Tag: illustration

Buckhead1111

Buckhead 1111, “Colaboration with Paul Cadmus”, Digital Art Photography

Buckhead1111, born Steve Douglas, is an artist and designer living on Maui, Hawaii. He is a multi-media artist who has produced work in a wide range of media including theater set design, jewelry, sculpture and painting. He is currently working in digital art using multiple apps on his iPad. Buckhead1111 weaves textures that he digitally creates into photographs that he has processed, frequently collaborating with other artists on their work.

Image reblogged with thanks to the artist: https://buckhead1111.tumblr.com

Spencer Douglass Crockwell

Artwork by Spencer Douglass Crockwell

Spencer Douglass Crockwell was born in Columbus, Ohio, on April 29, 1904. His family was a comfortable middle-class household: his mother the daughter of an attorney and his father a mining engineer. At the age of three, his family relocated to Saint Louis, Missouri, where he attended elementary school and then Washington University, studying business. As an undergraduate, Crockwell also took courses at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts, which ultimately prompted him to change his studies. 

Crockwell graduated with a business degree from Washington University in 1926; but he continued his studies at the School of Fine Arts until 1929. The next year, he relocated to Chicago to continue his studies at the American Academy of Art. Receiving a Traveling Fellowship, Crockwell studied in Europe in 1930 and 1931. He moved to Glens Falls, New York, in 1932, marrying Margaret Braman and raising a family in the town he considered his home for life. 

During the Depression years, Spencer Crockwell created three federally commissioned murals for the Works Progress Administration (WPA),.In 1937 he completed an oil on canvas mural entitled “Vermont Industries” for the White River Junction post office in Vermont. Crockwell painted another oil on canvas mural in 1938 entitled “Endicott: Excavating for the Ideal Factory” for the Endicott, New York post office.  His “Signing of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek” was completed in 1944 for the post office in Macon, Mississippi. 

The Finch Pruyn & Company,  the leading Glens Falls company in his home town, is the site for his 1934 “Paper Workers” mural. That same year Crockwell began experimenting in film making, initially creating low-cost flip-card animation films ween through a mutoscope. In the years 1936-1937, he created surrealistic films with his collaborator sculptor Dave Smith. 

The United States Brewers Foundation hired Crockwell in 1947 for its “Beer Belongs” campaign, whose goal was to make beer a part of a wholesome American lifestyle. The campaign ran for ten years producing 136 advertisements by various artists, roughly half which were done by Spencer Crockwell. Like Norman Rockwell during this period, Crockwell illustrated many cover illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post, sometimes just signing his work as Douglass. 

Spencer Crockwell was a founding trustee and the first director of The Hyde Collection, a respected art museum in Glens Falls, New York.. He received many awards, including the 1947 Art Directors Club of New York Gold Medal for best poster and the 1957 Los Angeles Art Directors Award for best painting. His paintings can be seen in many museums, public buildings, and in the permanent collection of The Smithsonian. 

Ethan Murrow

 

Ethan Murrow received his B.A. in Studio Arts with a focus on painting and printmaking from Carleton College in Minnesota. His Master of Fine Arts degree in drawing, painting and sculpture was awarded by the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Murrow is currently living in Boston where he is a professor at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University.

Ethan Murrow creates large-scale graphite drawings that are translated form film and photographic narratives. His rendered drawings focus on innovative and explorative characters attempting with confidence and passion to succeed in their endeavors, despite the unlikely outcomes. Murrow incorporates the art of perspective with great skill; his use of vantage points render the scenes real but intentionally absurd. 

Murrow’s drawings are dependent on still captured photographic images. They resemble the look and feel of early cinema and black and white photography due to their grainy surface appearance and use of gray scale tones. The process of drawing is extensive, The sense of depth is developed by complex layering and mark-making, filling large areas of space on the drawing surface, sometimes measuring up to fourteen feet wide.

Ethan Murrow’s series “Zero Sum” consists of a body of work centered around the same single figure shown in different positions as the figure hurtles upward or falls downward through the air. The heavily bandaged figure appears poised in the air, contorted but floating peacefully. A combination of both awkwardness and beauty is achieved in this series.

Drawing inspiration from contemporary literature and historical articles of Victorian-era exploration and voyages, Murrow plays with these romanticized stories that hid the grim realities and human mistakes, by depicting a new set of explorers who are foolhardy and quite apt to fail. His “Narwhal Hoax” series shows pseudo-scientists faking their expeditions; his “Doomed Explorer” series show explorers on oddball quests who never show any doubt of success. 

Ethan Murrow’s work is represented by Obsolete Gallery, in Venice Beach, California; Winston Winston Wächter Fine Art, in New York City and Seattle; and La Galerie Particulière, in Paris. His work in in collections worldwide, including the Guggenheim Foundation. 

 

Nick Robles

Nick Robles, “Nightcrawler”, Marvel X-Men Comics

Nick Robles is a self-taught freelance graphic artist from southern Louisiana. His main medium is digital art; however, he has also created artwork in the fields of sculpture and oil painting. Robles acknowledges many and varied influences on his artwork, from illustrators J. C. Leyendecker and Norman Rockwell to comic artist Mike Mignola and Pre-Raphaelite artist J. W. Waterhouse.

In 2014 Nick Robles started working with BOOM! Studios producing illustrations and cover art for their publications, including the 2014 “Clockwork Angels”, the covers of “Kong of Skull Island”, and work on the 2015 “Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials”. He worked with ECW Press, a Toronto-based independent book publisher, in 2015 on Kevin Anderson’s graphic novel “Clockwork Lives”. Robles also did artwork for both Black Crown Publishing and Dark Horse Comics. He is currently working with both Necromancer Press and Vault Comics.

Nick Robles is the co-creator along with author Tini Howard of Black Crown Publishing’s new graphic series “Euthanauts”, a sci-fi graphic adventure into the frontier of death. Robles created memorable characters with crisp details using a palette of warm and cool colors to indicate the living and the dead. His art on this series presents an atmosphere that is both modern and dark, with experiments in panel layouts and the design of the page. There are currently five issues in the series availabe from Black Crown Publishing.

The images above are Nick Robles’s work for the Marvel X-Men series, illustrating the character of Kurt Wagner, known as the Nightcrawler, a superhuman agile mutant with the ability to teleport.

 

 

Edward Julius Detmold

Wasps by Edward Julius Detmold

Edward Julius Detmold, “Common Wasps”, From “Fabre’s Book of Insects”, 1935, Tudor Publishing Company

Painter, printmaker and illustrator Edward Julius Detmold was born in London in 1883 along with his twin brother Charles Maurice Detmold. Provided patronage by their uncle Edward Shuldhan, the two brothers studied painting and printmaking under the tutelage of their uncle Henry Detmold, also an artist. In 1898, at the age of 13, the twins exhibited watercolors at the Royal Academy, and issued a portfolio of color etchings that same year that quickly sold out and brought them notoriety. In 1899 Edward and Charles began illustrating books jointly, begining with “Pictures from Birdland”, which was commissioned and published by J.M. Dent. This was followed by a portfolio of watercolors inspired by Kipling’s “The Jungle Book”.

The brothers’ tandem success, however, was ended with the sudden death by suicide of Charles in 1908. Edward Detmold threw himself into his work, beginning with an illustrated ” Aesop’s Fables” that included 23 color plates and numerous pen and ink drawings. This began a decade of intense productivity, in which the Detmold’s execptional eye for the detail and complexities of nature allowed him to achieve his place among the best illustrators of the Victorian era.

Edward Detmold continued to illustrate numerous books, including Maurice Maeterlinck’s “The Life of the Bee”, Camille Lemonnier’s “Birds and Beasts”, his own “Twenty Four Nature Pieces”, and Jean-Henri Fabre’s “Book of Insects”. However by 1921, after witnessing the horrific results of World War I and feeling a disillusionment with his own art, he had reached the end of his zenith. Though Edward Detmold went on to illustrate one last edition of “The Arabian Nights” in 1924, he had effectively ended his career with the publishing of a literary book of aphorisms entitled “Life”. He retired to Montgomeryshire, England, and died in 1957, also from suicide.

Samurai Champloo

“Samurai Champloo” is a Japanese anime series developed by the Japanese animation and production company Manglobe. The production team was lead by director Shinichiro Watanabe, character designer Kazuto Nakazawa and mechanical designer Mahiro Maeda. This series was Watanabe’s first directorial effort for an anime television series after his critically acclaimed “Cowboy Bebop”.  “Samurai Champloo” ran for twenty-six episodes from May of 2004 until March of 2005.

The series blended historical Edo-period backdrops with modern styles and references. The show dealt with the Shimabara Rebellion in Edo-era Japan, the restriction of Japanese foreign relations exclusive of the Netherlands, the art of ukiyo-e painting, and fictionalized appearances of real-life Edo-era personalities. Artistic license trumped accuracy and the music score used contemporary music.

Ron Monsma

“Still Life with Green Cup”, Date Unknown, Pastel on Paper

Ron Monsma received his BA in Fine Arts at Indiana University South Bend and has been an instructor of drawing and painting at Indiana University since 1997. His work has been recognized with numerous awards and is represented in many private and corporate collections across the United States. 

Calendar: December 9

A Year: Day to Day Men: 9th of December

An Anchor on Black Cord

The animated television special “A Charlie Brown Christmas” made its television debut on the Columbia Broadcasting System, CBS, on the ninth of December in 1965. Produced by Lee Mendelson and directed by Bill Melendez, it was the first television special based on the comic strip “Peanuts”, written and drawn by American cartoonist Charles Schulz. The television special won an Emmy Award in 1966. 

Charles Schulz is widely regarded as one of the most influential cartoonists in history and a major influence for other cartoonists. Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in November of 1922, he always loved drawing through his early formative years. Drafted into the United States Army, Schulz served as a staff sergeant with the 20th Armored Division in the European theater during World War ii. For being under fire, he received the Combat Infantry Badge. 

In late 1945 upon his return to Minnesota, Schulz did lettering work for a Roman Catholic comic magazine “Timeless Topix”. In July of 1946, he was employed at Art Instruction, Inc. where he reviewed and graded students’ artwork. Schulz’s first group of regular cartoons, a weekly series of one-panel jokes called “Li’l Folks”, was published from June of 1947 to January of 1950 in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. It was in this series that a character with the name Charlie Brown and a dog quite like Snoopy first appeared. 

In January of 1950, United Feature Syndicate became interested in Schulz’s “Li’l Folks”. Schulz had expanded the strip to four panels, a version the syndicate preferred. However, due to legal reasons, the syndicate changed the name to “Peanuts”. The comic strip’s first appearance was in seven newspapers on the second of October in 1950. Its appearance on the weekly Sunday page debuted on the sixth of January in 1952. The “Peanuts” strip eventually became one of the most popular comic strips of all time, as well as one of the most influential.

During the entire run of “Peanuts”, Charles Schulz took only one vacation, a five-week break in late 1997 to celebrate his seventy-fifth birthday. Many of the ideas for the characters in the strip were taken from family members and close friends, such as Peppermint Patty who was inspired by his cousin Patricia and the peppermint candies Schulz kept in his house. Charles Schulz was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian medal the United States legislature can bestow. He also received the Silver Buffalo Award, the highest adult award given by the Boy Scouts of America, as well as a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, adjacent to the Star of Walt Disney.

Rachel Newling

Rachel Newling, “Green Tree Python”, Date Unknown, Hand-Colored Linocut on Handmade Japanese Paper, 76 x 50 cm.

Rachel Newland is an established Australian artist, specializing in hand colored and reduction linocuts, mixed media engravings and drawings. Prints are available at her site: https://www.rachelnewling.com

Reblogged with thanks to https://crofs.tumblr.com

Source: rachelnewling.com

Chet Phillips

Chet Phillips, “Austin Bats”, Date Unknown, Illustration for Lone Star Match Works, Austin, Texas

Chet Phillips, living and working in Austin, Texas, began his career as a freelance illustrator in the early 1980’s. He has created work for advertising agencies, design firms, book, newspaper and magazine publishers and corporations. Trained in traditional media with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing, Phillips made the transition to digital media in 1992.