When I was starting out as an art student I was taking an illustration course in Manhattan at Parson's School of Design. The class was taught by Stuart Leeds, a well established cartoonist for The New Yorker. One day while skimming through my sketchbook, Mr. Leeds commented that he really liked my studies and gave me the assignment of getting some art supplies and making a proper pen and ink drawing from one of my sketchbook doodles. Now, I didn't want to do pen and ink, this was 1991 and I wanted to be Keith Parkinson, but I was a dutiful student and went to the Pearl Paint on 14th St. (RIP) and bought a bottle of Higgins ink, a crow quill pen and some ledger paper and took them home. I ended up producing three pen and ink drawings. I enjoyed the process, but quickly returned to my painting and left the drawings in a box. A few months later when I was building my first portfolio, it was a little thin, so I padded the back with the three pen and ink drawings, and mailed them out. About a month later I received a letter (yes, a letter). From the art director at White Wolf, who said he loved the pen and ink drawings and commissioned me to do 27 more just like it for Ars Magica. That was my first job.
October marks the return of Inktober™ in which artists are encouraged to produce and share an ink drawing every day of the month. I've decided to partake this year, and I have been enjoying seeing all the amazing work coming out of the project and having a lot of fun doing them myself, even if I am woefully rusty. I thought this would be a perfect chance to do a quick survey of the history of ink illustration and art.
•Western Ink Tradition
Ink and art go back a long way. It could be argued that drawing with ink goes back to the Egyptians or Romans, but the beginning of Pen and Ink as we would recognize it is medieval. The combination of paper and ink with quill becomes common in the monastic scriptoriums of the middle ages.
Utrecht Pslater 9th C.
The Renaissance sees a flowering of ink drawing as modern artists begin to produce sketchbooks and studies for engravings. The increasingly inexpensive medium of ink, paper and quill makes ink sketching very popular among artists for the next several hundred years, giving artists the versatility to draw and paint with the same material, even use it like watercolor, perfect for quick plain aire or figure studies.
Rembrandt
Tiepolo
Michelangelo
A. Durer
•Asian Ink Tradition
Nowhere in the world has ink held a more exalted place in art than in Asia. China and Japan have a millennia old history of both writing and painting with ink, producing some of the most beautiful and elegant ink works in the world. Much of this Sumi-e tradition was unknown by Western artists until Japan and China were opened up to trade in the 19th century, and ink scroll paintings and calligraphy were exported to the west where they influenced a generation of artists including the Impressionists and Expressionists.
T. Lautrec
V. Van Gogh
E. Schiele
•Golden Age Ink Tradition:
Pen and Ink drawing remained a sketching medium for the first few centuries until the invention of photography and industrial printing in the late 19th century. The ability to quickly and inexpensively reproduce art was perfect for the new daily newspapers, comics, pulp novels, catalogs, magazines and children's books that were churning off the factory printing presses by the millions at the turn of the 20th century. This was the first age of providing daily content and the lavishly illustrated magazines and books were big business. What had been a sketch tool a generation before was now the workhorse of the Golden Age of Illustration. Artwork done by freelance illustrators and staff artists in the publishing houses in NYC and London could be created and reproduced almost immediately creating a high demand for illustrators, forming The Society of Illustrators in 1901.
H. Pyle
A. Rackham
E.A. Abbey
A. Beardsley
F. Booth
G. Grant
W. Crane and W. Morris
R. Kent 1930
M. Flagg
After WWII we see the apex of Ink art with comics and children's books becoming popular with the Baby Boom generation combined with better reproduction techniques in premium magazines. As color photography becomes more common in periodicals and Modernism is the trending fashion, ink illustration adopts a more stylized aesthetic for cartoons, editorials, fantasy and comics illustration during the the Silver Age and through the 1990s.
A. Hirschfeld
E. Gorey
M. Sendak The Hobbit 1967
Moebius
V. Finlay
Beatles Revolver 1966 Voormann
B. Wrightson Frankenstein 1983
Cy Twombly
D. Trampier D&D 1977
•Post Modern Ink and the Future
Beginning in the 1990s most content became increasingly produced in full digital color using new software like Photoshop combined with inexpensive 4 color printing options and the rise of the internet, making b&w illustration less in demand for a mass market. Today, working in ink is mostly an artistic choice for artists who want their work to possess a graphic quality that has a long artistic heritage. Over the past decade ink has had a resurgence in popularity, along with other traditional mediums, perhaps as a response against digital art combined with a rising interest in traditional crafts.
Ink is a completely honest art form. Unlike other mediums there is no over-painting, erasing and absolutely no undo or revert option. What you see is every mark the artist made warts and all. As an artist it builds confidence because it forces you to commit to an efficiency of line and a limit of mark making. There is no hiding your drafting skills when every mark you make is indelibly inscribed. In an age of apps, filters and effects, that is a very appealing quality.
It is inspiring to see ink being appreciated by artists and fans. Hopefully through continued interest in this ancient medium ink has as rich a future as it does a past.
J. Sacco "The Great War" 2013
The House in the Night B. Krommes 2008 Caldecott Medal 2009
Spiderwick Chronicles. DiTerlizzi 2003
Y. Amano
T. Lockwood Summer Dragon 2017
This was only a brief selection of work and a broad overview, without even touching on comic book art, I hope you will go and explore more artists and styles and share your favorite artists with the Muddy Colors community in the comments section!
Looked at one way, Renaissance painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo's "The Vegetable Gardener" (1587-1590) looks like a black bowl overflowing with root vegetables, greens, and one huge onion.
But flipped, the painting become something else entirely. The onion has become a plump cheek, while the huge parsnip is a bulbous nose. The bowl is now a hat, perched on what is now obviously a smiling face.
Many of Arcimboldo's peers in the 16th century were painting portraits or still lifes, but Arcimboldo had the bright idea of combining the two, creating an instantly recognizable style that inspired 20th century Surrealists.
Nothing about Arcimboldo's early career as a stained glass and fresco designer suggested that he'd develop this distinctive style. It wasn't until he landed a cushy post as court portraitist to Emperor Maximilian II of the Holy Roman Empire in 1562 that he started painting, along with typical portraits of court members, his series of composite faces. Often set against pitch-black backgrounds, each composite face is made of animals, objects, or, most famously, food.
His royal patrons had a taste for the odd and unusual. Emperor Maximilian II and his son Rudolf II were reportedly delighted by Arcimboldo's style. They kept him busy with commissions, including paintings and drawings that documented the imperial family's collection of artistic works and natural curiosities. These Wunderkammers—compilations of oddities owned by the royal and rich—were the predecessors to museums, and they often focused on novel objects (taxidermied animals, preserved plants, cultural artifacts) brought back by European explorers. Organizing and displaying wild and wonderful objects not only fed the Renaissance appetite for the esoteric, but also exerted power over and made sense of a changing world.
Undoubtedly influenced by the imperial collections, many of Arcimboldo's food faces featured ingredients from the Americas. His 1563 series of paintings depicts the four seasons as male figures, from young Spring to geriatric Winter, using seasonal produce. Along with Spring's literally rosy cheeks and and Winter's lemons, newer additions to Europe's gardens appear. Summer's ear is an an ear of corn, while Autumn's head is a white pumpkin. Both were relatively recent arrivals from the Americas.
Arcimboldo's whimsical faces sometimes had real-world models, the most famous example being his 1590 painting of Rudolf as Vertumnus, the Roman god of the four seasons. Arcimboldo painted figures made of books, wine-making supplies, and, most eerily, meat. In a style similar to "The Vegetable Gardener," "The Cook" (1570) is a reversible painting. When displayed on one end, it's a haphazard pile of roasted piglet and chicken. Flipped, it's a grotesque face, with a small bird as a deformed-looking nose and a pig's tail as a curl of hair. The silver serving platter becomes a broad hat, decorated with greens and a slice of lemon. At one recent exhibition of Arcimboldo's work, mirrors installed beneath the painting showed visitors the flipped version.
Though Arcimboldo was renowned during his life, his fame didn't last long after his death in 1593. But his work gained prominence in the early 20th century, as his flair for the surreal and allegorical inspired a generation of artists, including Man Ray and Salvador Dalí.
Like the plants he portrayed, a long dormancy didn't mean Arcimboldo's whimsical style of painting was dead. It just wasn't yet back in season.
These marvelous illustrations were published in 1962 in a book that included collected stories about riders and horses. Finding a vintage book with Busch drawings is always such a pleasure. His work is powerful an inventive when it comes to composition. So inspirational!!
Flemish Renaissance painter Marten van Valckenborch painted a number of complex compositions depicting the Biblical story of the building of the Tower of Babel (of which you can find some other examples here and here).
I've found this one in particular to be striking in its dark, sombre tones, set against a light but clouded sky and framed by a cradle of dark foreground elements.
The repetition of forms and change in size of the elements as the tower ascends has a fascinatingly recursive feel to it.
It's interesting to compare Van Vlakenborch's interpretations to that of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, which was undoubtedly a primary influence on them, and on similar takes on the subject by other artists.
The story of the Tower of Babel is a story of hubris, a term we should all have in our awareness as we watch current events unfold.
Last year, Saturday Night Live introduced us to David S. Pumpkins, a dancing man in a jack-o-lantern suit who, along with two skeletons, inexplicably shows up on floor after floor of a haunted elevator. He is, he tells the bemused couple seeking Halloween frights, his own thing. "And the skeletons?" they ask in reply. "Part of it!" shout the skeletons. David S. Pumpkins might indeed be his own thing, but whether they knew it or not, the Saturday Night Live writers who came up with those dancing skeletons were tapping into an image with a very long history: the Danse Macabre, a medieval allegory about the inevitability of death.
In the Danse Macabre, or Dance of Death, skeletons escort living humans to their graves in a lively waltz. Kings, knights, and commoners alike join in, conveying that regardless of status, wealth, or accomplishments in life, death comes for everyone. At a time when outbreaks of the Black Death and seemingly endless battles between France and England in the Hundred Years' War left thousands of people dead, macabre images like the Dance of Death were a way to confront the ever-present prospect of mortality.
Though a few earlier examples exist in literature, the first known visual Dance of Death comes from around 1424. It was a large fresco painted in the open arcade of the charnel house in Paris's Cemetery of the Holy Innocents. Stretched across a long section of wall and visible from the open courtyard of the cemetery, the fresco depicted human figures (all male) accompanied by cavorting skeletons in a long procession. A verse inscribed on the wall below each of the living figures explained the person's station in life, arranged in order of social status from pope and emperor to shepherd and farmer. Clothing and accessories, like the pope's cross-shaped staff and robes, or the farmer's hoe and simple tunic, also helped identify each person.
Located in a busy part of Paris near the main markets, the cemetery wouldn't have been a quiet, peaceful place of repose like the burial grounds we're used to today, nor would it have been frequented only by members of the clergy. Instead, it was a public space used for gatherings and celebrations attended by all sorts of different people. These cemetery visitors, on seeing the Dance of Death, would certainly have been reminded of their own impending doom, but would also have likely appreciated the image for its humorous and satirical aspects as well. The grinning, dancing skeletons mocked the living by poking fun at their dismay and, for those in positions of power, by making light of their high status. Enjoy it now, the skeletons implied, because it's not going to last.
Inspired by the fresco in Paris, more depictions of the Dance of Death popped up over the course of the 1400s. According to the art historian Elina Gertsman, the imagery first spread throughout France and then to England, Germany, Switzerland, and parts of Italy and eastern Europe. Though some of these frescos, murals, and mosaics survive to the present day, many others have been lost and are now only known through archival references.
In Paris, neither the charnel house nor the cemetery still exists. (The charnel house was demolished in 1669 to widen a nearby street and the cemetery was closed in the 1780s due to overcrowding.) But the fresco lives on as a set of woodcuts created by printer Guyot Marchant in 1485. Marchant's manuscript replicates each figure in the procession as well as the accompanying verses. After the prints proved popular he went on to make several more editions, including the Danse Macabre des Femmes, a version including women, and an expanded version with ten new characters not found in the original fresco.
As the subject's popularity continued into the early 1500s, other artists and printers made their own versions of the Dance of Death. The best known of these is a series created by artist Hans Holbein the Younger from 1523 to 1526, first sold as individual woodcuts and then published in book form in 1538. Holbein's series begins with the very first appearance of Death, after Eve ate the apple and humanity got kicked out of the Garden of Eden, and ends with Death's final bow at the Last Judgment, when everyone who has ever died reappears again to be sentenced to eternity in heaven or hell.
In between, Holbein shows how Death can strike at any moment, regardless of social status or earthly power. His depictions of the different characters meeting their doom are more pointed than Marchant's versions. Instead of dancing, the skeletons in this Dance of Death mete out justice, going after their victims in situations that highlight suggested hypocrisies and immorality. A nun, for example, kneels in prayer but looks over her shoulder at her lover while Death snuffs out the candle behind her. And in many of the scenes, peasants and beggars are ignored by the bishops, judges, or kings who are supposed to protect and care for them. Holbein explicitly addresses the peasant's dismal treatment at the hands of his social superiors in the image of his final character, an elderly farmer kindly helped along by a skeleton. Unlike the rich and powerful, for whom Death represents a loss of status and wealth, the peasant finds relief in dying after a life of hard labor and exploitation.
Holbein's version of the Dance of Death proved so popular that by the time he died in 1543, dozens of pirated editions were circulating in addition to the official printings. Although the large, public murals, carvings, and frescos which originally depicted the Dance of Death went mostly out of fashion after the 1500s, Holbein's prints have remained well-known until the present day. Artists continued to find inspiration in the Dance of Death theme over the next few centuries, changing styles and formats to suit their times.
From 1814 to 1816, the English artist Thomas Rowlandson published The English Dance of Death, a series of satirical cartoons in which stereotypical caricatures of English men and women are teased by skeletons with fittingly satirical and cruel fates. A character labeled "The Glutton" dies of overeating, an apothecary is poisoned with his own medicine, and reckless young men driving too fast overturn their carriages. Like the fresco and Marchant's versions, the cartoons were accompanied by verses, written by the comic poet William Combe under the pen name "Doctor Syntax."
In 1861, French artist James Tissot explored the subject in a painting exhibited at the Salon in Paris, depicting a line of human dancers with skeletons at the head and tail end of the procession. At the front, two musicians flank the cadaver, who looks directly out of the painting towards us, the viewers. At the end, a shrouded skeleton carries a coffin, hourglass, and scythe. The dancers, oblivious both to the specters around them and the open graves in the rocks near their feet, frolic merrily through the landscape.
Almost seven decades later, in 1929, even Walt Disney crafted his own adaptation of the allegory with "The Skeleton Dance," an animated short in which skeletons rise from their graves and dance to a lively foxtrot. At times, the music is played on instruments made from their own bones. Though no humans are danced to their graves in this cartoon, the expressive skeletons wouldn't look out of place in earlier Dances of Death. Other Halloween staples—black cats, owls, tombstones, and bats—add to the spooky mood.
Though the Dance of Death isn't, strictly speaking, associated with Halloween, the macabre imagery resonates with the holiday's connections between life and death. Skeletons, skulls, and corpses reminiscent of those grim medieval dancers often show up in haunted houses, as yard decorations, and as costumes. Sometimes grisly, sometimes cartoonish, today's dancing skeletons are far removed from their predecessors in the Danse Macabre. But, as sanitized and commercialized as Halloween can be, it's still a holiday that brings a greater awareness of death and forces us to confront our own mortality, even if the frights all vanish when November 1st rolls around.
At the end of the Saturday Night Live sketch, David S. Pumpkins' skeletons appear by themselves, still dancing even without their main character. When they finish, Pumpkins himself, from behind the perplexed couple asks, "Any questions?" They scream, finally getting the scare they wanted when they got on the haunted elevator. Once the terror subsides and their hearts stop racing, they'll go about their day, able to ignore the realities of death far more easily than the citizens of Paris could back in the 1400s.
But even after David S. Pumpkins and his skeletons are long gone, there will be another Halloween, reminding us year after year that no matter what, death's still waiting.
