumbersome to carry, and run hot. from the few ive used they all heat the projected object to the point of melting if its plastic, but i havent had any paper catch fire yet. also the light bulb's are a pain in the ass if you have to buy a new one.

[kev ferrara]

Stoat, try craigslist... sell it for cheap and if nobody comes repost it under the free section.

I have an arto-graph... piece of CRAPPPPPP... projector. I don't remember how much I paid for it, but the thing doesn't even hold a lens properly.

The reason I ask is because I"m starting to move toward thicker paper, which which is too opaque for the light box when I want to trace off sketches onto good paper. I guess I should get back to graphite paper and tracing, but its such a hassle and its always hard to tell where you are in the tracing. (complain complain)

[kev ferrara]

A friend of mine in woodstock has a Mcginness original and its built up with all these delicate thin brush strokes. Really strange surface. Like cross-hatched color strokes, each semi opaque and building up toward the light. Tempera? Looks almost like thatch when you get up close.

[kev ferrara]

Hmmm... a little pricey but... http://hudsonvalley.craigslist.org/art/534948875.html

[Stoat]

Are you using actual graphite paper? I prefer to smear a bit of graphite powder directly onto the back of the tracing paper. You can get away with using a very small amount of graphite that way, so you're not getting the paper all 'greasy', and you don't have to press hard (and possibly make indentations the paper). It usually takes a few strokes with a loose camelhair brush afterwards to flick away excess graphite. If you're having trouble seeing where you've been, you could use a pen or something.

I used to do a lot of watercolor on bristol board -- the surfaces really need to be super clean and the linework crisp and faint. This method worked well for me.

[Ilaekae]

Kev, I had two huge overhead "lucies" for studio work. Both were destroyed in a storage accident. The top is a plastic and metal box about 2 feet long and a foot high/wide. Ran cool, and accepted 11" x 11" originals. It was designed to project downwards to a drawing table, but the unit could easily spin 90° to project on a wall for really huge images. They came from an art store that services the ad industry, and probably still exist, so if there's a source near you, check them out. A lot of them were scrapped sadly when computers came in as the studio workhorses. I'll try to find the name out for you.

ADD: Just had a thought. Basically, if you assume all you want to do is get an enlarged image onto a canvas/whatever to transfer accurately, why not check out ebay for a decent OVERHEAD projector. they've all been mostly replaced with electronic projectors and computers, so these are more readily available, not used very often when they were used, and work by projecting a light through a transparent sheet. There is no reason why these wouldn't project through standard tracing paper in a darkened room. You're not posting an imaging for an audience, just a guide for yourself, so it would be a nice cheap alternative to an over-heated opaque projector. And when I say cheap, I mean cheap...$20-40 US for items that are almost new or used once.

[VulgarDragon]

I remember using one of those in grade school...we had an ancient opaque projector. That thing was massive, but it took in a whole magazine. I used it to copy a map of Grand Canyon for the school project.

I currently use an Artograph projector. It's pretty useful but the drawback is that it will only take small pictures...so if I draw something larger, I have to scan it and print out a shrinked version, so I can draw a bigger version. Ironic, huh?

I wonder if it's possible to build a bigger opaque projector yourself?

[HunterKiller_]

Very fine brush work.
Ah yes, the magnifying glass, so that's what Ctrl+ is, irl.

[Jasonwclark]

McGinnis is in pretty good company

"It is quite correct that I have made use of photography throughout my life. I stated years ago that painting is merely photography done by hand, consisting of super-fine images, the sole significance of which resides in the fact that they were seen by a human eye and recorded by a human hand. Every great work of art that I admire was copied from a photograph. The inventer of the magnifying glass was born in the same year as Vermeer. Not enough attention has yet been paid to this fact. And I am convinced that Vermeer von Delft used a mirror to view his subjects and make tracings of them. Praxiteles, most divine of all scultors, copied his bodies faithfully, without the slightest departure. Velasquez had a similar respect for reality, with complete chastity... The hand of the painter must have an ultra-academic training. It is only through virtuosity of such an order that the possibility of something else becomes available: Art."

-Dalí

[aesir]

I hate that view of art.

[Stoat]

Yes, Dali traced extensively (I've often wondered how well he could draw, really). So did Maxfield Parrish (his technique on landscapes was EXTRAORDINARILY mechanical. He actually painted separate RGB layers). So did a lot of the late 19th C guys (photography was so new and exciting for them).

I have to say, I HATE tracing. I've done a buttload of it in my career, using all sorts of methods. I did a lot of technical illustration, for which tracing and copying is SOP. For the figure, I don't like the way it looks and I don't like being dependent on it and I don't like the way it affects my compositional judgment. You know, you have the vague picture idea in your head, you have an actual photo in front of you...which one is going to win?

There. I feel silly criticizing artists who are clearly much better than I am. Obviously, in the hands of a master, much can be done with tracing. But I do think the technique stultifying...and it can be fatally seductive to newbies.

[Chris Bennett]

This stuff only works when the photo reference is pretty complete in the first place. As has been said above you have to be an experienced artist anyway, but what happens is that those skills are really only being used to texture a photograph with an odd elongation here a bit of hair missed out there and a few trinklets added. No really important decisions can be made because it would undermine the whole point of the process. It also means that a real internalisation of the entire environment one is depicting is constantly discouraged and can often become little more than a gimmick for manufacturing paintings.
As Stoat has just said; you end up having a battle between the photograph and what your imagination is doing. Photo reference is like a mistress - to be seen occasionally but if indulged in too much she will want you to leave your real wife.....

[Chris Bennett]

Yes, Dali traced extensively (I've often wondered how well he could draw, really).

Dali couldn't draw for toffees.....