The artist I choose for my GE assignment is Arthur Rackham who did illustrations for many children’s books.
I’ll paste my paper below my WIP from the drawing portion of the assignment os that you can read it if you want.
Below is my concepts page for my drawing, Rackham does drawings that can whimsical or morbid without being grotesque. Some of his artworks also have built in frames for the illustrations, while I was thinking on what to draw a tarot card came into mind because of his style. To even further try to match the type of drawings that Rackham did I choose card 13 from the tarot deck also know as Death. Rackham also drew both humans and animals that he turns humanoid, so I figured why not a crow also a symbol of death into death himself.
On my big drawing I have yet to add the spider lilies, or a sky but I plan to. If I add any kind of color I think that I will use chalk pastels to try and emulate the often subtle amounts of watercolor that Rackham would add to his pieces.
My paper is as follows:
“Arthur Rackham was an English book illustrator, he lived from September 19, 1867- September 6, 1939. He was one of twelve children, and originally worked as a n office clerk for a fire office. In about 1885 is when Rackham actually started making art as he actually didn’t pursue art/drawing as a child, and his first publication is dated about ten years after the start of his art journey. He developed watercolor skills with the help of his wife Edith Starkie who he married in 1900. William Heinemann was the publisher who worked with Rackham, with Heinemann to write the tales and Rackham to draw the illustrations their works sold well. Rackham also work with other publishers to illustrate their stories and help them come to life.
Rackham mainly used pen and ink, and with some drawings he used watercolors. Many of Rackham’s drawings overall end up at one end of the value scale, either very light or very dark overall. His mark making looks very deliberate, and he is able to mix surreal factors with realistic backgrounds and other subjects. While his use of color is limited it is striking when he does use color. Rackham is able to balance his drawings nicely and keep the flow of the piece natural. Arthur Rackham has a style that beautifully mixes realism with surrealism. He has created many different whimsical pieces of artwork as well as some more horror-like pieces.
Overall, I think that Rackham uses a heavier line weight specifically to distinguish his characters from the backgrounds and/or each other. In his whimsical pieces he keeps the overall line weight lighter and the colors more evenly balanced throughout the page, while in his more horror-like pieces he uses a heavier line weights with scratchier feelings to stress and help balance the darker parts of the scenes. This difference in lighter versus heavier line weights helps to set the tones in the drawings, with heavier line weights there is a sort of visual stress on the drawing, a larger section of a solid black color. While with lighter line weighted there is a sense of transparency, an overall “light” feeling of the object, it is not weighted down into the page but “lifts off” the page rather than sinking into it.
*this is an image of Rackham’s work it couldn’t transfer correctly (its title is “to hear the sea-maid’s music <Act II, Scene I>”)
Works Cited
“Arthur Rackham 1867–1939.” Tate, 1 Jan. 1970, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/arthur-rackham-1811. (Accessed October 1, 2021)
Menges, Jeff A. “The Arthur Rackham Treasury : Rackham, Arthur, 1867-1939 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming.” Internet Archive, Mineola, N.Y. : Dover, 1 Jan. 1970, https://archive.org/details/arthurrackhamtre00rack/page/28/mode/2up. (Accessed Oct 1, 2021) *Plate 11 from the collection is shown above*
Stein, S. (2014, September 19). No hours but (sort of) Sunny ones. The Paris Review. Retrieved October 30, 2021, from https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/09/19/no-hours-but-sort-of-sunny-ones/.
University of Florida (2013). University of Florida. When Phantasie Takes Flight: the Art & Imagination of Arthur Rackham. Retrieved October 30, 2021, from https://exhibits.uflib.ufl.edu/rackham/.
*(the Menges source was used to view many of the works by Arthur Rackham)*”
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