Last night at the Illustration Master Class in Amherst, Massachusetts, Greg Manchess began his oil painting demonstration of "Beauty and the Beast," entertaining the rapt audience with stories from his martial arts training. He gave a lecture a few days ago debunking the myth of the DNA gene for talent.
Mastery, he said, comes from steady practice, the willingness to embrace failure, and a positive attitude. Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell talked about their creature design inspirations, and Scott Fischer led us through the process of composing the digital/traditional cover for an upcoming Robert Jordan "Wheel of Time" cover.
I was scheduled to do a demo after my "Color and Light" talk. So I asked Ken, one of the students (and a college archaeology professor), to pose next to our school mascot, Flynn, the Icelandic ram skull.
Ken is of Norwegian ancestry, so I tried to morph the two faces together into a sort of "Viking Satyr."Illustration Master Class
Gregory Manchess Art
