Category: Chiaroscuro

Categories
Chiaroscuro Landscape Media Portrait Self-portrait Urban

Rembrandt van Rijn

Rembrandt’s was a key inspiration for:

Sources and references

  • Bikker, J. and G. J. M. Weber (2015). Rembrandt: The Late Works. London: National Gallery.
  • Royalton-Kisch, M. (2006). Rembrandt as Printmaker. London: Hayward Gallery Touring.

Goldmark exhibition (has a loupe to see the detail of markmaking)

CD of Rembrandt etchings purchased from Rembrandthuis.

https://www.rembrandthuis.nl/en/rembrandt-2/collection/etchings/

Christie’s exhibition

Rembrandt as printmaker

Rembrandt (1606-1669) was a Dutch  painter, draughtsman and printmaker. His works cover a wide range of style and subject matter, from portraits and self-portraits to landscapes, genre scenes, allegorical and historical scenes, biblical and mythological themes as well as animal studies.

Rembrandt’s fame while he lived was greater as an etcher than as a painter (he did no engravings or woodcuts). He experimented with different etching and drypoint techniques. He used different mark-making tools to create different types of line – in contrast to the much more mechanical engraving techniques. Rembrandt sometimes employed even the V-shaped engraver’s burin in his etchings, combining it with the fine etching needle and thicker dry point needle, as in the work opposite, for richer pictorial effects.

Landscape

Rembrandt The Three Trees Etching and Drypoint
Rembrandt The Three Trees Etching and Drypoint

See also Google images

Rembrandt’s landscape etchings and drypoints are in the classic Dutch ink and watercolour tradition with broody skies over low horizon and dark, cold foreground.

Portrait prints

He makes the subjects look alive through the way he uses tone to draw the eye to visual features.

Rembrandt Old Bearded Man
Rembrandt Old Bearded Man
Rembrandt with Saskia etching
Rembrandt with Saskia etching

Chiaroscuro

He also experimented with different inking variations for chiaroscuro, producing very different interpretations of the same plate. Etching allows a lot of correction and burnishing to change the image. In some instances his etching were explorations of light and shade that he then transferred into his paintings.

Rembrandt The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds, 1634, etching, engraving and drypoint printed in black ink on cream paper.
Rembrandt The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds, 1634, etching, engraving and drypoint printed in black ink on cream paper.

Technique

Detailed discussion of Rembrandt’s techniques and the background to his etchings.

Portrait paintings

‘Warts and all’

Rembrandt’s self portraits

Rembrandt The Late Works

Categories
Abstraction Chiaroscuro Design

Notan

Notan

Japanese dark, light. A notan painting is a small, quickly executed monochrome painting that consists of simple shapes in a number of flat values.

positive and negative space

barry john raybould:

mass notan: rough plan of disrribution of light and dark shapes. 7 or less shapes.

contour notan: detailed exploration of exact contour of light and dark shapes

limited value study: quick painting in 3,4 or 5 values.

shape simplification. Merge shapes that have similar values into larger shapes of one

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Categories
Chiaroscuro Memory

Gustav Dore forthcoming

Categories
Chiaroscuro Inspiration Landscape Memory Printmakers Urban

Frans Masereel

Frans Masereel 1889 1972 Die Passion eines Menschen 1918 ChateauBoynetAgency 2012

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The City

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Google images

Frans Masereel (31 July 1889 – 3 January 1972) was a Flemish painter and graphic artist who worked mainly in France. He is known especially for his woodcuts. His greatest work is generally said to be the wordless novel Mon Livre d’Heures (Passionate Journey). He completed over 20 other wordless novels in his career. Masereel’s woodcuts strongly influenced the work of Lynd Ward and later graphic artists such as Clifford Harper and Eric Drooker. There is a Frans Masereel Centre (Frans Masereel Centrum for Graphix) in the village of Kasterlee in Belgium.

Frans Masereel was born in the Belgian Blankenberge on 31 July 1889. He moved to Ghent in 1896, where he began to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in the class of Jean Delvin at the age of 18. In 1909 he went on trips to England and Germany, which inspired him to create his first etchings and woodcuts. In 1911 Masereel settled in Paris for four years and then emigrated to Switzerland, where he worked as a graphic artist for journals and magazines. His woodcut series, mainly of sociocritical content and of expressionistic form concept, made Masereel internationally known. Among these were the wordless novels 25 Images of a Man’s Passion (1918), Passionate Journey (1919), The Sun (1919), The Idea (1920) and Story Without Words (1920). At that time Masereel also drew illustrations for famous works of world literature by Thomas Mann, Émile Zola and Stefan Zweig. In 1921 Masereel returned to Paris, where he painted his famous street scenes, the Montmartre paintings. He lived for a time in Berlin, where his closest creative friend was George Grosz. After 1925 he lived near Boulogne-sur-Mer, where he painted predominantly coast areas, harbour views, and portraits of sailors and fishermen. During the 1930s his output declined. In 1940 he fled from Paris and lived in several cities in Southern France.

At the end of World War II Masereel was able to resume his artistic work and produced woodcuts and paintings. After 1946 he worked for several years as a teacher at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Saar (de) in Saarbrücken. In 1949 Masereel settled in Nice. In the following years until 1968 several series of woodcuts were published, which differ from his earlier “novels in picture'” in comprising variations of a subject instead of being a continuing narrative. He also designed decorations and costumes for numerous theatre productions. The artist was honoured in numerous exhibitions and became a member of several academies. Frans Masereel died in Avignon in 1972 and was entombed in Ghent. The cultural organizationMasereelfonds was named after him.

Influence

From Mon Livre d’Heures (A Passionate Journey, 1919)

The American graphic artist Lynd Ward was greatly influenced by Masereel in creating his novels in woodcuts. A number of cartoonists have cited Masereel as an influence on the development of the graphic novel: Art Spiegelman cited Mon Livre d’Heures as an early influence on his Maus. Will Eisner cited Masereel as an influence on his work, as has scratchboard novelist Eric Drooker.

Wordless novels

Source: edited from Wikipedia articles on Masereel and his different works, the You Tube videos and reading of his graphic novels themselves.

Categories
Chiaroscuro Inspiration Landscape Natural Printmakers

Katarzyna Cyganic

Inspiration

Katarzyna’s work is extremely detailed linocut made of dot shading and very fine markmaking. It has a dreamy quality. I am not sure if this is partly done using etching techniques with bleach, or something like a mezzotint shader.

She also generally chooses dramatic composition – reflections, swirling sky and water. The compositions are often upside down reflections in water, or putting the dark area at the top right. This significantly increases the sense of drama and the unexpected even on apparently simple scenes of just trees and water.

website: http://www.linoart.eu is now subscription only

Reflections This is an amazingly detailed and well-obesrved linocut rendering of tree reflections in water.

Forest This shows leaves falling from trees with sharp contrast between the white leaf shapes against a misty background of forest trees.

 

Landscape  This shows a waterlily pond with beautiful contrasts between the dark round waterlily leaves, straggly thin stems and water.

Landscape This shows a seascape with swirling waves in very small marks. Though the scene itself is not so unusual.

More information

http://nydamprintsblackandwhite.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/linocuts-by-cyganik.html

There is no biography or details of technique or size of the images on the website.

Categories
Abstraction Chiaroscuro Etching Inspiration Landscape Lithograph Media Monoprint Natural Portrait Self-portrait

Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas has been influential in my work for:

Degas produced many prints as well as paintings, and often worked in pastels over prints.

Lithographs

He produced lithographs from some of his paintings – some of these have a beautiful dreamy quality, benefiting from a monochrome treatment to enhance the total contrasts.

Degas After the Bath 1891–92 Lithograph, transfer, and crayon on laid paper; fifth (final) state
Degas After the Bath 1891–92 Lithograph, transfer, and crayon on laid paper; fifth (final) state
Degas La-Chanteuse-1888-89 lithograph

Etching

His etching uses a range of styles, often based on drawings of intimate scenes that have a . In ‘The laundress’ his energetic lines echo the frenzy of work in the laundry, and the ink tone on the plate conveys the steam and mist. His ‘whorehouse scenes’, some based on monoprints have an immediacy and poignancy not found in his painting.

Degas The laundress, 1879-80. Etching on copper plate.
Degas The laundress, 1879-80. Etching on copper plate.
Degas Whorehouse scene 'The drunk prostitutes'
Degas Whorehouse scene ‘The drunk prostitutes’

Monoprints

Degas (1834-1917) took up monotype printing in 1874-75. In his lifetime Degas produced more than 250 subjects and 400 separate impressions in monotype, far exceeding his etchings or lithographs. He used ghost prints as a basis for pastels. Between 1876-1881 nearly 70% of his works in colour were monoprints enhanced with pastel, sometimes drawing with them, sometimes wetting them for watercolour effects to give different moods, and to add and take away figures.

Degas Le Sommeil c 1885 Courtesy of British Museum
Degas Le Sommeil c 1885 Courtesy of British Museum

Degas found monotype gave him greater freedom to improvise and be spontaneous than drawing on paper allowed. The ability to wipe and smear ink on the plate, and the darkness of tone from the ink, allow a range of mark=making and tone very difficult to achieve with charcoal. It was ideal for capturing secret and intimate scenes, such as women engaged in their toilet or in brothel scenes. He was influenced by Japanese woodblock prints and was interested in the ways shapes and lines can be organised on paper to indicate figures in movement. From 1870s he started to have problems with his eyesight, so he was more sensitive to light/dark contrasts and created dramatic chiaroscuro effects.

He was introduced to the process by his friend the amateur etcher Vicomte Ludovic Napoléon Lepic (1839-1889).  Lepic enjoyed experimenting tonal wiping (l’eau forte mobile or variable etching) to create many variations on a basic landscape composition. He used one etched plate and  wiped off this plate, and also ‘retroussage’,  a way of adding ink to previously wiped plates to produce much richer tones on the prints.

Degas adopted this  ‘dark-field’ method. He covered the entire surface of the printing plate in oily, slow-drying ink and then removed it as necessary to create the image. He scratched and brushed it, wiped it with a rag and manipulated it with his fingers to create the composition, before fixing it by printing it onto paper. He worked and reworked his plates, wiping off and adding ink with rags, fingers and brushes. Later he began to draw on the plate with Indian ink, often diluting it with turpentine and working directly on the plate with a paintbrush.

Degas usually printed two impressions of each monotype subject, one strong, the other weak. He would keep untouched the first impressions (this is a first impression), but he would rework the second with pastel or gouache.

A Strange New Beauty: Monoprint Landscapes

His monoprint landscapes, included in a MoMA exhibition in 2016, are particularly beautiful and innovative. These use oil based ink and solvents to produce misty effects with strong abstraction.

 

Edgar Degas, Factory Smoke, 1877–79, monotype on paper, 4¾ x 6¼ inches

Sources

Hauptman, J. (2016). Degas: A Strange New Beauty, New York: MoMA.

Google images for Degas chiaroscuro

Degas Creative Commons site for paintings only.

Categories
Chiaroscuro Inspiration Media Portrait Printmakers

Benedetto Castiglione

Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione

(Wikimedia Commons)

Kopf eines bärtigen Orientalen 1655 31.7 × 23.6 cm (12.5 × 9.3 in), Windsor Castle

Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (1609–64) was an Italian painter and etcher who was the first artist to produce brushed sketches intended as finished and final works of art (rather than as studies for another work).

Heavily influenced by Rembrandt he experimented with different inking variations on etchings. From there he invented the monotype process in the 1640s. He produced over twenty surviving monotypes, over half of which are set at night.

He normally worked from black to white. He drew directly into an unetched plate, drawing white lines with a stick, created tonal areas with his fingers, rags and brushes. He then printed using a printing press.

File:Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione - The Creation of Adam - Google Art Project.jpg
The Creation of Adam circa 1642 Monotype (dark manner) in black on ivory laid paper Height: 303 mm (11.93 in). Width: 203 mm (7.99 in).

Categories
Abstraction Chiaroscuro Etching Inspiration Linocut Lithograph Media Memory Monoprint Portrait Printmakers Still Life

Pablo Picasso

To be further developed as I finish Assignments 3, 4 and 5.

Picasso’s work is a key influence in my printmaking, both stylistically and conceptually. I am particularly interested in his abstract work both that influenced by African art with its ferocious angularity that is also echoed in Guernica, and the fragmented light of the abstraction in analytic cubism ‘trying to communicate the perfume’ of an image. See particularly:

and forthcoming:

  • Assignment 4: Abstract Self Portrait (1932 paintings, cubism, portraits and lithographs) forthcoming
  • Assignment 5: From memory (influenced by Guernica) forthcoming

Painting isn’t an aesthetic operation; it’s a form of magic designed as a mediator between this strange, hostile world and us, a way of seizing the power by giving form to our terrors as well as our desires.(p11)

Painting is stronger than I am. It makes me do what it wants. (p70)

A picture is not thought out and settled beforehand. While it is being done it changes as one’s thoughts change. And when it is finished, it still goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it. (p12)

References and Resources

  • Borchardt-Hume, A. and N. Ireson, Eds. (2018). Picasso 1932: The EY Exhibition. London, Tate Publishing.
  • Clark, H., Ed. (1993). Picasso: In His Words. San Francisco, Collins.
  • Cohen, J., Ed. (1995). Picasso: Inside the Image. London, Thames & Hudson.
    Coppel, S. (1998). Picasso and Printmaking in Paris. London, South Bank Publishing.
  • Cowling, E., N. Cox, S. Fraquelli, S. G. Galassi, C. Rigpelle and A. Robbins (2009). Picasso: Challenging the Past. London, National Gallery Pubications.
  • Eik Kahng, Charles Palermo, Harry Cooper, Annie Bourneuf, Christine Poggi, Claire Barry and B. J.C.Devolder (2011). Picasso and Braque: The Cubist Experiment 1910-1912. Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
  • Picasso (1980). Picasso: Lithographs. Toronto, Dover Publications.
  • Picasso (1981). Picasso: Line Drawings and Prints. Toronto, Dover Publications.
  • T.J.Clark (2013). Picasso and Truth: from Cubism to Guernica. Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press.

Picasso as artist

Picasso’s life and evolution of his style from:

    • Highly accomplished figurative drawings and paintings from boyhood to late teens
    • Blue period (1901–1904) influenced by the suicide of his close friend Carlos Casagemas
    • Rose period (1904–1906) during his early marriage and relationship
    • African influence (1907–1909), notably Les Demoiselles d’Avignon as a sudden leap to abstraction (see also Wikipedia overview of images from, this period)
    • Analytic cubism (1909–1912)
    • Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919), also referred to as the Crystal period.
    • Neoclassicism and surrealism (1919–1929)
    • The Great Depression to MoMA exhibition: 1930–1939 – the period of Guernica, his 1932 paintings of Marie-Thérèse Walter and the Vollard Suite etchings
    • Later works to final years: 1949–1973 combined elements of his earlier styles

    Overview: BBC Modern Masters Series by  Alastair Sooke

    Gives an overview of Picasso’s life and art and the way they influenced each other, and the influences that Picasso’s art still has for us today.

    Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, MoMA

    A detailed discussion of the origins and meaning of this painting.

    Exhibition Review: Exhibition Review : Picasso 1932 – Love, Fame, Tragedy at the Tate Modern 2018

    The Exhibition focuses on his numerous paintings in the one year of 1932, influenced by his relationship with Marie-Thérèse Walter. See catalogue:

    Borchardt-Hume, A. and N. Ireson, Eds. (2018). Picasso 1932: The EY Exhibition. London, Tate Publishing.

    Girl before a Mirror

    Discussion by a teacher of the ways in which the meanings of this painting are seen and explained to children.

    Picasso portraits at the National Gallery

    Looks in particular at multiple viewpoints and cubism.

    Guernica and attitudes to politics

    Picasso’s last paintings are very poignant, but not well received.

    Google Picasso drawings

    Picasso as printmaker

    Picasso (1881–1973)  made prints throughout his career – over 2,500 principally in etching, lithography and linocut, but also monoprints.

    Google Picasso monoprints

    Google Picasso lithograph

    The Vollard Suite at the British Museum (etchings)

  • Google Picasso etching

    Linocuts

    Invention of the reduction linocut

    His earliest linocut is from 1939, but his major period of working in this medium was from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s. During this time the artist resided mainly in the south of France, far removed from his collaborative involvement with the master printers in Paris where he had made his etchings and lithographs in the 1930s and 40s. He began by producing linocut posters for ceramic exhibitions and bullfighting events in Vallauris with the talented local printer Hidalgo Arnéra.

    Within a very short time Picasso was finding new ways of producing colour linocuts which dispensed with the orthodox method of cutting a separate block of linoleum for each colour.  He devised a method of progressively cutting and printing from a single block that required him to foresee the final result, as once he had gouged away the linoleum surface he could not go back.

    Linocuts Exhibition British Museum exhibition: 10 January – 6 May 2014

     Still Life under the Lamp (1962) depicts a still life of apples next to a glass goblet, brightly illuminated under a lampshade at night. The BM exhibition shows nine stages, beginning with a blank tabula rasa, Picasso progressively cut and printed the single block, gradually building the image with increasing complexity. At each stage the viewer sees an image that would appear finished but Picasso goes further, pursuing it to its final form. (See Google images)

    Jacqueline Reading (1962) a series consisting of four progressive proofs for a monochrome subject, Jacqueline Reading, Picasso’s second wife Jacqueline Roque with whom he lived in the last years of his life. She is posed reading, one hand held to her face and eyes cast down, locked in an interior world. For this print Picasso used two blocks. In the first block he scratched the surface with a stiff comb to describe the form of Jacqueline’s head and bust in tonal terms. A second block was cut with gouges to leave just her outline. Then the print from the second block was superimposed over the first to achieve the final image. (See Google images)

  • Other linocuts: Google Picasso linocut ;
  •  before the lance avant la pique 1959 1
  • Deux femmes près de la fenêtre, 1959
  • Danseurvet musicien  
  • Les Banderilles Like Cretan. Like the composition. How about the background?.
  • Trois femmes 1959
  • le vase de fleurs  
  • tete de femme de profil

Picasso lithographs: Google images

Picasso drypoint : Google Images

Painting technique: Cubist

MoMA painting techniques series has an interesting overview of how to draw multiple perspectives.