Harvey Dunn- class notes

[Flake]

Like it says in the title, class notes from illustrator and teacher Harvey Dunn. I meant to post these a while back but completely forgot until I saw Dunn mentioned in another thread earlier today.
Anyhow, I figured they might be of interest to some of you.

Class notes-
http://www.robolus.com/h.dunn-eveningclassroom.pdf
http://e-pix.com/ArtMuseum/Dunnclassno.html

Pics-
http://www.southdakotaartmuseum.com/explore_harvey.htm
http://www3.sdstate.edu/Administration/SouthDakotaArtMuseum/Collections/Dunn/

[SgtDirtbag]

I just skimmed over the first few pages and there were some quotes I liked and some I didn't.
I like these quotes:

Once when I had a little job, the editor said, “Mr. Dunn, don’t spend too much time on these things,
we’re not paying you for a lot of work, and they’re not worth it.”
And I replied, “Mr. Editor, you may be paying me for these, but I’m really working for this fellow Dunn, and he’s got to be pleased.”

People say to me how wonderful it must be to be an artist, how I must enjoy my work, etc... Not knowing how we have to slave and sweat and struggle and swear before that picture.

Don’t be negative! You look for what’s wrong in your pictures. Look for what is good. Then make everything come up to that. Be positive!

================================================

But I have got some problems with these quotes:

An idea is not something you “cook up”. It comes to you when your consciousness is open and receptive. It presents itself.
If it is a true idea it has always been true. There is no such thing as a creative artist.
An artist merely expresses that which has always been.So, are we supposed to "be receptive" and just wait till an idea "presents itself"?
I agree that an artist expresses that which has always been, but isn't it "cooking it up"
when an artist recombines things that already exist to come up with something "new"?
I think there is, or can be, a much more active approach than just waiting for the idea to present itself.

A negative statement can never strengthen a statement.Hm.. I remember an anti-smoking campaign that showed people smoking,
then the camera moved inside their lungs, showing the damage that had been done.
A very negative statement about smoking that adds strength to the statement "don't smoke", atleast in my opinion.
Or maybe I misinterpreted what he means.

Picture making is just like a song. You don’t sing it your own damned way, you try to follow the song.Well... why not? There are many good covers which I think are better
than the originals BECAUSE they weren't sung like the original song.

[dbclemons]

Yes, I've always had a problem with the "There is no such thing as a creative artist" statement as well. In fact, "...how we have to slave and sweat and struggle and swear" seems to contradict it. What else would they be sweating over? Is the air conditioner off? Also, "avoid middle tones" and then "have it dark but not too dark - light but not too light." You're not left with much else, are you? Nonetheless, it's fun reading, and he seems to have taught well, judging from the level of his students.

[Mr. Visions]

These are amazing finds, thanks so much Flake. This is my initial response, I still have to read it all the way through. From what I read, this is really motivating and uplifting. Some of the questioned statements earlier on quotes not liked: read them again, and you may or may not feel differently. The one about picture making, I feel kind of reflects on learning to sing. You never just start singing and stick to that, you hear others and learn from them. You learn from the greats to become better, not sitting in the cave and learning from yourself. I probably took that quote on a tangent, but that's what I got from it.
Also with the ideas thing, I think he was referring to the voice that is within us, saying ideas are a cummulative form of everything we have experience in our lives brought together to define the subject at hand. Some of that quote does bother me to, but I can see some truth in that. I do believe there are creative artists, that just goes done funny any other way. Anyway, sweet articles. I'm sure being there and hearing this would have been a totally different experience. Now to put my slippers on and enjoy some Earl Grey with this fine liter'ture.

- Visions

[kev ferrara]

As the guy who started this momentary Harvey Dunn frenzy (happily so!) with a mega post/crit on theincredibleandy's thread, I'll weigh and try to explain things...

I've been a huge fan of the Brandywine illustrators for a good long while. Howard Pyle is the founder and he taught Dunn. I have Pyle's notes too, as well as some notes from some his other teacher-students too. I was given a copy of Dunn's 1934 notes by Walt Reed of Illustration house, who has just completed a book on Dunn that should be out soon. I have read Dunn's notes a thousand times and spent years thinking about them and researching what he meant by some of his more cryptic aphorisms and trying to incorporate what his students like Cornwell and Anders have written about him into my own understanding of his message. I have a huge cache of illustrations of all the Brandywine guys including Dunn. I guarantee I am the biggest Dunn fan on Conceptart.org! :)

All that being said I will now try to clarify the questions posed here...


We don't "cook up" art -- He means that true dramatic illustrations can't be constructed like setting up dolls in a playhouse. You must live the moment in your mind until your heart races with the reality of what you are imagining and you must "see" the moment in your mind's eye as if you are actually living in the moment. You must smell the smells, known where the sun is, feel the floor beneath your feet, etc. You are not looking at the moment through some window.. you are IN the moment yourself.

Dunn is also saying that the more you struggle to make your pictures "interesting" by adding stuff, the more falsity you will interject. Again, going to one of his main themes, that you cannot just be posing your figures like dolls in a playhouse.

Frazetta is a big Harvey Dunn guy. There's an interview in Ariel from long ago where he talks about his picture making philosophy and it is exactly Dunns! And I know that Krenkel must have turned him onto Dunn's notes way back in the 50s probably!

Anyhow... look at Frazetta's Fire Demon... One of the great fantasy works of all time. Yet at its core there is this kernel of truth in it about how a male sometimes feels about a female. Fire Demon is a metaphor for that scarily mysoginistic feeling of betrayal and hate. And the reality of life is, men have, *at times*, felt this way about women since the dawn of time. It is a Jungian archetype... a truth that has always been true and always will be. You just interpret the truth in your own way, in your own time, with your own subject matter. Frazetta's way just happens to be through fantasy. He created his own metaphor for this ultimate truth.

Thus what Dunn is saying when he says "there is no such thing as a creative artists" he means we are merely expressing truths that have always been and always will be. This requires a receptivity to the truth, not creativity. But we do express our metaphoric version of truth in our own creative way.

Dunn means a "false" or "deliberately weak" element or visual when he says "negative statement." He is saying that you can't make a head look better by making a poorly drawn forest behind it, or some kind of indistinct blur that makes no sense. You can't just scribble over something that doesn't look right and expect it to make the good parts of the picture look better. He is saying that something badly drawn will make something that is well drawn also look bad...
continuing... in next post.

[Elwell]

Remember that many of these are critiques of specific pieces that we can't see. A good teacher knows what a particular student needs to hear at a particular time, and that may seem contradictory to advice given in different circumstances.
As for the song analogy: Yes, a song can be interpreted in different ways, but every song has it's own internal logic and structure. If the singer understands that, whether intellectually or instinctively, then they will be able to interpret the song successfully, even to the point of changing the lyrics or melody. But you can't just throw in words or notes willy-nilly; the song itself dictates how it has to be sung. Dunn is saying a well constructed picture is similar, and when you truly understand the underlying concept, then many of the following decisions will be made for you.

[kev ferrara]

Picture making is like a song, you can't sing it your own damn way, you have to follow the song...

He means... When you dream a strong dramatic image you have to follow the image, you can't scramble it and expect it to work. Storytelling requires certain information to be told first, followed by other important information, followed by the climax to the story. You don't give away the climax first, that would ruin the suspense. And you don't leave out information that is necessary to make the climax make sense.

You also have to understand that these notes were written in 1934. Everybody knew the same songs and the American culture was much less diverse. Much more folksy era. There wasn't this whole "cool" thing yet. There wasn't characters with blades for fingers and blood spewing from every orifice. People sang in barbershop quartets and played Dixieland tunes on their hand cranked Victrolas.

[kev ferrara]

What we are "sweating over" when we make pictures is clarifying the dramatic concept for ourselves and then stripping away all the extraneous nonsense and going right for that dramatic core. Dunn expected everybody in his class to already know the technical know-how to paint realistically. And models were very cheap then and you could just hire one to stand there all day if you needed.

So he's always talking about how we fight with ourselves on a picture because we put all this other crap we want to put in there, but not all of it helps. And this is the result of not having a clear enough picture in the mind before beginning. The dramatic image must be previsualized and held with all one's might. And that must be traced off onto your canvas. That is the core Dunn philosophy.

[kev ferrara]

Avoid middle tones.. he means at the point of most drama have more contrast. Simple.

Have it dark but not too dark, light but not too light... He is just saying in his own way the 1/3 rule/formula of light and dark balance on a canvas. That either you are making a picture that is 2/3 light and 1/3 dark or 1/3 light and 2/3 dark. That's a real simplification but its a classic formula. He is also saying (and this is the great thing about Dunn, he is imparting sooooo much wisdom when he says things..) that if you want to achieve a high-keyed tone in your paintings, that's all well in good, but if you make it too light, it will be boring, monotone.. indistinct. On the other hand if you make it too dark, it'll just look like a big black painting.. .mud, again indistinct.

Kev

I talk a little bit more about Dunn on my own thread:

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=101106

[Flake]

Kev, do you have a link for the Pyle notes you mentioned?

[kev ferrara]

Don't know about the Pyle notes online. They come from an exhibition catalog from an exhibition of the Brandywine artists held years ago. The title is "Notes From Howard Pyle's Monday Night Lectures" June-November 1904. Its too much for me to type. If they can't be found online maybe I'll scan them in and post em and somebody else can do the typing.

I believe there is also some Pyle notes on light and form and color in one Loomis' books which somebody has linked to on this site somewhere. Loomis also offers his commentary on the notes which is very clarifying. The text begins..."Fortunately I am able to give you, in his own words, the general theory of approach used by Howard Pyle, as it was given out to his students."

kev

[Flake]

Good point, I'd completely forgotten about that section in Loomis, it's in "Creative Illustration" if I remember correctly.

I'll get googling for the rest, thanks.

Edit: yup, page 136 of Creative Illustration.

[dbclemons]

Reading these notes of excerpts is like a joke book of just punch lines, and trying to figure out the set up. It's really necessary to read or hear them as a whole to figure out the context of what he's saying.

[Dizon]

What is the difference between the "Idea" and the "Pictorial Concept" ?

[kev ferrara]

Patdzon...

One may have a good idea for a picture (climber slipping down a wall towards an awaiting tiger on the ledge below, say) but not have a good solid vision of that scene. The "vision" is the pictorial concept, which Dunn says "must be graphic in nature". That is it must "read from a distance" as a GRAPHIC DESIGN.

That is the core philosophy. Drama that reads from a distance (which is why Dunn says when you go to conceive your idea pictorially, think of it in the most barren way. Put in the least you can that will tell all that needs to be told)

Hope that explains it.

kev