Jon Foster

At the Beginning of April, my school brought Jon Foster to campus to judge the illustration portion of the annual student show- Best of Ringling. While he was there, he also did a lecture/slideshow and a couple demos. I ended up taking a bunch of shorthand notes as he was talking, and later transcribed them, planning to go through and organize them a bit. As that was over two months ago now, I might as well just post them in raw form. =)

Jon Foster - RSAD 4/5/07
-Geometry, shapes in composition
-draw as much as you can from imagination, that's where your style comes out
-Reference for lighting and volumes
-Imagination is unique, but limited
-'intangible quirkiness from reality when you work from reality'
-not getting reference is lazy
-opaque projector
-make it sit back and come forward where you want it to!
-draw a half an hour every day, but DRAW EVERY DAY.
-Dark on light
-look at Rick Barry; Don't do a figure, do something you can experiment with more and have fun.
-You like to make art, remind yourself you like it. 'is it going to suck today?' It's sensual.
-Process and being involved. It's visceral
-looking at Phil Hale
-edges and values
-Your reference is directing you, but you are not its slave.
-Print out and paint over? feels hollow, like painting by numbers
-Nothing like experience to figure it out, master copies
-Pay attention to silhouettes!
-Raw umber and pthalo blue
-Body language natural, yet unnatural.
-Tension, storytelling
-nc wyeth
-Don't quit too early (in reference to the digital 'look')
-"Versus" with equal standing. 'swirling cloud with feet coming out' XD
-Scanning in sections. Make sure the scan settings are the same, not adjusted per section.
-young adult work
-be inventive with your fixes. Inventive with reference.
-red noses
-Photoshop for my masks and color adjustments
-"I did this. cool!"
-Detail. Sometimes things get too slick. Go in and muck it up. Give it more life.
-Eyedropper tool is amazing.
-arthur rackham
-design- james jean
-dissect your influences and go back to the sources.
-Asian print making, dean cornwell, harvey dunn.
-Let some edges go
-Sit down and play. Caricature, volumes and shapes, mood, warm/cool play, texture, subtlety. Pattern.
-Mixing vocabularies, still communicating
-abstraction of reality
-It's good to have favorite things
-Palette knives, large shapes and rhythms.
-where do we crop?
-moocha?
-in a tree looking down
-looking up, color, design!
-barbed wire
-stacks of houses
-rarely do specific scenes from a book
-not everyone has to be a badass
-National Geographic, lot of give and take with experts
-posable GI Joes
-where is the gutter?
-Do you have a personal project? Are you going to get it done?
-Pattern and texture, design. Love it. Line and Flatter color.
-inspirational email list, daily photo/image from the 40's-60's
-Big ears
-complexity of composition and motion
-crows= an amazing bird
-9 tailed fox- so much perspective
-realistic waves like the chinese paintings
-graphic trees
-"mood pieces" loose studies
-atmosphere, lighting, characters, postures, who they are. Moments, personality.
-sketchbook, do it for fun. Not just utilitarian. George [Pratt] does it all the time. Bastard.
-Use your pencil in different ways.
-geometries and rhythms
-have fun, experiment. This stuff is the most important, finding your voice, talk to the paper, it talks back to you.
-Sculpture for characters you plan on repeating.
-shock waves
-wallpaper patterns
-authentic looking fake guns. Or pink styrofoam. 'sallgood.
-color, selective color, cools and warms.
-can't go wrong with a cool moustache
-never time myself, I'd probably find out I'm making like $2 an hour.
-Start early, so you can get away from it, come back. The more distance you can get, the more perception you'll have, the more you'll get out of it.
-Sometimes you're ON you're there. Sometimes the procrastinating takes over. Then, "Why did I avoid this? this is fun."
-Studio-inspiration, What are your friends doing? People around you.
-in a sense, this isn't me
-Studio wanted him, that's cool, but what do you want me to do?
The reality was that the programmers couldn't or wouldn't do what they wanted, the subtleties. 'can only go so far' geometries of the models.
-Decided they didn't want what they thought they wanted, they wanted the straight-on orthographics. <-D&D Online.
-Traditional pieces, unfinished paintings in the closet.
-Most of the time is process, thumbnail, composition, everything you do before you sit down and paint. What's the feel? Energy? it goes a lot smoother if you plan it out.
-Critiques- group of friends, email list. Trust them.
-Wish I went to the Graphic Courses. It's another vocabulary. More tools for your box.
-If you get too abstract as an illustrator, you've got a hard time of it, communicating to a smaller group. Not bad for art, but not a great thing for illustration.
-Irene Gallow at TOR
-Pyle, Liyndecker, Schoonover, Wyeth, Symbolists, Pre-raphaelites, russian socialists
-never be afraid to grow up, even if you're in your 50's.
-Kurt Williams, John Booth. Comic books for storytelling.
-Comics, unique. Not a movie, not writing, something completely else, reader participates at different levels.
-Process. Doggedly getting it right. Repetition, markmaking. Getting more involved with your work.
-pthalo blue, raw umber, manganese blue, zinc white, yellow ocher, venetian red (potent earth tones), Burnt Sienna[W/N], Cad yellow deep(or medium), Cad red deep, alizarin crimson (cool red)
-Big chunk of graphite (or whatever) in your sketchbook, just see what happens, shape. negatives and positives. Simplify. See what you can find.
-freeform
-what do I like
-you see shapes
-"look! a Giraffe!"
-geometry

Check his stuff out at http://jonfoster.com