My Introduction to Kenneth Potter and the California Style

I had no idea who Ken Potter was when I first met the man. I did not know that he was an internationally renowned artist who had painted landscapes and cityscapes on location around the world. I did not know that he was an important proponent of the California Style of Watercolor Painting, an art movement known for bold expressive brushwork and bright transparent color which features prominently in the history of California landscape painting. I did not know that Ken was a Marine who saw intense combat during WWII. Many things I now know about Ken Potter, I only learned after the fact, either from reading the McClelland’s book, or from talking with people who knew him.

But I knew none of this when I first met the man, I was just an ignorant kid taking art classes at Sacramento City College. Ken’s mother and my grandmother attended church together, and through this connection I was introduced to Ken. At first, I thought he was just another guy who was interest in art, but then I saw the gallery brochure below. The list of accomplishments was impressive even then (1990), but it still doesn’t begin to tell the real story.

When we first met, Ken asked me if I would be interested in attending his upcoming watercolor workshop. I was, but had no transportation. Ken suggested we might split the cost of a motel room, and he could drive me to and from the workshop, if I was willing to tag along to help him carry stuff around as well as scout locations (i.e. find good subjects for landscapes/cityscapes). We sealed the deal with a handshake, and so began four days that changed my life.

Each day of the workshop more or less followed this pattern: Ken and I would get up before sunrise, grab a quick breakfast at a local diner, and then on to the location where we set up our easels and began to paint well before any of the workshop participants arrived. Throughout each day, Ken demoed, lectured, and walked around to spend time with each student. The workshop was only supposed to last so many hours each day, and by late afternoon, the workshop participants had packed up and returned home, but not Ken and I. We remained on location, painting until the last rays of sunlight. After a meal at a local diner, Ken and I returned to the motel, where Ken pulled out the lower drawer of the dresser on his side of the room, and set his watercolor board on the drawer, turning the dresser into a makeshift easel, on which he continued to work on his painting from earlier that day. Following his example, I set up on my side of the room, and we painted until well after midnight (and this is after having painted sunrise to sundown).

We took occasional breaks from painting only to converse about art. I had many questions, and his answers encompassed a life experience that was shockingly broad and deep (and he was not boasting about any of this, everything he said was in response to my prying questions). He described living in England, France, Italy, painting on location in cities around the world, selling his paintings to provide daily bread, being a student of Jean Metzinger and Fernand Léger, interacting with some of the foremost figures of the Modern Art scene, being an art director for ad agencies in New York and San Francisco, watching bullfights in Spain, operating anti-aircraft gunnery against kamikaze planes in World War II, hitchhiking across the United States... and on and on the conversation went, meandering through Cubism, Divisionism, Abstract Expressionism, Futurism, and passionate debates among artists of the 1950’s. The history I could only read about in books was a history he had lived.

On one of those nights in the motel, Ken took a break from his painting. He stood up and walked over to look at a drawing I was working on in my sketchbook. He offered his critique, pointing out that my drawings were missing the gesture, lacking the spirit of my subjects. He described drawing as an act akin to the matador dodging the charging bull; the artist must be fully in the moment, each mark must have focused intention, like the matador drawing his sword and landing a killing stroke on the bull in one fluid motion. He made the motion of a matador drawing his sword. You have to imagine this man, then in his late 60’s, moving across the motel floor with the grace of a 25 year old matador, slaying his imaginary bull. I was trying to process everything he was saying, and avoid saying something stupid, but all I managed (in a meek hesitant voice) was, “So, uhmmm… you’re saying that I need to push the gesture more…” Ken ceased his swordsmanship, turned around and practically shouted, “THAT IS THE GESTURE! You don’t have to push it, Thomas. That IS the gesture!”

Well… that changed everything. I knew that, if I were going to be an artist, I must go all out, I must fully commit. You cannot be an artist with half-hearted intentions – it’s all or nothing. So, I packed up and ran off to art school. Thus began the caffeine-fueled haze of sleepless nights and ever-looming deadlines that defined much of my life ever since.

In the years that followed, Ken and I kept up a written correspondence. I suppose all who knew him have a Ken Potter story to tell. I will share more of mine, along with some thoughts on the “California Style” or “California School of Watercolor Painting”, in future posts on this blog.

My “False Horizon” Mistake

Looking over my old perspective notes, I caught myself making a minor mistake. In the first set of drawings below, you can see “Cartoon Thomas” driving uphill in his little 4 cylinder “shoe car” (so called because a friend, after too many beers, said to me, “Dude, your car looks like a shoe.”) The second drawing shows the street from Cartoon Thomas’ point of view.

Next we have Cartoon Thomas zooming downhill, followed by his view of the street.

I made these drawings while studying Andrew Loomis’ book Successful Drawing, and I was trying to apply his idea of “false horizon”. In his book, Loomis correctly draws streets converging to a “false horizon” above or below the actual horizon. My intention was to show that the actual horizon was at Cartoon Thomas’ eye level, while the streets converge to a “false horizon”. However, I drew Cartoon Thomas looking up or down along the street, so that the “direction of view” is parallel with the incline of the street. In other words, it’s like a camera tilting upward or downward (see diagram below). In this scenario, if the “direction of view” tilts up or down, the environment would shift into 2pt-vertical perspective (like the examples on the lower left side below).

Minor mistake, it’s not a big deal. I probably could have just left out “direction of view” altogether and focused on the inclined planes - then everything would be more or less correct, but little mistakes like this just bother me.

BTW… the “shoe car” survived almost 180k miles (even taking me across the U.S. from Florida to California), before it began to fall apart. I miss my old shoe.

Futurama: Drawing an Environment from Multiple Angles

Here is a typical scenario for an animation layout artist: drawing the same environment from multiple camera angles. Below are three of my drawings from Futurama. The first one is a high angle down shot in three-point perspective.

The second shot is a one-point perspective view with a low horizon line.

The third shot is a two-point perspective view (with one vanishing point inside the picture frame), zooming in closer on the dumpster.

It’s been so long ago, that I can’t remember which episode this was, or even what the characters were doing exactly (I think somebody was digging in the dumpster, but I'm not sure - I do remember that the production deadlines were so tight that I was living on too much caffeine and too little sleep, and the rest is a fog). However, these backgrounds represent a typical pattern in filmmaking: an establishing shot, followed by medium shot, and then close-up. 

• Establishing Shot: composition would emphasize environment over characters
• Medium Shot: emphasis might be roughly divided between characters and environment
• Closeup: composition would emphasize characters over environment  

The high-angle shot establishes the setting, and would show the positions of characters within the scene. The medium shot brings us down to the level of the characters, helping the audience connect with the character acting/story. Finally, a closeup brings us right up to the characters, emphasizing acting and emotional impact. (I really wish now that I had saved the character poses for these shots, but regrettably I only Xeroxed my backgrounds.) 

Before so much Los Angeles animation production was shipped overseas, an animator/character layout artist would focus on the character acting, while the background layout artist focused on developing the environments. The main challenge for the background layout artist was to keep the proportions and environment design (including all the details) consistent from shot to shot, while applying credible perspective. Looking at these so many years later, I think my proportions are a bit off on the dumpster and the crates (but hopefully animated cartoons are somewhat forgiving).

In one of the perspective classes I taught at AAU, students were assigned to draw the same environment or subject from multiple camera angles. I think this is a great exercise, because it helps you develop your eye for proportions, and really think about the structure and design of the environment. And of course, you can’t get away with hiding stuff in the background by overlapping it with a foreground shape - that might work for one shot, but probably not the rest.

Is Blogging Dead?

What happened to the art bloggers? A number of art blogs I used to follow are no longer around. Others still exist but have not been updated in years. Some are still going, but blogging doesn't seem to be as big as it was over a decade ago. Many artists I know have turned to social media sites that are perhaps better suited for posting images, and that offer more immediate audience reaction ("likes", comments, etc.) 

So why start an art blog now? Well... the painter, Chuck Close, said there is no better time to paint than when people are saying that painting is dead. There are no expectations or established norms, and the artist is free to experiment wildly. Perhaps the same is true of blogging. I love to draw and paint, and I love to write, and blogging would seem like a natural way to combine words and images. I had intended to start an art blog years ago, but I was seduced by Facebook (with it's easy flow of likes and comments). Much of the energy I would have put into a blog went into Facebook posts. But Facebook has some limits on how art can be displayed, and I don't like how hard it is to find older posts (not to mention that I don't care for all the bickering, politicking, and random things that appear in my feed there). I would like to keep a record of my posts that is better organized; for example, in a blog I can organize posts into portrait demos, notes on perspective, animation backgrounds, sketchbooks, etc. So, I will use this blog to post drawings, paintings, art tutorials, and general thoughts on art, along with the occasional irreverent cartoon.

If blogging really is dead, then no one will pay attention to what I am doing, which means I can experiment wildly... and maybe even get away with it.

AAU Ellipse Policy

One of my dubious claims to fame was authoring the Academy of Art "Ellipse Policy" for the Foundations perspective class.

Eye Update

I posted this recently on social media, but I want to post it here as well, in order to keep a record of my recovery from eye surgery. I hope to document the recovery process in the months ahead.

Eye Update: My left eye is healing up nicely and my vision in that eye is dramatically better. I can see details and textures which I have not seen for many years. Vision in my right eye is still a hazy fog and I will be going in for the surgery on that eye next. With DMEK surgeries, it can take up to 6 months for vision to stabilize in each eye, so I still have a ways to go before my vision is fully restored, but I am very happy with the progress so far.

Eye Surgery

I posted this on other social media over a month ago, but I will post it here as well, just to keep a record of my progress.

In late January, I underwent eye surgery to address Fuchs Endothelial Dystrophy, a condition that breaks down the inner layer of the cornea, causing loss of vision. The following was my effort to depict eye surgery, and the recovery process, from the point of view of the patient.

DMEK is Descemet Membrane Endothelial Keratoplasty, a technique that removes a thin layer of the cornea and replaces it with donor tissue. Compared to full thickness cornea transplant, or even partial thickness cornea transplant (DSEK or DSAEK), DMEK involves only the thinnest layer of the back of the cornea, resulting in less chance of rejection, faster recovery, and better visual outcomes.

So far, I’ve only had the DMEK in my left eye; my right eye has yet to be done. At the time I made these drawings, my vision was still quite blurry, but was improving quite a bit compared to the days immediately following surgery.