Exercise - History of Illustration

Chosen artist E.H. Shepard
Shepard graduated from the Royal Academy Schools. By 1906 he had become a successful illustrator after illustrating editions of Aesop’s Fables, David Copperfield and Tom Brown’s Schooldays.
In 1915 he was called in to the Royal Artillery and in 1916 started sketching the combat zone for the Intelligence Department from his battery position.
He also illustrated for Punch throughout the war.
In 1924 he was commissioned to illustrate a series of poems by A.A. Milne after he was recommended to Milne by another artist at working for Punch. Milne was so impressed by his work that he insisted that Shepard illustrate Winnie the Pooh, Everybody’s Pepys in 1926.

Materials used
Shepard used mostly Pen & Ink creating black and white illustrations, some pieces included watercolour washes. He seems to use some sort of crosshatch technique overlapping his lines more and more to create depth, shape and shadow. This can be seen in picture 1 on the inside of the toads jacket from Wind in The Willows and very clearly on picture 5 for the darkest side of the tree on the left. His lines are very messy and almost seem scattered but they all have their purpose in the illustrations.

Old Fashioned? 
His work doesn't really seem old fashioned although there are some elements that do, for example Christopher Robin’s clothes. There is something modern and familiar over the illustrations and I believe it is because of the materials used, pen and ink and watercolour are still very commonly used today to create illustrations.

Contemporary illustrator Nicolas Marlet
Although not really an illustrator everything he does is a form of illustration so I felt it fitted the requirements anyway. Marlet is a French-American animation artist and character designer. He works for Pixar and is most known for his characters in Kung-fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon. He has a very unique style and his work is stunning.

Materials used
Nico uses Pantone markers, Col-Erase pencils and Gouaché to create his artwork. He has a very unique style and uses textures and a limited colour palette concentrating on using browns, oranges, yellows and greens.