Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Golden-Age of Pen and Ink

Jim Vadeboncoeur is a publisher and collector of classic pen and ink artwork. He has published several editions of of the pen-and-ink collection called ImageS, which brings together some of the finest black and white artwork from Golden Age of illustration.

The fifth edition of “ImageS” has just been released. It includes work by Frank Pape (above), Daniel Vierge, Elizabeth Shippen Green and many others.

Producing these collections requires a lot of careful restoration work. Mr. Vadeboncoeur often begins with faded, yellowed, and foxed reproductions. He digitally strengthens faded lines, erases brown spots, fixes rips and tears, and otherwise brings the artwork back to the way it looked when it rolled off the pen.

It’s becoming a rather rare delight these days to see good pen-and-ink illustration.

Slide show
Home page of ImageS

5 comments:

Don Cox said...

Jim's "Images" series are expensive but of superb quality. They are worth every cent, in my opinion.

Unknown said...

Thanks for reminding me to order this! I've learned more from these publications about drawing then I did from 4 years of art school. Essential stuff.

Anonymous said...

Good morning! Allow me to share with you a link: www.coppervale.livejournal.com

It's James A. Owen's blog. James, like you, is an illustrator/author. He uses this very technique for his illustrations, and the results are amazing. Right now he is in a run of posting art for his upcoming book, the fifth in the Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, which is an amazing fantasy series, which I also recommend you to check out.

James, like you, is quite the student, and his books are also filled with details that can only come from a deep knowledge of the topics one is addressing. I believe you'll enjoy his work, so I hope you can take a look.

Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. said...

Thanks for the kind words, Jim. It's satisfying when folks like you get excited about my efforts. One aspect of the reproduction that isn't immediately obvious is that most of the pictures are enlarged by 50% in order to provide more detail. The fact that no one notices is extremely pleasing to me. Peace, Jim (|:{>

Anonymous said...

I can never draw a decent picture with pen. I always manage to mess up.