Tag: illustration

Tom Kenyon

Illustrations by Tom Kenyon, “William Walker, the Man who Saved the Winchester Cathedral”, Lithographs

Children’s book author and illustrator, and former art director, Tony Kenyon’s lithographic prints, of William Walker, are part of a series of works entitled ‘Winchester Legends’ using different graphic art techniques. Kenyon was intrigued by Walker’s legendary feat and the strange, subterranean and submerged world under the Cathedral.

William Walker MVO (1869–1918) was an English diver famous for shoring up the southern and eastern sides of Winchester Cathedral. In 1887, he began diver training at Portsmouth Dockyard. He worked through the roles of diver’s attendant and diver’s signal man, passing his medical exam and deep-water test to qualify as a deep-water diver in 1892.

In his time, William Walker was the most experienced diver of Siebe Gorman Ltd. In 1906–1911, working in water up to a depth of six metres (20 feet), he shored up Winchester Cathedral, using more than 25,000 bags of concrete, 115,000 concrete blocks, and 900,000 bricks.

Before his work, the cathedral had been in imminent danger of collapse as it sank slowly into the ground, which consisted of peat. To enable bricklayers to build supporting walls, the groundwater level had to be lowered. Normally, the removal of the groundwater would have caused the collapse of the building. So, to give temporary support to the foundation walls, some 235 pits were dug along the southern and eastern sides of the building, each about six metres deep. Walker went down and shored up the walls by putting concrete underneath them. He worked six hours a day—in complete darkness, because the sediment suspended in the water was impenetrable to light.

After Walker finished his work, the groundwater was pumped out and the concrete he had placed bore the foundation walls. Conventional bricklayers then were able to do their work in the usual way and restore the damaged walls.

Steve Minty

Steve Minty, Muertos Night Deck Playing Cards

Muertos is an original set of American playing cards designed by Steve Minty and produced by the United States Playing Card Company (USPCC). It is independently crafted and honors the holiday that celebrates life and death; Dia De Los Muertos. The Muertos deck takes the classic aesthetics of Dia De Los Muertos and is updated with the tradition of playing and my experiences growing up. It depicts the social classes and history of the culture while simultaneously giving off a contemporary elegant luxurious feel.

Reblogged with thanks to Steve Minty’s site: https://www.steveminty.com

Great site. Decks of cards, medals, pins. Just bought the Night Deck.

Andrew Davidson

Illustration by Andrew Davidson

Andrew Timothy Davidson, born on the 13th of May 1958, is a British artist. He has illustrated two novels by Ted Hughes: the 1985 edition of “The Iron Man” and the 1993 “The Iron Woman”. Davidson also illustrated the 2002 edition of Jack London’s “The Call of the Wild”.

Hughes and Davidson won the 1985 Kurt Maschler Award for “The Iron Man”. The British award annually recognised one “work of imagination for children, in which text and illustration are integrated so that each enhances and balances the other.”

Nicolas Delort

Illustrations by Nicolas Delort

Nicolas Delort is an award-winning illustrator currently living in the grey suburbs of Paris. Gathering inspiration in the daily and mundane as well as books and any kind of narrative medium, Nicolas endeavors to tell stories, big and small, by working on strong, evocative and intricate black and white compositions.

His work has received the Gold Medal from The Society of Illustrators, and has been recognized by American Illustration, 3×3, Juxtapoz, Supersonic Electronic and This Is Colossal. Some of his clients include Blizzard Entertainment, Games Workshop/The Black Library, Quirk Books, Tor.com and Solaris Books.

Bernie Wrightson

Bernie Wrightson, “Frankenstein” Illustrations

Frankenstein was a comics adaptation of the novel of the same name, first published in 1983 by American company Marvel Comics, with script and art by Bernie Wrightson.

This edition reprints the full novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley published in 1831, with illustrations by Wrightson. It includes an introduction by Stephen King and from Wrightson himself. The illustrations themselves are not based upon the Boris Karloff or Lee films, but on the actual book’s descriptions of characters and objects. Wrightson also used a period style, saying “I wanted the book to look like an antique; to have the feeling of woodcuts or steel engravings, something of that era” and basing the feel on artists like Franklin Booth, J.C. Coll and Edwin Austin Abbey.

“I’ve always had a thing for Frankenstein, and it was a labor of love. It was not an assignment, it was not a job. I would do the drawings in between paying gigs, when I had enough to be caught up with bills and groceries and what-not. I would take three days here, a week there, to work on the Frankenstein volume. It took about seven years.” -Bernie Wrightson

For the 25th anniversary of the first edition in October 2008, a new edition was prepared and released in 1994 by Dark Horse Comics in an oversized (9″ x 12″), hardcover format scanned from the original artwork. It is still available through Amazon books.

Henry Moore

Henry Moore, “Mother and Child and Figure Studies”, Mixed Techniques on Paper, Colored Crayon, Charcoal, Pencil, Ink and Gouache, 25.5 x 18 cm

According to the Henry Moore Foundation, this work is probably page 7 from the Upright Sketchbook 1942. “ Although all known drawings of the sketchbook are horizontal, it is numbered upper right on the recto and upper left on the verso in vertical format…. The recto is interesting in that it provides the sketches for two larger drawings.”

Hevajra’s Esoteric Dance

The Esoteric Dance of Hevajra Surrounded by Dakinis

Hevajra (ཀྱེའི་རྡོ་རྗེ) is one of the main yidams or Enlightened Beings in Tantric, or Vajrayana Buddhism.  The Tibetan term ‘Dakini’ means “sky goer” and may have originated in the Sanskrit khecara, a term from the Cakrasaṃvara Tantra. Dakinis are often represented as consorts in Yab-Yum representations. The masculine form of the word is ḍāka, which is usually translated into Tibetan as pawo “hero”.