News2024-09-10T12:03:59-04:00

NEWS

LATEST NEWS

ALL NEWS

MonNov 2, 2020

Embedded: Illustrators and the Armed Forces

Despite the growing efficiency of cameras in the nineteenth century, photography on the battlefield was difficult due to long exposures and cumbersome equipment. Because of this, Civil War illustrator reporters like Winslow Homer, Alfred Waud and Edwin Forbes were engaged to capture events that photography at the time could not. In the twentieth century, wartime illustrators remained in demand⸺as skillful practitioners they were able to prioritize in chaotic situations and assemble compelling visual evidence that communicated to viewers in a visceral way.

WedOct 28, 2020

Jack O’Lanterns – The Hallmark of Halloween

In addition to scary witches and ghosts, glowing pumpkins with carved faces are a quintessential sign of the Halloween season.  People have been making jack o’lanterns at Halloween for centuries, but where did the idea come from? One theory as to their origin looks to Ireland and an 18th century folktale about a man named “Stingy Jack.”

WedAug 19, 2020

The Expressive Face

 How did artists like Norman Rockwell, Austin Briggs, Jon Whitcomb, and others create the believable unique faces that can tell a whole story by themselves?  In a magazine cover, like those by Rockwell and Stevan Dohanos, the image, with its setting and, most of all, its characters, must convey an anecdote without any help from words.  So each face must be carefully crafted to do its part in creating the drama⸺or comedy.

TueJul 14, 2020

Drawing as a way of seeing

If you want to observe an artist at work, a good place to start is with his or her sketchbooks. Here are ideas, techniques, observations, memories – all the underpinnings of the finished work. Often the contents are so free and spontaneous that they draw us in, wanting and needing nothing more than these simple lines on paper.

WedJun 24, 2020

Harold Von Schmidt: Pictorial Structure through Research

This week’s subject allowed me to delve deeper into a recent acquisition by Harold von Schmidt, a student of the accomplished illustrator Harvey Dunn. Curious about the imprisoned man in “I have had the liberty of speaking through the hold of door to my wife and servants, his editorial read," I performed a web search for the December 1934 issue of The Elks Magazine, to find out more. Luckily, the magazine was digitized.

ThuJun 11, 2020

The “Contemporary” Racial Conscience and Sensitivity of Norman Rockwell

The 1960s would prove to be the opening of the floodgates of Rockwell’s love and concern for all humanity. After leaving the Post in 1963 he did one of his most famous and important paintings, “The Problem We All Live With”. This symbolized a moment in the life of Ruby Bridges at six years old being escorted by U.S. Marshalls to help end segregation in a school in the South. But it was also a depiction of a moment in the state of America that still resonates to this very day and moment.

Go to Top