Scratchboard

Scratchboard is a lovely way to draw and it looks a lot like an etching or wood engraving but is much easier. It only requires the scratchboard and a few scratching knifes and tools. It is available on a panel or thick, rigid bristol board like paper. It's made by coating paper or board with a thin layer of clay and a layer of India ink on the surface. After scratching out the image, it can be colored or painted. Cool stuff!

Images from an enchanting children's book called The House in the Night by Susan Marie Swanson. Pictures by Beth Krommes. (Houghton Mifflin Co. 2008)

PS. I've been experiencing a family crisis which is why I haven't been posting on this blog much in the past few months... it's a bit time consuming to post because I do research things. Please bear with me. I love sharing art history with you all and have greatly enjoyed and appreciate your comments and visits. (I've no intention of shutting down Artslice.) Hopefully things will improve and I can get back on track.

Jean Cocteau

Menton's Marriages (Registry Hall) - A room decorated my Jean cocteau. (In the city of Menton, France)

Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) . French poet, dramatist and film director. A leading figure in European Modernism, he worked with Picasso, Diaghilev, and Stravinsky. He produced many volumes of poetry, ballets such as Le Boeuf sur le Toit (The Ox on the Roof - 1920), plays IE-Orpheus, 1926, and a mature novel of bourgeois French life, Les Enfants Terribles (Children of the Game - 1929). (Brockhampton)

I thought this piece so interesting, I wanted to share it. The lines throughout the figures and background remind me of Spanish embroidery... although can't remember the name of it! Cocteau was much more than a poet and film director he was also an artist. He created an art museum as part of his legacy in the town of Menton on the gorgeous French Riviera. Read and see more of his art here.

Modern Madonna

Mother and Child by Picasso 1922

This modern Madonna, painted on a tinted gray background and very lightly colored, was signed by Picasso in 1922. It belongs in Picasso's period of great simplicity and classical feeling. It is an eloquent sample of his authority as a draftsman and one of the most tender of his monumental figure pieces. (Andre Maurois - from a 1927 Vanity Fair magazine article)

Olaf Gulbransson

The actress Elenora Duse, 1905 by Olaf Gulbransson. From Beruhmte Zeitgenossen, Verlag Albert Langen, Munich.

Olaf Gulbransson: 1873-1958. Born in Oslo, Norway. Norwegian painter and graphic artist. He is one of the most important caricaturists of the 20th century. In his ironically naive, powerfully expressive drawings, he communicated the essential characteristics of his subject using only the most economic means, and later simply by use of outline. His major works include Beruhmte Zeitgenossen (famous contemporaries, 1905), Aus meiner Schublade (From my drawer, 1911) and his autobiography Es war einmal (Once upon a time, 1934). (Gabriele Fahr-Becker).

White-Vine Work

Example of medieval white-vine work.

White-Vine: Type of ornate medieval decoration in which the background of a vine pattern is drawn in, leaving the white paper or parchment revealed in the form of the vine itself. (Rose Folsum)

A Good Noir

Even van Gogh was searching for good colors and good art supplies. Here is an excerpt from Dear Theo - van Gogh's collection of letters to his brother, benefactor and confidant:

September, 1883

My dear Theo,

...If you want to do me a great favor, send me by post some pieces of craie de montagne - a kind of crayon/pastel. That crayon has soul and life - I find Conte crayon lugubrious. It's as if 2 violins had more or less the same appearance, but when you play them one produces a fine tone, while the other is useless.

That crayon has a lot of resonance and tone. I'm tempted to say that it understands what I want it to do that it understands what I want it to do, that it listens intelligently and obeys, while Conte crayon is apathetic and unwilling. Craie de montagne has the true soul of a gypsy; send me some of this marvelous stuff, it it isn't asking too much...

Vincent.

(From the book, Colors, the Story of Dyes and Pigments by Francois Delamare and Bernard Guineau.)

Babery

Also babewynnery. Derived from the Italian babuino (monkey). 14th-c. term for figures drawn in margins as decoration. (Rose Folsum)