the true mastery of j.c. leyendecker's art

We all know Joseph Christian Leyendecker for his expertly painted characters and covers for the Saturday Evening Post, but there …

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[Music] we all know Joseph Christian lion Decker for his expertly painted faces hair clothing and flowers and pretty much all the like painterly aspects of his work sculpted beautifully with his brush and ranges of harmonious Hues but I think we often forget about the true Mastery of his artwork in my opinion one of the most core art fundamentals and I think he just really excelled at compositional design more than anything else I think he himself regarded his work and his career as being a designer most of all his images inspired generations of American iconography and we still feel the impacts of his work today like the images that he was producing at the time are still like traditional cornerstones of like American visual culture so one of the things that he popularized with his illustrations was the the tradition of GI flowers on Mother’s Day He also helped to kind of more solidify an official Santa Claus design with his artwork I’m pretty sure he was the one who invented the concept of the New Year’s baby he would always paint a baby for like I think this went on for like 40 years for the SAT Evening Post so he he did that concept he painted a lot of like Thanksgiving and football iconography that eventually became so linked together that we still like that still like American culture so heavily Associates football and thanksgiv giving as well as like homecoming he also made firecrackers popular for the 4th of July instead of discharging firearms and other artillery into the sky which albe it still happens today but to a lot less extent like back then they like people like multiple people would die every single year because of those celebrations and I think this book that I have about lion Decker I’ll I’ll have the reference on screen but there’s a quote that basically explains what politicians could not do by means of years of speechifying L Decker accomplished with a single image so influencing all these people to purchase and use like fire crackers and fireworks instead of like actual firearms for the 4th of July and looking at his work now and in this lens of like American iconography and art being as a means to like influence like inform and to persuade a public I think in an age where governments are actively trying to defund art programs grants and scholarships thinking that they’re unnecessary and waste of money in addition to it feeling like outright Bleak and just like makes you feels sad it feels more like a removal of resources or rallying and communication by artists to the public but I don’t know that’s just a theory a game theory so when artists plan out to do a line decker study nowadays I feel like what I primarily see online is a focus on a head shot a hand and a bundle of flowers which there is technical Merit in like breaking down his brush strokes and how he depicts form yes but there is so much more to his work than just his formal painting skills lion Decker was a designer a composer a Storyteller and I think studying his pieces as a whole seeing the forest for the trees is more important than ever in an age of replacing paint Strokes with prompts and I think before doing any sort of study of an artist at least for my own like art curiosity and like understanding of that person’s work I think it’s important to realize the context of Li Decker’s work before studying so we can understand his design motivations and decisions like more holistically and better apply it to what we’re doing now so a lot of the work we see from Li Necker was made for print publication and advertising most popularly the Saturday evening post and the aroc collar clothing advertisements many of his paintings are figures against a stark background heavily focused on the character and being that these Pages were printed weekly it makes sense that they were as effective as possible with using the figure instead of like painting super intricate backgrounds and scenes every single week he was also working in like traditional material oil paint so like maybe us now with like digital means we could like produce this amount of work that quickly but he was working at oil he had to like plan these things out and apply them to a canvas that was like significantly larger than what the actual like print ended up being and I think because of his work being meant for commercial like publication he had to stick within um certain parameters like he couldn’t just like paint whatever he wanted so that included like promoting this very idealistic American visual standard at the time very conventional looking women and men and I believe he wasn’t allowed to depict people of color specifically black people as like the the subject of the Saturday evening post paintings the only way that he could include people of color is that they had to be in some sort of like serving Rule and we don’t know if he himself wanted to like push back against this or he like agreed with this like we don’t know but hopefully I’d like to think that he was trying to be a bit more Progressive with some of his paintings but we just don’t know and I’ve also realize through looking at his work plus-sized people are usually seen as like the butt of the joke or just like not taking as seriously or romanticized or idealized like the the prevalent like thin archetypes that he’s painting so there’s a lot of things that we have to be aware of when we look at his work it’s very much like American idealism and like nuclear family but he still has like these beautiful paintings but it’s just important that we recognize that first so we can kind of bring a newer interpretation and like a newer take what we want and then leave the rest kind of do de if that makes sense it’s also commonly known now that lion Decker was gay and used his own partner’s likeness Charles Beach as the icon of the idealized American man in many of the clothing advertisements and Saturday evening post covers the American public at the time had no idea of this while he was still working and actively publishing his work and for it to be known would have been career ending and potentially life endangering as well for him and his partner so much of his life was private and closed off because of this in the JC line decker book that I have I think in one of the sections it really emphasize how lion Decker and Beach mostly just stuck together and lion Decker rarely hung out with other artists and colleagues and kind of rarely develop relationships outside of the home and outside of his immediate family but looking at his work more formally the compositions are often very simple and clear but purposeful in shape and gesture if you’re trying to advertise clothing or any other product you don’t want to confuse the viewer on where to look or be distracted by other objects in your image this very intentionally designed graphic quality is perfect for advertising because you want to catch the attention of the viewer make them instantly understand what you’re communicating with that image and in turn get the consumer to buy the paper or the product I feel like this is very similar to like YouTube thumbnails basically or any type of like online marketing campaign now you want to visually catch the eye of the the audience that you’re trying to reach and at the same time have them like instantly understand what’s going on in that image so that they feel motivated to click on that video or click on that product link all that sort of stuff so a lot of this can be applied to like what we as artists are trying to do now with marketing our artwork specifically in an advertising sense but also in like a storytelling sense so this skill and illustration the ability to compose an image and make specific design choices to be able to manipulate your subject and graphic elements to tell a story convey an emotion or idea that’s what I think Li Decker is truly a master at and his technical skills just take him e even farther they’re like the icing on the cake well I don’t think they’d be the icing on the cake I feel like with his work the technical aspect really do like support his vision like I feel like if his work wasn’t as like technically excellent then maybe his idea would fall through so maybe it’s more like a relation ship like both are really important in their own sense but if they don’t have the other then it fails to bring out the the best in each of them if that makes sense yeah I think I like that better it’s not just the I scene they’re both they’re both important so we should study both of them in fact from a technical aspect line decker depicts form extremely well but he kind of uses the same trick every time if you noticed in his paintings even if the clothing or the characters are more complex often he likes lights his subject with two light sources usually a fill light contrasted with a rim light and this graphic way of lighting his characters gives them weight and more grandiosity almost like they were Studio or stage lit which also if you think about the context of his work and producing this work a lot of what he painted was studied from real life models so he probably had control over how they were lit and how best that would convey form and Clarity in the painting we are also often looking at the figures slightly From Below which adds again to like the grandiosity of his figures which paired with this lighting just makes them seem like Larger than Life icons of a hyper idealized like American public when I was in high school I was pretty much always told that Central Design Elements made for a static composition but what lion Decker does differently is ADD gestural Design Elements throughout his illustrations to convey movement and that Central design AIDS in a feeling of tranquility and stability and that attractive pleasing nature of his work definitely would draw eyes to the publication so I wanted to study his work to hopefully elevate my own character and cover work to the next level and add design and compositional elements to make a simple oneof figurative illustration describe so much more than just a character on a blank background composition is something that I really want to focus on this year and practice more consistently and I feel like like it’s kind of the biggest thing that’s been holding me back with my work a lot of the times in a lot of different ways so for instance when I was working on the first part of the Y 2K witch comic I found that either I was drawing a lot of the same panel compositions which was typically some sort of character face reacting to something and/ or it was the overall page composition with the panels lacking movement and creativity in relation to the storytelling so I was just like man I really got to work on this aspect because I think so much of my art Creation in the past like probably up until like halfway through college I was mainly just working on my Sketchbook like I didn’t have like a ton of experience like actually making fully finished pieces like illustration like imaginative illustration with my characters like everything always stayed in my Sketchbook which I feel like held me back for such a long time and now I’m finally like making these fully finished pieces and realizing like man I really need to study composition I really need to like look closer at what I want to create and how this composition how this visual tool can Aid my storytelling and I feel like that skill is just like lacking it’s kind of like if you’re you’re working out and you really like to to work out your legs like you really like to do squats and lunges and like leg presses like all those sort of things and you you get really like far in that area but then you go to do like a push-up or a pullup and you like instantly fail and it’s like really difficult I feel like that’s me in my art right now there’s some things I can do well and I feel confident with well even those things I’m still like learning but like other things if it’s just like sketching or doing a bunch of explorative things and coming up with ideas like I feel confident about that and like even just like simple portrait painting I feel confident with but when it comes to like Fuller illustrations and sequential like visual storytelling that’s that’s where I feel like I really start to falter and I feel like I don’t have like stamina in that area and I don’t have enough knowledge or enough practice in that area basically so um because of this uh lack of skill in this area I think this second quarter of the year I really want to focus on composition and that that starts with like taking action and studying so to start working on the skill and after studying lion Decker’s work which you guys have seen in this video already I wanted to make a kind of faux comic cover for a character I recently designed hinting at her story a little bit more while trying to craft a more intentional illustration or at least attempt to so this is my druid Fluttershy design and I wanted to imagine what a backstory comic issue of my DND My Little Pony project could look like if she had like a one-off story going into how she became a damper and like all the the events leading up to that and just trying to create a piece like conveying the softness and reserved nature of the character while subtly hinting at her vampirism and like I said for this painting and for most of my work in the next couple of months I really want to focus on composition and spend a lot of time thumbnailing out ideas and really pushing myself to try new things instead of what my brain automatically comes up with and also like researching more things because the compositions that most like resonate with what I want to do or what I just like like they have a lot of Storytelling and intentionality and elements that just add to the piece rather than like complicate that and I feel like that just comes through like research and writing and intentionality which I’ve already done a ton of writing with my own characters and with this My Little Pony project so I’m hoping that eventually things start to click and composition becomes something that’s a lot more intuitive for me so yesterday I was working on a ton of different thumbnail iterations for what I wanted to communicate with this piece specifically looking at the the shape design and the framing of the character and I find myself like doing like the same thing over and over again and I was just kind of stumped on ideas for how I could be more creative with the composition and Steph yesterday gave me the idea of trying to incorporate some sort of like Fang idea within the shapes trying to get more of like a sharp pointed shape going on almost like this like mouth so he he gave me that idea and we were like messing around with it and it wasn’t really turning out how we thought but then I found these beautiful MAA pieces that had this Crescent shape I thought that was such a cool composition and so now I’m taking that sort of Crescent shape and trying to see how I could put that in and make it fit with this character since she is like this nocturnal vampire character I thought it’ be cool to have like this Crescent shape and kind of just like push that like vibe and push that like more like vampiric feeling to this piece so yeah I’m just going to explore a little bit more and hopefully I’ll find something that I like so after exploring different compositions of my Sketchbook I chose about six of them to finalized further digitally and eventually nailed it down to like two different compositions that I liked one more static and peaceful with a sharp compositional shape and the other more Dynamic but still Serene in retrospect I honestly kind of regret my choice in not picking the latter the more Dynamic one because I definitely feel like it’s more Dynamic and engaging than the other and I was going to go with that one first and that’s why I liked it but at the last minute I second guessed my pick and went with the other one I’m definitely not beating the overthinker allegations I guess but still learning and I still I still think it’s a it it turns out as a decent painting I think my thought process was to choose the one that maybe felt more like the character more solemn and static and a bit more symbolic but I think from a compositional standpoint and if this truly was a comic cover the more Dynamic tilted Crescent composition I think works a lot better maybe I’ll still pursue it in the future or use it as like maybe like a quick warm-up painting or like use it as like a a speed painting exercise or something like that and I don’t know if you guys ever feel this way but some sometimes I think I wish I had some sort of art director outside of myself to make decisions like this for me I think it’s because composition is a skill that I don’t have a lot of confidence in I tend to overthink things a ton and make decisions out of fear rather than what I think is best for the story and what I am like confident about I feel like I can easily come up with a ton of different ideas but choosing what to do and deciphering which is the best option that’s really difficult for me and I hope to get better at that skill with more practice and just like that that way of seeing because a lot of people say like drawing is mostly about being able to see and maybe it’s just developing that that eye more which I I really want to practice for April so next month I will be doing PL a April and pl a April is a daily art challenge where you go outside and make a painting every day this challenge was started back back in 2017 by Warrior painters and I have never participated in it before but now I really want to because this is a scale that I realize I obviously like lack a bunch of like knowledge in and a lot of experience in so plain air will be definitely a great way to get me started in that area and because of the lovely ever tumultuous weather of Florida and the time it takes for us to actually drive out to a nice area to paint that wouldn’t be doxing myself it won’t be possible to actually go outside and paint every day of April but um I’m really hoping to substitute some of those days for indoor painting from a photograph or even better from uh still life that I could set up at home and with this exercise like I said I really want to focus on composition and decision making things that I really struggle with in my normal work I feel like a lot of the times what I’m studying with my art practice right now isn’t necessarily like the technical skills even though I I obviously still need um some work in that but it’s more so just like the mindset skills and the composing skills like I think I have like a basis in like foundational technical skills but now it’s more just like putting things together and being intentional but anyways in order to prepare for this challenge cuz I didn’t just want to like throw myself into painting every day I just wanted to like slowly warm up to this so throughout March I hosted two study sessions over on my Discord where we studied line decker pieces and gibl screenshots which you can watch like the full recordings of on my patreon and along with that I’ve been doing these like 20 minute painting studies of my favorite animated films as my warm-up each workday and now slowly coming up with my own paintings so right now I like the other day I did a little imaginative painting of what I think seline’s house from fields of mysta would look in more of a like more realistic painterly yet still like stylized way and then I also did a little environment concept of a more realistic version of Sweet Apple Acres that I would really love to explore more as a part of my DND D MLP series to do some environmental design and this is all just like pushing myself a little bit more each day with my compositional and environment painting skills and I found this gradual approach of learning a new skill bridging like copying and studying to application and invention over course of a month and even longer because I started studying composition like back in February or January no it was like January with the the Arcane study stream and I found this like just gradual buildup of intensity and more like brain effort on my part going from just like studying black and white to my own original paintings has been really helpful in reducing overwhelm and just like giving up on learning this area cuz I know it’s it’s a really difficult and like broad area to learn like composition there’s like so much that goes into that but like I said just starting with just simple black and white studies for the first week and then direct color studies of the The Stills that I grab from my favorite TV shows and movies then back to black and white studies of line decker pieces then back to the color studies of the films for a couple days and now onto imagining my own scenes based off of my own interests has been really helpful and it’s was just like oh yeah this is a like comfortable way of learning for me and I should do this more often it’s been fun to imagine these full scenes and just jump right into painting something without planning too much for these uh imaginative paintings I still grab some references but it more so has been an exercise and letting go enjoying the process and just like capturing a mood and applying from what I just learned from the the direct copies so with how this piece turned out it’s it’s not bad I think the Crescent shape is really interesting and the coolness of the image really feels peaceful in contrast with the sharpness of the Crescent I don’t think I normally do a lot of cool color palette things so I think had a lot of fun with like the purples and the greens and the blues and I think it was like a good like experimental piece for me and it was fun to put this character into an environment for the first time and it gives me a lot of ideas for what I can do in the future like I really want to paint this scene of Druid Fluttershy in the everfree forest like in her quote unquote like natural habitat where she basically grew up and she’s just surrounded by either like dire wolves or like Undead creatures and she’s just like hanging out she just looks like really happy it’s like a a bit of like a darker Disney princess Vibe I guess but now since doing this piece it gives me a lot more confidence with uh going into that piece in the future and I’m proud that I pushed myself to think more about the composition and intentionality with how I place things in the image and how I position the character I just need to be more confident in what I’m choosing and follow my instincts a little bit more and not like second guess myself so much I guess yeah I may go back and try out that other composition like maybe it will be my warm-up for a day or like I’m going on like spring break soon so maybe I’ll have some fun with it and like Tinker with it during that but until then I will continue to paint explore and capture the stories I care about and I’m confident that Mastery will come in time eventually at least I hope L Decker will Contin to be a huge inspiration for me and my work and I’m looking forward to studying him again and learning something new it feels like every single time I do a study of him or read more about him in his work I always learn something new and it always brings a lot more understanding to why he painted how he painted and yeah that’s what’s been going on in my art brain these past couple of weeks thinking a lot about story and composition as always I feel like that’s been the theme this year as well as a bit of art history with line Decker’s work thank you for watching and listening to this more casual style Draw With Me video let me know if you guys want more of these I know it’s been a while since I’ve done this sort of sit down and chat directly with you guys Style video um I’m really hoping to do more cuz I like filming these types of videos I’m looking into to building a better traditional painting setup so hopefully there will be more like Sketchbook drawing videos too coming your way so let me know what you think of the finished painting if you’re interested in this character my My Little Pony Dungeons and Dragons design series make sure to check out the video on your screen now or if you’re interested in more draw with MES that will be linked down below if you want to keep drawing with me all right guys thank you so much for watching and drawing with me today I feel like I’ve said drawing like 400 times this video um I hope you have a great day take care of yourself uh maybe draw for a bit and I will see you in the next one all right guys bye [Music] [Music] [Music]

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