Sunday, November 28, 2010

Stymied

“Stymied: A Cornish Sketching Tragedy” by Ernest H. Shepard in 1925.



Shepard, better known for his Winnie the Pooh illustrations, was also a frequent contributor to the British humor magazine Punch.


There’s a lot of knowledge and experience behind those apparently scribbly lines.
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Previous GJ Post about Shepard’s training in the Royal Academy.
From “Fun and Fantasy,” Drawings from Punch, Methuen & Co. London, 1927.
For a good illustrated bio, see The Work of E H Shepard, by Knox, 1980.
Thanks, Dave!

7 comments:

  1. Oh, I can't tell you how many times I've been in this situation while at art school.

    For kicks and giggles, I usually just drew the other person in as well.

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  2. Seeing as how pen-and-ink is my primary medium, I have to admire this image. I like how a lot of the traditional pen-and-ink artists worked. You should also check out the work of Aubrey Beardsley, Rockwell Kent, and Charles Dana Gibson. And let's not forget the vintage comic strip artists like Bud Fisher, Elzie Segar, and George Herriman.

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  3. My first thought on seeing "Stymied" was of artist “F. Hopkinson Smith” and his book “A White Umbrella in Mexico”. This has nothing to do with the style but how I picture the character.

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  4. Wonderful stuff. Shepard is underappreciated, particularly as the Winnie the Pooh books have become pushed aside in favor of the Disneyized version over the years.

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  5. -aslo known for his wind and willows - which i think is more popular in england..

    He was awarded a cross for bravery during WWI and fought in the trenches - is purported to have done sketches there that would be somthing to see.

    BTW james, loving color and light- great reference, i am curious, you list flake of old pigments not recommended - do you paint exclusively with titaninum and zinc? i have tried, would love to but can't seem to get the handling properties of flake(someday, a post on white :)

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  6. ..and fun fact, his daughter, Mary Shepard, illustrated the original Mary Poppins books.

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  7. Shepard's two autobiographical books, "Drawn from Memory" and "Drawn from Life" are worth reading and full of very fine drawings.

    His delicate line work is hard to reproduce and some books spoil it by using rough surface paper, which breaks up the image.

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