Lines and Colors art blog

Eye Candy for Today: Dean Cornwell untitled illustration

Dean Cornwell untitled illustration
Dean Cornwell untitled illustration (details)

This painting by the fantastic American Illustrator Dean Cornwell is in the collection of the South Dakota Art Museum. The museum doesn’t have a title or source reference for where the painting was used as an illustration (if it was published), but the painting is wonderful nonetheless.

I haven’t see the original, but I’ve taken the liberty here of brightening the image slightly, just on intuition.

I love the visual drama Cornwell has achieved with such a limited and low chroma palette. The painting is full of interesting textures and muted contrasts.

Look at the depth he has created in the successive planes of the foreground figures, the muted color and texture of he stone wall, and the even lower contrast but brighter background of the picket fence and gate.

Notice also, the strength with which the hands of all three people have been drawn and rendered.

Cornwell was a student of Harvey Dunn, who was in turn a student of the great American painter and illustrator Howard Pyle.