Art Art &Books &Illustration &Independent Animation &Layout & Design &repeated posts 19 Jun 2012 06:23 am
Norman McLaren Drawings – repost
- I don’t intend to give an introduction to Norman McLaren or his work here, but he obviously was one of the solidly great film makers on the “Art” side of animation. His films are worth studying for their timing, if not for their sheer genius. As a matter of fact, his exercise films on timing are incredible (though I have no idea how you’d get to see them today.)
I do have a book of some drawings by him, and given the stories about China in the news today, I thought I’d post some of his drawings done in China. The book isn’t printed on the best of papers, so the quality of these drawings isn’t all it could be. However, I thought it might be worth showing this other side to his art.
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Moving away from China, there are two other drawings I thought compelling and
would like to share here.
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McClaren was certainly a brilliant artist, and his experimentation and developments brought about a real maturation of the art form. I wonder how he would have dealt with the technology we’re using today. Remember, he realized that the soundtrack could be drawn and did his own exploration of this part of the process.
The book was published in 1975 by Tundra Books.
Because the one illustration which graces the book’s cover, was of such interest to those reading my piece, I’ll start with the rest of that page. It’s a series of sketches done for the film, “LÃ -haut sur ces montagnes” and was drawn in 1945.
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The two illustrations above are connected on the same page. I separated them .
The entire page is labelled: Sketches for the film, “LÃ -haut sur ces montagnes.”
“Interlocking faces”
“Untitled”
“Tesseractine House”
I’m fascinated that a number of his illustrations look not too unlike Steinberg’s work. It’s obvious he was an influence for a lot of animators in the late ’40′s.
“Four Dimensional Cars and Bicycles”
“Memory of A Mexican Beach”
“St. George and the Porcupine”
on 19 Jun 2012 at 11:34 am 1.Don Cox said …
McLaren’s tutorial series on motion is on disc 5 of the 7-DVD set “Norman McLaren – The Master’s Edition”, issued by the Film Board of Canada.
Not a cheap box, but worth every cent in my opinion. It is probably easiest to buy it from Amazon Canada.
on 20 Jun 2012 at 6:50 pm 2.The Gee said …
These are wonderful to see.
Now that the Steinberg influence is mentioned, I am kind of surprised that his work was that influential.