Month: December 2022
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Happy Leyendecker Baby New Year 2023!
As I’ve done every New Year’s Eve for the past 17 years, I’ll wish Lines and Colors readers a Happy New Year with one of J. C. Leyendecer’s New Year’s covers for the Saturday Evening Post, in this case marking the arrival of 1923. American illustrator J.C. Leyendecker first represented the new year as a…
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Eye Candy for Today: DeCamp’s Blue Mandarin Coat
The Blue Mandarin Coat (The Blue Kimono), Joseph Rodefer DeCamp, oil on canvas, roughly 43 x37 in (109 x 94 cm); link is to zoomable version on Google Art Project, original is in the High Museum, which also has a zoomable version. There is a somewhat smaller downloadable image on Wikimedia Commons.
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Adoration of the Shepherds, Gerrit van Honthorst
Adoration of the Shepherds, Gerrit (AKA Gerard) van Honthorst; link is to zoomable version on Google Art Project, downloadable file on Wikimedia Commons. I love this kind of nativity scene, in which the painter has represented the infant as the source of light. Special effects! Van Honthorst was noted for his paintings featuring lighting effects…
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A Cavalcade of Santas
Our image of Santa Claus comes primarily from the interpretations of illustrators over time. Here are a few examples. Despite the fact hat Nast had given Santa his physical form and Reginald Marsh dressed him in the red suit with white cuffs, I think it’s J.C. Leyendecker to whom we owe our most complete contemporary…
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A few thoughts on “AI Art”
I will begin as a curmudgeon and state that I think the term “artificial intelligence” is overly generous when applied to the current level of this technology, and would be better reserved for future systems that are more likely to fulfill the expectations created by the term “intelligence”. In an effort to neatly sidestep the…
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Eye Candy for the Winter Solstice: Winter Landscape, Stepan Kolesnikoff
Winter Landscape>, Stepan Kolesnikoff, gouache Another wonderful winter gouache painting by Stepan Kolesnikoff. As far as I have been able to tell, Kolesnikoff was born in Ukraine when it was considered part of the Russian Federation, and after studying and working in Russia for a time, settled in what is now Serbia. Happy Winter Solstice!