The Art of Observation

There is more to art than what you do with pencils, brushes, and computers, or any art material. Good art takes place in the mind as a mental exercise as well as a physical one, and as such, it’s a skill that can be honed even when you don’t have anything to draw or paint with.

If I had to list the most important attributes to make up a successful artist, I’d most likely start with Observation. Observation is different than merely seeing. Seeing is mechanical, the input from your eyes to your brain. Observation is more complex and is the result of seeing combined with thinking, analyzing, and making an effort to notice some of the elements that often go unnoticed.

Some beginning artists merely rely on their eyes. They see something, and they attempt to recreate it in their art. You have far more power if you not only see something, but also understand it. So how do you go about improving this skill? It’s as easy as using your eyes and brain wherever you are. Ask yourself questions that you’d likely consider if you were actually painting a scene from life, and maybe a few that you might forget to ask yourself if you were caught in the art making process.
One of my favorite exercises is to spot reflected light and color, and pick out the source. Rather than being content to merely see the highlight and to recreate it, by understanding it more fully you have the ability to alter and control it. Take for example a bit of shiny metal on some object on your table top. It has some nice bright highlights, but you haven’t considered where that light comes from. With careful observation you can pick out that some of them are coming from the window behind you, giving those highlights a subtle cool color. Others are coming from the lights in the room, which are warmer. Having taken the time to understand what is going on more closely, you’ve been able to notice subtle color differences that you might not have noticed before, and that complexity will make your image more interesting. It also gives you the power to make artistic changes with more confidence. For example if you decided to change the time of day the light from the window would be different and thus would it’s reflections on the object.

The more you know, the better your observation skills potentially get as well. Knowledge of anatomy means that you can combine what you see with what you know, to give you clues on how to spot difficult plane or color changes. Your eyes can sometimes fool you, or give you misleading clues. Making some observations from another angle will help you understand what is going on in front of you.

There are hundreds of questions and observations that you can make on a daily basis that will help hone your observation skills, and in the process widen your understanding of how to portray the world accurately. The stronger your observation skills, the better decisions you’ll be able to make at the drawing board or easel. Like with everything else, practice helps greatly, along with knowledge.

In the Beginning: Haddon Sundblom

This post continues an illustrators' parallel to the series on early works by modernist painters.

The subject is Haddon Sundblom, who spent his career in Chicago and was highly influential in his day; many successful illustrators cut their teeth in the field while working at his studio. If you're fortunate enough to have a copy of the first issue of Illustration Magazine or its later reprint, the lead article deals with Sundblom.

In December 2010 Leif Peng had a series of posts on his blog dealing with Sundblom. The lead article, which dealt with his early career, can be found here. Go to the blog's archives for that month to access the related posts.

The source for Sundblom's early work shown in the present post was the Annual of Advertising Art, a yearly awards publication of the Art Directors Club of New York; the organization's present guise is here, and those awards are still being given.

Dates for the illustrations shown below are "circa" the year before the source Annual was printed because that was when the the work was probably published.

Gallery

Coca-Cola Santa Claus
For better or worse, these days Sundblom is best known for his Santa illustrations for Coca-Cola.

For Lincoln - 1924
This image was found on the Web; a black-and-white version was in the Annual of Advertising Art for 1925.

For Lincoln - c.1924
In the mid-1920s Lincoln had many advertisements using the general visual and content themes shown above. One factor that was not consistent was the artist doing the illustrations. Although Sundblom did some of this work, perhaps most were by Fred Cole. It is hard to tell which artist did any given illustration, because the artistic style is similar for the entire ad campaign, something surely imposed by the art director. What's not clear is whether the art director had this appearance in mind from the start or else liked what he saw in the work created by the initial artist and ordered it continued. In any case, that series was very attractive -- more so than Lincoln's cars of the time.

For Ford - c.1924

For Ford- c.1924

Illustration for unidentified automotive client - c.1924

For White Naphtha Soap - c.1927

For Camay Soap - c.1928
Yes, this was really done by Sundblom (unless the caption was botched in the Annual). The deviation from his usual style might be explained by the art director wanting an appearance in line with the simplified, poster-like modernist look common in fashion illustration in the late 1920s.

For White Naphtha Soap - c.1929
The original artwork was in color, but printed in black-and-white in the Annual.

For Packard - c.1930
In the late 1920s into 1930 Packard advertisements would have a scene of luxury painted by a well-known illustrator at the top of the page and an image of a car towards the bottom. This Sundblom illustration has been cropped on the right side because the page in the opened Annual curved towards the gutter and distorted the image I photographed; note some reflected light washing out the right section of the remaining image.