Watercolour rendering of portraits

Applying non-photorealistic rendering techniques to stylise portraits needs to be done with care, as facial artifacts are particularly disagreeable. This paper describes a technique for watercolour rendering that uses a facial model to preserve distinctive facial characteristics and reduce unpleasing distortions of the face, while maintaining abstraction and stylisation of the overall image, employing stylistic elements of watercolour such as edge darkening, wobbling, glazing and diffusion

Const tegen conste: drawings as independent artworks in the Southern Netherlands

This essay deals with independent drawings in the Southern Netherlands, a particular type of artwork made in its own right, which is not easy to define. The concept of independent drawings, historically referred to as ‘autonomous drawings’, was defined by Bernhard Degenhart in 1950 in the context of Late-Medieval drawings that were not ‘purpose bound’

Constituent Parts: Recent Portraiture in Canadian Military Art

Not common within the art historical record of the Canadian Military, the work of a number of visual artists participating in the Canadian Forces Artists Program demonstrates a keen and growing interest in portraiture. In this article, the work of Gertrude Kearns, Mary Kavanagh, and Erin Riley will be highlighted to illustrate the recent trend. Their work is contrasted with one another as well as with portraiture created by Canada’s war artists in the First and Second World Wars to bring to light the tensions of representation inherent in military portraiture. It will be shown that shifting perceptions found in the wider employment of portraiture and freedom given to participants in the Canadian Forces most recent official art program have encouraged depictions of members at all levels of the Canadian Forces

Art in the Trenches: Unofficial Art of the First World War

Abstract: Scholarship in recent decades focusing on soldier experiences of the First World War have largely ignored soldier-produced artworks as access points into the experience of modern warfare. Though there has been work on official war artists and post-war artworks of soldiers turned artists, artwork produced during service in a non-official capacity has only featured in art history, where the artwork and artists feature as subjects, rather than as sources for understanding their experiences that contextualize their work. This paper makes a historiographical case for exploring this source-base, while also analyzing several selected works from unofficial First World War artists