As we continue our journey through the alphabet some of you may have noticed a slight itching in the back of your eyes. Maybe you’ve felt hunger pains, not in your belly, but at the midpoint of your head. That’s where your visual cortex is found and that hunger signals the beginning stages of art addiction. Other symptoms include a compulsive need to discover all the names of teachers and friends of a particular well-known artist, exploding bookcases due to the weight of too many art books, and a deep knowledge of auction houses and their scheduled public viewings. Lastly, hives.
Don’t worry, the addiction is relatively benign and plenty of support groups exist. Just remember, it’s a scavenger hunt which has no list and never ends.
Note: Click on images to see them larger and in much higher quality.
Alberto Pasini
A little known Orientalist painter, the bulk of his canvases are exquisitely detailed and colorful architecture of the Middle East. His paintings have an extraordinary surface quality to them, almost like lacquered jewels. Seeing them on screen does them very little justice.
Herbert Paus
An American illustrator from the latter half of the twentieth century. His simple blocky rendering combined with thick graphic line work produced a truly unique style. It’s almost as if Leyendecker took up wood block printing.
George Pratt
A comic artist and illustrator who’s known for his broad expressionistic painting style. His work on the fully painted graphic novel Enemy Ace, ushered in new sensibilities to the comic medium. He now splits his time between teaching at the Illustration Academy and producing work for solo shows.
Dermot Power
He began his career as a cover artist for the British comic anthology 2000AD, and has since moved on to producing concept art for the film and game industry. He has built both an enviable resume and a distinct graphic style while working on some of the most high profile films in the last decade.
William Pogany
Hungarian Born Pogany worked throughout the Golden Age of illustration primarily as a book illustrator. A chameleon when it came to styles, Pogany is probably best known for his intricate pen and ink drawings. The greatest of which can be found in his four masterpieces of book illustration: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Tannhauser, Parsifal, and Lohengrin.
Howard Pyle
In illustration, all roads lead to Pyle. Meticulous research, dynamic compositions, and a love for storytelling are all found in Pyle’s work, which is timeless in its quality. However, the only thing that might outshine his legacy as an artist is his legacy as a teacher. He taught and influenced icons like N.C. Wyeth, Frank Schoonover, Harvey Dunn, and Jessie Wilcox Smith.
C O L O P H O N
The image header features Cochin, an elegant serif type with a distinctive italic, designed in 1914 by Georges Peignot; and Residenz, a script face by German calligrapher Friedrich Poppl (1977).
We are Kurt Huggins and Zelda Devon. We live in a pocket-sized apartment in Brooklyn where we collect neat, weird things. Our home is abundant with books, old furniture, mismatching tea cups, and a cat named Cipher. We both illustrate stuff for money so we can continue to invent stories, buy shoelaces, watch puppet shows, and eat sandwiches.
