Jacques Villon

Young Girl, Back Turned (looking for French title), 1908, via MoMA.

Was in Europe this past summer (July and August 2010) and I had the great fortune of visiting many museums, one of which was the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Having not had much exposure to Van Gogh beforehand, I was expecting to develop an understanding and hopefully a preference for Van Gogh’s works after this visit. Unfortunately, I did not develop a liking for his work whatsoever, and the exhibits at the museum that actually fascinated me had nothing to do with Van Gogh.

One such exhibit was Jacques Villon’s temporary exhibition from the Rijksmuseum (also located in Amsterdam).

Jacques Villon, according to many biographies of him, is best known for his cubist work. However, the exhibit I saw focused on his early work as an illustrator who was influenced by Art Nouveau at the time, and I immediately liked what I saw. I can’t recall all the best work that I’ve seen from the museum (no photos were allowed and I was running out of time and couldn’t jot down the titles), but I was very, very taken by the wispy lines and the watery colours. I was also lucky to have seen the actual metal plate that produced Le Potin (not 100% sure, just sure that it was one that contained multiple well-dressed women), and it was quite awesome.

There were also a few books on display for which there were illustrations by Villon. Would’ve liked to flip through them, but alas. Tried to look for a book or some sort of souvenir related to Villon’s works at the Van Gogh gift shop, but there were none. Very disappointing, but should’ve expected as much because it was a temporary exhibit. Still, would be great to get a book on him immediately after!

Yeah, really can’t get enough of Villon’s prints and illustrations, they’re really very good. Here are some of my favourites:
- La Femmeau Chien Colley, 1905
- La Parisienne, 1902, La Parisienne, 1904
- Devant un Guignol, 1909
- La Chasse aux Mouettes,1904 (Incredible blue colour)

The Museum of Modern Art Database: http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=6165
Artfact: http://www.artfact.com/artist/villon-jacques-l2wcsdg6zl
de Young Collections: http://deyoung.famsf.org/search-collections
R. S. Johnson Fine Art: http://www.rsjohnsonfineart.com/villon.htm

Mary Cassatt

Title: Autumn (Profile of Lydia)

Might as well start profiling traditional artists and painters too because I’ve been exposed to many of them as of late and do not want to forget their names. They’re really very awesome, seriously. Well, I don’t really have to profile them myself since there are always wiki articles, but hey, writing about them builds retention! I hope!

Discovered Mary Cassatt today as a friend linked me to the image shown above. Cassatt is an American female painter who worked mainly in France and was a friend of Edgar Degas, whom I also like very much. She is part of the Impressionism movement.

I was very taken with the work above because of the uniqueness of the colours and brush strokes. Really reminded me of compressed wood chips in construction material, and was amazing that an arrangement of this sort can be used to construct an immediately discernible shape. I also very much like the coordination of colours and the way the face stands out. Really good shading, too, those blue hues, geez! Would love to see this in person so I can know what its true colours are like (digital representations seem to have varying degrees of hues.) It seems to be housed in the Petit Palais in Paris right now. Will pay a visit there if I get the chance.

Another work that I liked very much was At The Theatre. Brilliant use of those shades for colouring, extremely beautiful and well-coordinated! Really can’t get enough of artists and painters using blue and/or purple for shadows, the just give off such a soft touch. Also, I quite like the face, I could keep looking at it forever and it would still seem difficult to decipher. Geez, such depth!

redjuice

Long overdue coverage on the incredible redjuice (also known as しる, which he says is equivalent to the Mike of Michael, because juice in Japanese is “shiru”.), remembered because of icie’s lovely coverage of the Summer 09 issue of Gelatin, in which redjuice participated in.

Anyways, redjuice is touted as one of the new generation of artists who have made their name from contribution to popular internet sites like Pixiv and Nicovideo, and he reached widespread recognition due to his work with supercell and livetune, providing artwork for both popular Vocaloid composers. (Notable songs include World is Mine and Last Night, Good Night, respectively.)

However, what sets redjuice apart from other illustrators (other than his artwork style), is that he is not ONLY an illustrator, but is also capable of really high quality web design (he designed his own website as well as supercell’s 1st album home page) and really knows how to interact with the English community as well, creating a page on Deviantart and filling out his profile in English.

As for his drawing style, it’s extremely distinctive (unless he is trying out a completely different style), and some notable features include thin lines, narrow eyes, and relatively “cool” colours. Most of his original stuff also has a techy kind of theme where he enhances the feeling even more with metallic backgrounds and renders created in AfterEffects and lots of mechanical components.

Lastly, by visiting a few of his streams, I have concluded that he has really varied/good taste in music, and he also has pretty nice voice…A++++!

Site: http://redjuicegraphics.com/
Pixiv: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=3446
Deviantart: http://redjuice999.deviantart.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/shiru
Ustream channel: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/shirumamire
Old website: http://redjuicegraphics.com/2007archives/

Archlich / Licheus

Been a while since I did an artist focus…Anyways, Archlich/Licheus is another one of my absolute favourites, up there with the professionals, although Archlich is currently an art student and not yet a professional. He might as well be, though. Some other details is that he is 20 years old and is a Chinese-Canadian. He has done quite a few commissions for Deviantart users and for various Chinese Touhou doujins.

What I like most about his style is how uninhibited and dynamic everything is. Usually anime-style art artists use line art and colour inside them, but Archlich seems to like making a draft then colouring over it so everything melds together and there are little to no lines to be seen in the final product, which is EXTREMELY effective since his pictures always evoke a sense of movement and for myself, emotion. Use of colour as highlights are also incredible. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been staring at every stroke in his pictures. Brush strokes, lighting, composition, theme, Archlich’s art is seriously, to me, the pinnacle of anime-style art, although I do think that it’s really blurring the lines between “anime-style” and “regular” art.

Website: http://malus.cc/ (under construction, top image only)
Pixiv: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=19407
Deviantart: http://licheus.deviantart.com/

yocky

I am now obsessed with posting. Anyways, yocky is probably also one of my favourites, but really, I love all the artists I post about. They are all so incredible I can’t rationally pick favourites and stick with them.

yocky (pronounced as よっき, and real name is いしだゆきひろ) does mainly card illustrations of the fantasy genre for series such as The Key of Avalon 2 (アヴァロンの鍵弐) and Duel masters, but lately has delved into doing character designs for video games such as Deltora Quest and Populous DS. He mostly specialized in drawing monsters or other big fantasy things, but lately he’s been drawing a lot of top-notch portraits and characters.

His style is really easy to recognize because all of his drawings are so uniquely intricate, and there’s always a really high degree of realism in them, despite the fantasy-type style. Sometimes I think that they’ll come to life or something. His colouring is really effective too. There are usually a lot of different colours in them, but they all seem to blend in somehow, and they’re rarely overdone, if ever. I don’t know, but something about his illustrations move me so much that I feel like crying when I look at them, especially the picture in this post and this picture. I really could just stare at one of his sketches forever. Sorry for my inability to articulate just what his art is like, but it’s really hard to describe.

It pains me that even though 590,000+ hits on his website, he doesn’t really seem to be talked about anywhere. I really do believe that he deserves more attention (and more artbooks please), because my goodness he is talented.

Site: http://www.yocky.biz/
Pixiv: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=252221

Is it just me or are these posts getting longer? Sorry ;A;