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Monotype: Big Sister (& a Diebenkorn exhibit in Palm Springs, CA)

Tuesday, November 5, 2013 18:52

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Big Sister 10.75×3.75 Monotype with watercolor and colored pencil

This original mixed media print is available in my Etsy Shop.

In my previous post about working in light, tonal values after looking at the work of Thomas Wilmer Dewing (1851-1938), I mentioned that I was influenced just as strongly a few months earlier by the boldly colored, masterfully illustrated work of Jessie Wilcox Smith (1863-1935) (see an example below). That’s where the piece above got it’s high contrast, bold lines, bright colors and sugar from.

I have my hand up in the Who Get’s Influenced by Other Artists roll call. The image source is a 1947 photo from my grandparent’s albums, showing 2 of their four kids. I cropped my mother and her big sister from the group – they are two of the three artists my grandparent’s produced on that branch of the tree.

If you like the history of American Illustration, I’ve mentioned in previous posts how wonderful the Alice Carter book - The Red Rose Girls - is. Carter chronicles the intersecting lives of three American women illustrators with enough detail to give you a sense for that place and time in history – especially as it pertains to women working in the field of illustration. But, there’s also a lovely book that’s out of print, but available online – called Jessie Willcox Smith, by S. Michael Schnessel. If you get a chance to grab one, I’d recommend it. It’s full of magazine cover art and book illustrations, as well as stories and anecdotes on Jessie, and quite a few illustrators in her circle.

Who are your illustrator faves? Do you follow contemporary illustrators, (digital or analog?), or historic illustrators? Share your heroes in the comments so we can all discover.

by Jessie Willcox Smith (1863-1935)

Adding color to the monotype – Big Sister

Another one being pulled after a trip through the press – the monotype is both illustrative
and textural. perfect for adding other media like watercolor, pastels, acrylics, etc.

The wet-ink side of the paper is pressed against a sheet of printmaking
paper on the press to get a fuzzy-lined, softly scumbled drawing with
very unique characteristics.

The paper with the wet-ink drawing on the back is peeled off the plate.

Different art but the same process: a thin sheet of lineco or tracing paper
is laid on the ink, and a drawing is done on the paper which
pushes the line work into the wet ink.

Big Sister – the monotype above started with a copper plate
rolled with a layer of oil-based intaglio ink.

Coming This week:
I’ve mentioned my talented daughter - Melanie Ham - in this post, and we’ve been working on a great little collaboration project that will be available in each of our Etsy Shops this week. If you’re looking for gift-giving ideas that are hand made, and include a sweet box of sewn goodness and original printmaking – have a look at our shops here and here.

A collaborative gift box of goodies coming soon!

Richard Diebenkorn, Cityscape I (formerly Landscape I), 1963

The Palm Springs Art Museum is hosting and exhibit on Richard Diebenkorn – The Berkeley Years 1953-1966 (10/26/13 ~ 2/16/14) I saw photos of the show on instagram, and I can just imagine how great the art would be to stand in front of and soak up in person.

Art Quote

An excerpt from the Diebenkorn show description:

Starting with tentative figure and still-life paintings, Diebenkorn’s conversion from abstraction to figuration began in 1954-55, followed by impressively confident, large paintings of figures, still-lifes, landscapes and interiors. Diebenkorn explained the sudden shift in style, commenting that he was weary of the “super- emotional” approach required by the dynamism of the abstract work, and credited the influence of his friends David Park and Elmer Bischoff, both of whom had recently abandoned abstraction for figuration. Other factors influencing the change were his growing interest in figural drawing, a strong interest in Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard, as well as artists Edgar Degas and the German Expressionists, and a new-found concern for the human psychology of his own paintings. Richard Diebenkorn: the Berkeley Years will trace the development of these factors and examine the continued interaction but shifting balance, in nearly all of Diebenkorn’s work, between nature and abstraction, observation and artifice; a point dramatized at the conclusion of our study by growing evidence of a movement back towards abstraction in works produced in Southern California.

Art Quote
In 1947, the acquisitive American illustrator and collector, Thornton Oakley, wrote to his friend Charlotte Harding Brown and asked if she had any of her original illustrations which she would be willing to sell him for his collection of American illustrator art. Her unfortunate reply was that, outside of a few drawings that had personal meaning, “everything else went into the bonfire. I had no reason to keep anything, for that phase of my life had ended years before.” Such a tragic loss of an important illustrator’s work only reaffirms the need to reconsider the ridiculous pretension that art is art, and illustration is illustration, and ne’er the twain shall meet.
S. Michael Schnessel, in his book Jessie Willcox Smith

Belinda Del Pesco Fine Art Blog

Source: http://belindadelpesco.blogspot.com/2013/11/monotype-big-sister-diebenkorn-exhibit.html

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