Gordon Mortensen is a distinguished American printmaker renowned for his exceptional printmaking skills and unique artistic style. His mastery of woodcut and metal engraving is profound, evident in the intricate lines and textures that pervade his works, showcasing his meticulous attention to detail and precise capture of light, shadow, and color. Mortensen's art not only
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Raven © 1924 Nouveau petit Larousse illustré, 354e édition Paris, 1940 Download vector
Dürer revolutionized printmaking, elevating it to the level of an independent art form. He expanded its tonal and dramatic range, and provided the imagery with a new conceptual foundation.
Tirzah and Eric Ravilious painting a mural at the Midland Hotel, Morecambe Artist couples are fascinating. Like the rest of us they have a public life and a private life, only the hidden world of an artist couple or family is often revealed - if only in tantalising glimpses - in correspondence, diaries and in artworks themselves. In some cases the relationship has proved inspirational to both halves of the couple, but often one artist's work tends to pushed into the background as the career of the other takes off. Still going strong in 2012 The history of 20th century British art is rich in artist couples. There are those who, like Gilbert and George, have pooled their identities to form an artistic double act and others, among them Mary Fedden and Julian Trevelyan, who succeeded in maintaining parallel careers. This was true too of Ben and Winifred Nicholson, a couple whose artistic relationship long outlived their marriage; they were still busily writing to each other about painting decades after splitting up, although you wouldn't know it to judge from the books about Ben. I was at the Central Library in Bristol the other day - it has a wonderful art history collection - and on asking about Ben Nicholson in the Reference section was presented with a trolleyful of books, each one progressively bigger and glossier and less comprehensible. His first wife merited a solitary book. Personally, I think Winifred's best work is beautiful. I also think the importance of intimate relationships is underplayed in conventional art history, which tends to consider artists in terms of similar artists and via the art historical theories of the day. An artist is only 'important' if they fit within the narrative - but you don't need me to tell you that... Winifred Nicholson, Bonnie Scotland, 1951 (Tullie House) Eric Ravilious was virtually invisible ten years ago and is now a central figure in the alternative story of 20th century British art that Alexandra Harris has championed in her 2010 book 'Romantic Moderns'. The exhibition of his watercolours which opens at the RWA in Bristol next week will be the third show in consecutive years, each one given little attention in the national press but attracting unprecedented numbers of visitors nonetheless. Tirzah Garwood, The Train Journey, 1929-30 His work also features in a second exhibition opening this month, at the Fry Art Gallery in Saffron Walden, but he is not the main subject. 'Long Live Great Bardfield!' is a show about Rav's wife, Tirzah, and the creative force behind it is Anne Ullmann, their daughter and the author/editor of several stunning books about them. Over the past few years she's been editing her mother's autobiography, 'Long Live Great Bardfield, & Love to You All', which is about to be published by the Fleece Press. Eric Ravilious, Train Landscape, 1939 (Aberdeen Art Gallery) I've written before about Tirzah, who learned wood engraving from Eric and as Tirzah Garwood became an outstanding printmaker in her own right. She gave this career up to concentrate on raising her children, but didn't give up art per se. Throughout her married life she made marbled papers, which at different times she sold through London boutiques, and she also assisted Eric, publicly when he was commissioned to paint murals at the Midland Hotel, Morecambe, and privately in ways we will probably never fully appreciate. Her contribution to the painting 'Train Landscape' (1939) is one of my favourite instances. Tirzah Garwood, Orchid Hunters in Brazil, 1950 - there's a story to this... After Eric's death she took up oil painting and also made a series of unusual relief pictures of shops. This work is rarely shown, except at the Fry, and the appearance of two examples on the Antiques Road Show last year caused some consternation to their resident expert. Now we have the opportunity to look at Tirzah's work properly and also to read what she thought about married life with Eric. Famous for her fiery letters, I suspect that she had a thing or two to say... 'Eric Ravilious: Going Modern / Being British' is at the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, from Saturday March 10th. 'Long Live Great Bardfield!' opens at the Fry Art Gallery, Saffron Walden, on March 31st. Wood engravings by Eric Ravilious are included in an exhibition of work from the archive of the Society of Wood Engravers, showing until March 23rd at Manchester Metropolitan University. 'Ravilious in Pictures: A Travelling Artist' will be launched at the RWA on March 10th, 12-2pm
A new film version of the Biblical story of Noah reminds us that concerns about climate change are nothing new, says Sarah Dunant - and neither is our response.
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Wood engraving by unknown artist (possibly Flammarion), found in “L’atmosphère: météorologie populaire”, Camille Flammarion, 1888. ( ((Source) The caption that accompanies the eng…
Grackle Reproduction of woodcut on paper Numbered engraving (series of 5) and signed by the author Each engraving is unique and unrepeatable Measurements: 25 x 25 cm
So, I've been meaning to write about this for a little while, and as tonight is particularly celestially auspicious, I might as well. When I was a child, from the age of perhaps 2 until I was 7, I ...
Extraordinary impact and visual conspicuousness. Poipoi is a super 3D sans family for posters, logos and all display. The basic idea is not a brand new. The Stacking type system has been used since before wood type age. As you imagined, colored wood type(woodcut), many other engravings and contemporary printer machine print many colors separately with different printing plates for each color. Poipoi uses the same system for 3d effect. Please use Photoshop or Illustrator, or your favorite graphic design apps that can handle layers. Layers are the printing plates of wood type. You should be able to change text color for each layer. Poipoi "Standard" style is the base of this font family. You can add effects by stacking Highlight and shadow layers. Stacked layers in different color make the text in 3D. Instruction Type your text as you like. Set font-name "Poipoi" and font-style "Standard" Set color of "Standard" layer. Duplicate the "Standard" layer twice (One for Highlight, one for Shadow). 4' The layer order should be Highlight, Standard, and Shadow from top to bottom. Set font-style and color of "Highlight" and "Shadow" layers. Adjust tracking if you need. (Please use same tracking value for all 3 layers.) For further detail, https://www.dropbox.com/s/xymis7dh5hwxn9q/Poipoi.pdf Poipoi Standard, Highlighted, and shadowed style can be used solely. Rounded terminals add soft, cute, and casual impressions to your design. Spec: OpenType Format (.otf) with over 400 glyphs! Almost all Latins are covered. Basic Latin ✓ Western Europe ✓ Central Europe ✓ South Eastern Europe ✓ Mac Roman ✓ Windows 1252 ✓ Adobe Latin 1 ✓ Adobe Latin 2 ✓ Adobe Latin 3 ✓
Albrecht Dürer and his unrivalled copper engravings and woodcuts AD – almost everyone is familiar with the monogram of Albrecht Dürer, who may well be Germany’s most famous artist. Born son to a goldsmith on 21 May 1471, he was not only a painter and printmaker – his versatility also reveals itself in his activities…
What are the critical principles underpinning great art? Like all broad generalisations there will always be exceptions, but if I were to reduce all the factors that come together in the most memorable artworks then three principles are essential: projection (to arrest a viewer’s attention and to invite the viewer to look at the featured subject); visual dialogue (to express meaning by comparison of the centre of interest with another pictorial element); and, alluding to subject material outside of the field of view (to conceptually expand the range of projected meanings beyond the featured subject material). In the following discussion I will address each of these principles and explain how Hendrick Goltzius and Giovanni Battista Piranesi have applied them. My choice to use Hendrick Goltzius’ Apostle Simon (shown below) as an example of the first principle—projection—is simple; I love the print. Moreover, I find myself drawn to keep looking at it. For me, the attraction has nothing to do with the physical beauty of the subject as I am sure that there are few viewers who would see Saint Simon as eye candy. I am, nevertheless, attracted by the finely engraved lines rendering the image (see details further below) but this is only a small part of the reason I love the print. The primary attraction lies with Saint Simon’s hands. This is especially true with regard to the saint’s left hand and more specifically with his third finger so emphatically pressing on the ground as if the saint is making a ideological point. This arrangement of the forward projected finger is the element that both arrests my eye and draws me into the image. After this pictorial “introduction” into the image my eye then follows a gently spiralling course. First stop is the saint’s left hand. Next, my eye moves to traverse across the book (bible?) the saint is holding to arrive at his right hand. After pondering the odd way that Saint Simon holds the book—mindful that the saint’s hands is undoubtedly modelled on Goltziius’ own deformed right hand (see drawing in Teylers Museum Haarlem)—my eye is then lead along his right arm to finally “rest” on his face (see diagram of the rhythm below) before making visual forays to examine other pictorial features like the saw of his martyrdom. Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617) Apostle Simon, 1589 From the suite Christ, The Twelve Apostles and St. Paul 15 x 10.3 cm (plate) with margins on fine laid paper with watermark “Crowned Arms” Marvellous lifetime impression of lll (of Vl). From collection R.S. (not at Lugt) Bartsch 53; Hollstein, Hirschmann 44 lll (of VI) Condition: perfect I am selling this print for $560 AUD including postage and handling to anywhere in the world. Please contact me using the email link at the top of the page if you have any queries or click the “Buy Now” button below. This print has been sold (Detail) Apostle Simon, 1589 (Detail) Apostle Simon, 1589 (Detail) Apostle Simon, 1589 Diagram of inward rhythm, Apostle Simon, 1589 Although the middle-finger of Saint Simon’s left hand is the point of introduction into the image, there are other elements in the print contributing to an invitation to look. For example the spine of the open book also draws attention inward as do the converging lines of the saint’s arms. To make the point of this discussion clearer in terms of how the eye is invited to engage with the act of looking and thinking, compare the difference in how the eye is not so welcomed by the arrangement of hands and arms in Golzius’ Apostle Bartholomew. This is true even though there are many other pictorial devices inviting the viewer’s eye to gaze into the print’s pictorial depth, such as the flaying knife of the saint’s martyrdom and the saint’s backward tilt of his head. Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617) Apostle Bartholomew, 1589 From the suite Christ, The Twelve Apostles and St. Paul 14.4 x 10.4 cm (plate) right and left with small margins, cut on the platemark at the top, cut slightly inside the platemark at the bottom, on fine laid paper with watermark “Double Eagle” Marvellous lifetime impression of lll (of Vl) Bartsch 49; Hirschmann 40 lll (of VI) Condition: traces of use, otherwise in good condition I am selling this print for $360 AUD including postage and handling to anywhere in the world. Please contact me using the email link at the top of the page if you have any queries or click the “Buy Now” button below. This print has been sold (Detail) Apostle Bartholomew, 1589 (Detail) Apostle Bartholomew, 1589 Regarding the second principle—visual dialogue—I will return to Goltizius’ Apostle Simon as this print is so cleverly composed and rich in subtle use of visual devices. To begin at a very fundamental level, even the most cursory look at the image will show a connection between the saint and his book. This relationship between the centre-of-interest—the saint’s head—and the book he is examining is a fine example of visual dialogue. On a more reflective examination of the image, however, there is more to this visual dialogue than just the saint reading his book. He is also responding to what he is reading and this is signified by the gesture of the middle-finger of his left hand. This hand gesture that I proposed earlier as Saint Simon making an “ideological point” (i.e. a body-language gesture of clear emphatic certainty) does more than depict Saint Simon fully engaged in his reading. This gesture is the punctum point (discussed in an earlier post focused on Dujardin and Dietricy) of the whole image. In short, this single finger is the pivotal feature in the composition that shows the intensity of the saint’s reading of the book. Even more subtle than the triangulation between the saint’s head, book and finger is the visual dialogue between the saint’s central lock of hair and the tuff or grass in the centre foreground (see diagram below). To my eyes, this visual connection created by the similarity of form between the hair and grass is important to the expression of a decisive moment in the saint’s reading. From my viewpoint, I see the link as establishing a line of separation between the related dual gestures of the saint’s hands. Diagram of visual dialogue, Apostle Simon, 1589 For the final principle—alluding to a subject outside of the field of view— Piranesi’s etching, The Tomb of the Plautii near Ponte Lucano (shown below) is an excellent example. Here the shadow cast by an unseen structure lying beyond what can be viewed in the image creates a theatrical dimension of an unknown presence. This shadow not only hints at the form of the structure casting it but the shadow’s shape—especially the “extension” of the shadow’s shape into the cloud pattern—creates a window-like effect by framing the far distance. This principle is a very useful device for giving an artwork pictorial breadth). To illustrate what the print would be like without the shadow, compare the original etching with a view of the same tomb without a shadow (see the digitally manipulated image below). Beyond the use of shadows, another way to connote subject material beyond what is visible is the simple device of cropping the portrayed subject at the framing edge of the artwork. Again, Piranesi’s print is a good example of this approach as the portrayed tomb is not a panoramic view where the whole building can be seen but is cropped by the left and top edges of the format. This cropping ensures that a viewer understands that the image is only a section of a much broader view and this projects the notion and feeling of breadth. Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–78) Tomb of the Plautii near Ponte Lucano, 1761 From the Vedute di Roma [Views of Rome] series Etching, 46.6 x 63.2 cm Hind 83 IV (of IV) with the number 801 at upper right; Focillon 783; Wilton-Ely 216. Cartouche with the Italian inscription “Veduta degl’ avanzi del sepolcro della famiglia Plauzia sulla via Tiburtina vicino al ponte Lugano due miglia lontano da Tivoli”. With fecit note “Cavalier Piranesi F. (ecit)” Condition: excellent impression on wove paper without watermark, with margin around the platemark, minimal traces of use, browned and foxed with the blind stamp of the Calcografia di Roma I am selling this print for $960 AUD including postage and handling to anywhere in the world. Please contact me using the email link at the top of the page if you have any queries or click the “Buy Now” button below. Altered image of Tomb of the Plautii near Ponte Lucano, 1761
