Pantone Fashion Color Report

Spring 2015

Fashion Drawings

From the Victoria and Albert Museum

American Beauties Online Exhibition at the Library of Congress

American Beauties Online Exhibition at the Library of Congress

My favorite are the unique "Fadeaway Girl"

Then from the American Art Archives
Coles Phillips and the Fade Away Lady
By Norm Platonic

Illustrated Letters

"Often the expression of joy or affection, illustrated letters represent an irrepressible urge to picture language. They are evidence of the writer's use of words and images to amplify the form and effect of a message. These are drawn entirely from the collections of the Archives of American Art, encompassing exuberant thank you notes, winsome love letters, lively reports of current events, graphic instructions and other personalized communiqués from the early nineteenth century through the 1980s, in each sender's distinctive style."
Visit Getting the Picture: Illustrated Letters in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian. Browse by artist or date.
This is the first of several pages by Dale Chihuly

Picasso Lesson: Reduction to Abstract

Reducing an image to it's fewest essential lines has always been a challenge for me.
This Artyfactory article illustrates a progression in thinking.

Pablo Picasso created 'Bull' around the Christmas of 1945. 'Bull' is a suite of eleven lithographs that have become a master class in how to develop an artwork from the academic to the abstract. In this series of images, all pulled from a single stone, Picasso visually dissects the image of a bull to discover its essential presence through a progressive analysis of its form. Each plate is a successive stage in an investigation to find the absolute 'spirit' of the beast.
From this

To this

Graffiti

This post is for Kim whose son is interested in graffiti art. My concern is the ability to practice the art without getting arrested.
Neatorama has an interesting post about Paul Curtis who creates his art by cleaning the surfaces. There is also a link to an NPR interview.

Then there's this Flickr set by Jef Aerosol who has elevated graffiti on unstretched canvas into important pochoirs.

EBSQ Self Representing Artists Zine

I have been following the coversation on Dabbled about making Shrinky Dinks from plastic in your recycle bin (found via CraftyPod). That thought led to this tutorial for Making Jewelry From Found Objects on the EBSQ Self Representing Artists site.

These charms are recycled plastic shrinky and those long beads are soda can metal inside plastic tubing.
Then I realize that the entire site is chock full of interesting information and that I was reading just one article in their monthly Zine. Love it.

Owen Jones 1809-1874

From the University of Wisonsin Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture.
Full facsimiles of The Grammar of Ornament (1856) and Examples of Chinese ornament selected from objects in the South Kensington Museum and other collections (1867).
Jones, an architect and ornamental designer who served as superintendent of works at the Great Exhibition of 1851, was instrumental in the application of chromolithography to book illustration. In his travels as a young man he became fascinated by Eastern forms, and the books he published reproducing these patterns influenced the design of English wallpaper, carpets, and furniture.
The Grammar of Ornament, one of the masterpieces of nineteenth-century color printing, is a systematic presentation of ornamental motifs from the ancient world through the Renaissance. There are several thousand examples; each plate depicts a group with common chronological and geographical origins. The individual plates, lithographed by Francis Bedford, are tied together by a unified color scheme. As the title suggests, Jones intended the work to be used as a practical guide and resource for designers, and the introduction includes a set of principles covering "the arrangement of form and color."
The Grammar of Ornament. 1856

Examples of Chinese ornament selected from objects in the South Kensington Museum and other collections. 1867

The color plates are offered in 4 resolutions. If you want to print them choose the largest page size to save. Look for this tool.