Rapunzel, Kay Nielsen, from www.artpassions.net"…It was now three mornings since they had left their father’s house. They began to walk again, but they always came deeper into the forest, and if help did not come soon, they must die of hunger and weariness. When it was mid-day, they saw a beautiful snow-white bird sitting on a bough, which sang so delightfully that they stood still and listened to it. And when its song was over, it spread its wings and flew away before them, and they followed it until they reached a little house, on the roof of which it alighted; and when they approached the little house they saw that it was built of bread and covered with cakes, but that the windows were of clear sugar. “We will set to work on that,” said Hansel, “and have a good meal. I will eat a bit of the roof, and you Gretel, can eat some of the window, it will taste sweet.” Hansel reached up above, and broke off a little of the roof to try how it tasted, and Gretel leant against the window and nibbled at the panes.
From Grimm’s Hansel and Gretel
More on Kay Nielsen and his Hansel and Gretel (1925). I was cruising around and found that I could download a pdf (for free from Logos Books in their Public Domain Hour offering). There are really nice plates and offerings from Art Passions to explore Nielsens color and extrordinary black and white line work. Wow. Gives this gal a kick in the booty to keep going, keep going, keep going. Love how patterned this Rapunzel image is...a veritable tapestry of pattern, tone and imagery. Nielsen really partied with his work. He just keeps embellishing and designing with the black and white, white and black. And he uses color to pop the story out of his work. Nielsen's work portrays a man who leapt out of bed every morning to grab his brush and live in his work and world of decorative illustration. What joy. What happiness.
To think that he died in poverty is amazing. His influence through his fresh and exhuberant work continues today.
Golden Age Comic Book Stories>>
Childscapes.com>> Nielsen books for purchase>>
Today its packing and wrapping things up for our field trip to Amherst tomorrow. Alex has dinner to take to an indoor track meet potluck. We have a small present to put together for Kitty's hostess. Money for Alex for his student United Nations trip Friday/Saturday. So lots of mom work along with the general work for clients. Busy but not painfully so.
Have been interested in a job that keeps coming back and forth to redesign an iPhone app that a group in Canada is putting together. So many of the developers present themselves as the whole shooting match from architecture to creative to coding to implementation. They miss the creative bit. So, I get that as a bit of an offline/ ping pong way of driving consistency. What is growing out of this (as this is the second one we have touched for the same client) is a corporate standard, a consistent palette and type treatment, and a vocabulary for handling lists/charts/ graphics. But it's zero to sixty and then wait, then zero to sixty and then wait. But its making me think which is rare for this wooden head.
Got some creative work done on GlassLab for the Museum along with a "brand" for the up and coming Medieval Show at the Museum of Glass.
More later>>