Discovering the Artist James McMullen
James McMullen
James McMullan is one of America’s legendary living illustrators. He is 84 years old and he still works 8 hours a day, working out of his New York City studio. He has worked for every major magazine in the world. As a student of his back in 1995 I learned much about how to rightly perceive a subject through careful observation.
James McMullan has created images for magazine stories, books for adults and children, record covers, US stamps, murals and animated films but he is most well known for the over eighty posters he has done for Lincoln Center Theater. Among the most recognized of these posters are Anything Goes, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I and My Fair Lady. To celebrate this achievement Lincoln Center Theater has recently mounted a permanent exhibit of his original poster art in the lobby of the Mitzi Newhouse Theater.
Another highlight of his career is illustrating the popular series of vehicle books, (including I Stink!, a monologue by a garbage truck), written by his wife, the author, Kate McMullan, which Amazon has transformed into the animated series, The Stinky and Dirty Show. A standout in James McMullan’s work for magazines is the group of journalistic illustrations of a Brooklyn Disco that he painted for New York Magazine that became the visual inspiration for the movie Saturday Night Fever.
James McMullen
In 2010 he produced a series of how-to-draw lessons for the New York Times. I have taken these lessons and combined them into just a few lessons so we can learn to draw from a master. I am in contact with James McMullen and he is very happy that we are applying his lessons in this manner.
McMullen first teaches a fundamental shape that is found throughout nature and the human figure, that of ellipses. He shows us a fundamental lesson using a clay vase as the subject because of its natural organic shapes that include ellipses, ovals and straight lines. The vase he is drawing is found here:
#1
This is the object or vase we are going to see drawn.
#2
The structure of ellipses, ovals, and lines construct the vase first as shown here.
Curved hatch lines start our shading with cross hatch lines to start going darker as shown below.
#3
McMullan writes, Now we’ll move on to shading the pot that we previously described in simple outline, using curving lines that are like segments of the ellipse.
These are what I think of as “cat stroking” lines — curves that start gently, reach a crescendo of pressure and then fade out at the end. They enclose lines sensuously and are enormously useful in describing all kinds of bulging, rolling, bumpy subjects. In using these curved lines to shade the pot, we will not only describe the shadow but, because the lines curve around the pot, we will be accentuating its actual form. In my example of cross-hatching I show that, in order to avoid a “clotted” effect, the lines are made at different angles. I have drawn my examples in pen and ink to make the images clearer, but you might want to draw in a 2B or 4B pencil.
#4
A single directional light from a 45 degree angle illuminates the pot. Notice how the shadows wrap around the ellipses as if gently embracing the pot.
Now that the pot has been illuminated with a strong directional light, we can study how that light falls on the object, the angles that the shadows make and how to use lines to shade the drawing. Either using the outline drawing you did last week or, drawing the pot again, follow along with these steps to delineate the shadows on the pot.
In the first stage of the drawing, I show that the light is coming from the right and slightly in front of the pot. This means that the basic pattern of shadow on the outside of the pot falls on the left, but the shadow on the inside of the pot is on the right.
In the last stage of the drawing, I use very pale lines in the light part of the pot on the right to dramatize the very lightest part of the pot on the “shoulder.” In other words, I am saving paper white for the one dramatically lit part of the pot. I finish the drawing by shading the shadow on the ground behind the pot, accentuating the flatness of the ground by using straighter parallel lines.
Lesson One- As an assessment complete the following form to show evidence to me that you read the information on James McMullen.
Lesson Two- Your lesson is to create a drawing from one of the photographs below that demonstrate the shading techniques of James McMullan. Show that you understand how to draw ellipses as shown in McMullens drawing samples. Focus on the way light wraps around each object as if it were hugging the object gently. Focus on the specific darkness of the crosshatching as the back side of your objects get darker.
