Week Two - The Golden Age of Illustration.

Difference between Illustrators and Artists.

An illustrator is an artist, technically speaking. The term artist can refer to many career paths. These include art directors, fine artists, craft artists and multimedia artists such as animators.
An illustrator creates images for the use in publications. There are also commercial illustrators that make images for products such as T-shirts, bags, calendars or cards. The type of work they do varies on what type of illustrator the person is. Some illustrators may specify in medical or scientific illustration, whereas others may create illustrations for technical use such as instructions to build something.

The Golden Age of Illustration.
This the time between 1880 and 1920. It became easier and cheaper with new technology, for artists and illustrators to reproduce their work. There was a demand by the public for new graphic art because they had been introduced to it.

Golden age Illustrators.
Louis John Rhead, 1858-1926.
English/American Illustrator.

Louis John Rhead was an English born illustrator that moved to America in his Twenties. This piece was created as an advertisement for an art's magazine called The Quartier Latin. It is a commercial lithograph print and the colours used to create it were yellow, red, light blue, dark blue and black. It measures 19 3/4 x13 7/8 inches and dates 1898-99. Using the technology he was able to create pieces such as this and also have them reproduced, this would have been very helpful since the piece was an advertisement. I like the use of line in this piece, it is very simple and the same width in most parts of the piece. The use of colour makes this piece stand out the most because of the brightness. I also like the way no line has been used in some parts such as the leaves and flowers towards the top of the piece and the blue at the bottom. The use of typography works really well, it is legible and you can see it well but it doesn't distract from the imagery.



Aubrey Beardsley, 1872-1898.
English Illustrator.

This piece is from a series of 16 prints Aubrey Beardsley created for Oscar Wilde's 'Salome'. They are process prints from line blocks and dated 1906-7. It's amazing how modern this piece looks today even though it was created more than 100 years ago. The use of line varies a lot from very thin with not much detail to thick black lines. I like the way most of his work in general is created in black and white, the contrast works really well. The attention to detail in this piece shines through regarding the hair on the head that the woman is holding. I really like the use of space in this piece, the way the black and white space has been separated in the background gives the imagery a chance to be seen without anything else distracting it, its almost like two pieces in one. The negative colour towards the bottom works really well in the way that you can tell it's water just by using shapes and no colour. I can see why Aubrey Beardsley was one of the great illustrators of the golden age because of the way he used the technology that was on offer and created work that still gets produced 100 years later. 

Figures
Figure 1 - Louis John Rhead piece.
Figure 2 - Aubrey Beardsley print.

References

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/history/golden-age.html
http://education-portal.com/articles/Artist_vs_Illustrator_Whats_the_Difference.html
http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/339272