SHAE DETAR

Lately I've been admiring the art work and fashion photography of Shae DeTar.

Soft and dreamy, dear I say a bit hipster and also with a touch if pre raphaelite- as well as some Klimt influences in some pieces.

All images from shaedetar.com

FANTASIA

Print of the day: Fantasia by Erté.

Erté is one of my favorite illustrators, you may remember; I've written about him before.

THE MASTERFUL LINE OF GRUAU

I'm continuing on my very un-chronological and no-logic-whatsoever series of featuring my favorite fashion illustrators. (Previously mentioned are Erté and Ohgushi.)

Today it's time for perhaps the greatest of them all; Renée Gruau!

I've always admired the 'less is more' when it comes to illustration (that is, if you know your way around the paper and pencil) and Gruau is a true master in the use of negative space, somewhat continuing the japonisme-inspired style of Touluse-Lautrec. Gruau was also a master with his use of color and patterns, but most of all, his trademark line - strong and simple but total perfection.

RenéeGruau (1909-2004) was a French-Italian artist and illustrator who worked mainly in Europe but also in New York. He did numerous high style magazine covers, ads and haute couture illustrations for such as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Flair, Balenciaga, Givenchy, Dior... He also did posters for The Moulin Rouge and Lido for years. At some point he even did some fashion design himself.

Gruau worked with Dior from the fifties until the late eighties, even at times when fashion photography and digital art had already taken over. Images above from the sixtes.



Obviously an inspiration for the iPod ads?


Great work of pattern and space from the sixties.



I had a hard time picking out images for this post leaving a lot unshown here, so be a darling and go google up images by Gruau! Do it! Now!

OH, OHGUSHI

I've always admired the ones who are good with taking advantage of the empty space of the paper. Somethimes less is more. Drawing just and only the right strokes is not something everyone is capable of doing.

Japanses artist Ohgushi is a master in this field. He paints in rolls and sweeps of sumi ink on traditional Japanese paper. His works are mostly considered contemporary bijinga (which means "pictures of beautiful women"). And he does some of them amazingly quickly, you can view some live-painting clips of him on youtube.

Takeshi Ohgushi was born in 1977 and is self taught. He has made lots of magazine editorials and covers, advertising and collaborated with fashion houses.









For more eye-candy, visit his portfolio:
www.ohgushi.jp

(...but otherwise. The whole thing with drawings of beautiful women. Sometimes it annoys me. Don't get me wrong, I think works like Ohgushis are wonderful. I think women in art are beautiful, as the female is generally considered the more beautiful sex. But the whole theme is so used somehow. Etsy for example is full of adorable prints of pretty girls with flowers and feathers and all. I'm not saying there's anyting wrong with it, it just bores me out a bit. Why do we find it so appealing? And why is it that drawings/paintings of beautiful men are mostly of a more erotic kind and almost only gay. -Ok, linking to art by Tom of Finland may be an example more on the heavier side, but really, try googling "pictures of beautiful women" - and "pictures of beautiful men" and see what happens.

Oh well, I get the point though -I totally love Mucha, but I guess his work just wouldn't be the same if they featured men with, eh, flowing beards and long locks or so...)

ART DECO!

Symphony in black

I'm going to go through some fashion illustrators and graphic designers I like, without any cronologichal order. First up is Erté. He's the man when it comes to Art Deco poster design!

Erté was born in Russia in 1892, but lived and worked in France. His actual name was Romain de Tertoff, he took his artist pseudo from the french pronounciation of his initials R.T.

Erté's style defines graphic design of the art deco area. He did several covers for Harpesr's Bazaar and numerous posters. But he also did fashion- and costume design, mostly for film and theatre, and sculptures. I admire his detailed serigraphs but most fond I'm of his clean, rather abstract covers from the thirties.

Some of his cover designs:




Fashion:


Serigraphs:




Erté was active until his death in 1990, and some of his most famous works (like "symphony in black" above)are from as late as the eighties, when art deco had a revival.

So do me a favour and go picture-google him, ok! Or then look at his works at erte.com or erte.ru.
(BTW, why are so many webpages featuring artist so old-school internet ugly and bad to navigate in?!!)