Chouinard Art Institute: Course Catalogs circa 1950

Happy 2011 New Year! It's hard to believe it's been almost two years since I wrote a post here about Chuck Jones and Chouinard where I mentioned that my Great Uncle had attended the school in the early 1950s. I had hoped to share a lot more about that story here by now, but better late than never.

My Great Uncle Dan, one of my Grandmother's brothers on my Mother's side of the family, enrolled in Chouinard after serving in the military during World War II. I believe his focus at the school was on Advertising Design and he went on to have a successful career as an Art Director in the advertising field here in Los Angeles. As I mentioned in my earlier post though, by the time I realized I'd really like to ask him some questions about his career and his schooling at Chouinard it was too late.

After he passed away in 2005, I was fortunate that his immediate family allowed me to have a few of the art books and other items from his studio space that I found interesting. Amongst these things were a couple of the Chouinard Course Catalogs from the time my Great Uncle attended the school.

I have to admit that it was pretty exciting to find these in his studio. Not only was I struck by the beautiful image of the drummer on the '51-'52 brochure, but when I looked at the class schedules and the instructors I saw more than a few important names I recognized. Names of legendary artists like T.Hee, Bob Winquist, Bill Moore, Donald Graham, and Marc Davis.

So I've finally gotten around to scanning them and would like to share the catalogs here:

Hopefully these scans will be of interest to some people, as well as acting to preserve a small aspect of Southern California's notable history in the modern arts.

2 Websites

Well, it's been quite a while since my last update, but I still have a lot more things that I'd like to share. It's just a matter of finding the time and making the effort to do it. Time management has never been one of my strong suits unfortunately.

I'm not going to make any excuses or promises that I can't keep this year though. Actions speak louder than words. All I can say is that I don't plan on abandoning this site any time soon. Subscribing to this blog will probably be your best bet to know when it's updated though.

I'd like to start off 2010 by sharing a couple websites that I've found to be pretty useful and interesting.

The first site is http://books.google.com/. I realize that I've probably arrived late to the party on finding out about this one, but I thought that it's definitely a place on the internet that's worth taking note of as a research tool. Especially since I recently found a full version of the book Composition by Arthur Wesley Dow available for download on the site.



I haven't given up on my research into the design program at Chouinard, and this author was one of the people that was mentioned in the book Chouinard: An Art Vision Betrayed, as having had a big influence on some of the design instruction and people at the school.

The second site I'd like to mention is http://howtotrainyourdragon.tumblr.com/.



DreamWorks has put together a great site with some nice interviews of quite a few artists who worked on "How to Train Your Dragon". I don't know how many people know about this site yet, but it's really cool. I found the interviews with Production Designer Kathy Altieri, and the film's Head of Story, Alessandro Carloni (who I was lucky enough to work with on the movie), particularly inspiring.

The Fine Art of Marc Davis

One of the nice things about living in Los Angeles is that there always seems to be something interesting going on, especially events which relate to Hollywood's rich history of cinema and animation. Recently there was an exhibit of the legendary Disney animation artist Marc Davis' Fine Art work at the Forest Lawn Museum in Glendale. It was amazing and very inspiring. I went there twice to see it.

I was fortunate to get one of the last few brochures that commemorated the exhibit. The cover is posted above. Inside the brochure there are quite a few gorgeous reproductions of some of his paintings in the show. Here are a few of my favorites.



I fell in love with this Harlequin piece above at the gallery. It was awesome to see it in person.

Unfortunately the brochure doesn't feature everything that was in the exhibit. It only has about 25%-30% of what was actually on display. There were sculptures, sketches, and some wonderful abstract compositional studies-- a very large and diverse variety of his work was presented at the show.

I asked a friend to take some pictures for me with his iphone, since I don't own a digital camera yet. I was particularly inspired by Mr. Davis' Life Drawings and Paintings. There was an amazing variety and sensitivity to his work, but most importantly it was clearly evident that he really enjoyed making them. Here are some photos of a few, unfortunately there's some glare, but I still think they are worth seeing.


The paintings on the bottom here are super loose and spontaneous. Very cool to see. He probably did a few of these from a live model at Chouinard, the art school where he taught. It was clear to me from the exhibit that Marc Davis loved being an artist, and that he really took his time to explore creating very personal artwork outside of the studio. Hopefully seeing his work here can inspire more of us to do the same.

(Update: I guess the Marc Davis show is still up through July 26, 2009. For some reason I thought it is was over when I wrote this. I highly recommend going to see it if you are in the L.A. area. I'm going to try and make it over to see it again myself. One of my fellow co-workers at DreamWorks, Jason Scheier, also made a post about the show on his blog. Here is the link: http://d3capmode.blogspot.com/2009/07/art-of-marc-davis.html)

Chuck Jones Part 1: Chouinard

So I've been busy preparing a post on Chuck Jones, gathering and preparing artwork that I've found inspiring by him to share here. While going through the image files I noticed a particularly interesting block of text that was next to a drawing I scanned. I'm pretty sure it is from his book "Chuck Amuck", but it could be from "Chuck Redux" as well. Both books are worth reading, but more on that later. This paragraph was so interesting to me that I wanted to share it now.

This particular passage is about Chouinard, the art school Chuck Jones attended in Los Angeles. I highlighted what I thought the most important part of the text was, but there's a wealth of information beyond that as well. Here is the text:


Wow. I have a lot I can say about this, but I'll try to keep it as short as I can.

First off, if you admire Chuck Jones as much as I do, then you'll appreciate actually knowing what the most important thing he discovered at art school was, and what his number one rule is for great drawing, because his drawings are phenomenal. It's told straight from Jones to the reader in this book.

If you don't know a lot about the art school called Chouinard, it's worth researching. Marc Davis taught there as well as many other extraordinary teachers/artists. My Great Uncle was actually a student there in the early 1950's and I have some things to share about that in a later post. Chouinard is the school which eventually became the California Institute of the Arts, otherwise known as CalArts. I attended CalArts from 2001-2005, so I also plan on sharing some things about that here later as well. It's also interesting what Jones says about his figure drawing teacher, Donald Graham, in this excerpt too. I'm hoping to write a post later on about figure drawing that relates to exactly what Chuck Jones talks about here regarding "imposing a personal style of drawing" on students.

Finally, I'd just like to make a note on researching things, and what else that I've found important in the text. Chuck Jones mentions about 15 things in this paragraph that are worth looking into. The first one I already mentioned is Chouinard. Chouinard is of special interest to me, because many of the artists I look up to in animation went to the school, and said that they learned a great deal there. The more I can find out about what the students were taught and the teachers who taught there, the better. I truly regret not asking my Great Uncle more about Chouinard before he passed away in 2005, unforunately I didn't really know how important the art school he attended was until he was near the end of his life.

The next things Jones talks about here that I think are interesting are the art and artists he mentions in the context of his "most important and stunning discovery" in art school: Cro-Magnon art, Claes Oldenburg, Beatrix Potter, Feininger, Kandinsky...ect. I haven't even really looked much at the work of these artists myself, but they are probably worth checking out if you like Chuck Jones. It's insightful to see who Jones seems to admire and who he considers to be accomplished artists in this paragraph.

Lastly mentioned again, is Donald Graham, whom Jones says was his greatest teacher (Graham also taught classes to the artists at Disney as well). Donald Graham wrote a book himself called "Composing Pictures" that is also worth reading. I started reading it a while ago, unfortunately I haven't finished it yet. I hope to get back to it some time soon. Simon Nicolaides is also mentioned here as being a great teacher too. I suspect that it's a misprint and that Jones was actually referring to Kimon Nicolaides, who wrote a book I've heard great things about called "The Natural Way to Draw: A Working Plan for Art Study".

I hope that it doesn't sound too much like I'm lecturing here. My primary goal is to share information which I've found interesting or exciting. I also hope that it can encourage students, and maybe even some working professionals, to supplement their learning with books or to revisit some that have been sitting on the shelf for a while. When I read a passage like the one above, I see not only the great knowledge that Jones imparted about his opinion on the importance of line to us, but I also see all those other names and things to look up and research. Just through reading this short passage and a bit of research we've been lead to two other entire books to read (5 books total if you also include George Bridgman's), and a dozen more people to research further. That's the really exciting thing about it for me.

When I hear people complaining about the instruction they've received in Art School, I can relate to it and had some issues with it myself, but on the other hand there is also always an opportunity for us to read a book and learn something too. I will write more about that later though, for now I'd like to stay focused on the wonderful work of Chuck Jones.