Brown Paper Bag Just another WordPress site

Kate Keara Pelen is a woman work­ing in a vari­ety of ways. Instal­la­tion, illus­tra­tion, needle­work, pho­tog­ra­phy, and paint­ing are just part of her port­fo­lio. I first became acquainted with her needle­work, which is what’s fea­tured here.

I am some­one who embroi­ders often, and enjoy look­ing at Kate’s approach to work­ing with thread. It’s non rep­re­sen­ta­tional, and she lay­ers col­ors and tex­tures, mak­ing her cir­cu­lar com­po­si­tions extremely tac­tile. Through these pieces, I’m reminded me of an inter­view I read between artist Alex Ebstein and sophi­a­ja­cob (a Baltimore-based gallery). Alex is an artist who uses yarn as a dom­i­nant mate­r­ial in work, and dis­cusses her choice to use it out of its orig­i­nal con­text. She explains dis­il­lu­sion­ment towards tube paint, stat­ing, “… I like that yarn, a more gen­tle mate­r­ial [com­pared with tube paint], can have a sim­i­lar aggres­sion, but retains this inevitable craft and “low” art con­text for people.”

Look­ing at Kate’s work, I think it’s an inter­est­ing way to exam­ine these pieces. Even though they are in a cir­cu­lar com­po­si­tion (ref­er­enc­ing the embroi­dery hoop), Kate doesn’t have a “tra­di­tional” approach to needle­work, which is often done for sur­face dec­o­ra­tion or sold as a craft kit. Still, based on how we inter­act with thread and yarn in the past, we view these works dif­fer­ently than a painting.

All images via her web­site.

 

If you are on Tum­blr and enjoy illus­tra­tion, chances are you might be fol­low­ing Mallory’s Illus­trated Ladies.  It’s how I found the illus­tra­tions of Marina Muun.

Her beau­ti­ful, elon­gated forms have a bit of mys­ti­cism behind them; the way she nat­u­rally draws lends itself well to this — an exam­ple being the illus­tra­tion of smoke in a bot­tle. The flow­ing shapes trans­late to ele­gant forms as well smoke and mirrors.

All images via her Tum­blr. Have I men­tioned before that I love it when artists and illus­tra­tors that have a Tum­blr? Make it so easy to keep up with their work… hope­fully the acqui­si­tion by Yahoo won’t screw any­thing up too badly.

These draw­ings by Will Laren are hilar­i­ous. They appeal to the part of me that enjoys satire and hat­ing on things, and gen­eral subversiveness.

Will is an artist and illus­tra­tor who lives in Philadel­phia. He is a part of space1026, a cre­ative com­mu­nity that houses artist stu­dios and a gallery.

All images via his Flickr. Like his draw­ings on Face­book. Check out his Tum­blr while you’re at it.

 

 

Image via Pick­adolla.

Chances are that if you are a small, illus­trated prod­uct from the mid­dle of the 20th cen­tury, I prob­a­bly love you. Recently, I have cov­ered postage stamps and scout badges, all exist­ing from a time coined “mid cen­tury mod­ern.” Today I’m fea­tur­ing vin­tage match­book covers.

I’ve used the term mid cen­tury mod­ern before, but haven’t both­ered to really describe it. For your ref­er­ence: It is a blan­ket term used to describe a num­ber of cre­ative endeav­ors from the years 1933 — 1965. This includes archi­tec­ture, graphic design, and indus­trial design.

A lot of the illus­tra­tion and prod­ucts from this period of time look dif­fused in both color and image qual­ity. This hap­pened because off­set lith­o­g­ra­phy print­ing (which is used in print­ing news­pa­pers, mag­a­zines, etc.) was often printed onto paper with a high-rag con­tent. Rag paper uses cot­ton rags (hence the name) as its mate­r­ial source, so print­ing on it gives the appear­ance of being on fabric.

Well! That was a lot expla­na­tion about the con­text sur­round­ing vin­tage match­book cov­ers. Hope­fully you enjoy these bold designs from through­out the world. If you watch a lot of Mad Men, you prob­a­bly see how much peo­ple from this era enjoyed smok­ing, so it’s no won­der why these are so engaging.

 

3 images above via Found in Mom’s Base­ment.

 

2 above images via Chris­t­ian Montone’s Flickr.

By Saul Bass! Image via design:related.

2 images above via Dark Roasted Blend.

Some of my favorite illus­tra­tions come from the busi­ness pub­li­ca­tions. They are imag­i­na­tive and weird, because hon­estly, if they weren’t, it would be illus­tra­tion after illus­tra­tion of men in suits shak­ing hands. And who wants to see that? Not this lady!

Aisha Franz is an illus­tra­tor in Ger­many who does a lot of work for Bloomberg mag­a­zine (nearly all of the images from this post are from it). Obvi­ously, you can enjoy these images in their own right, as they are dri­ven by con­cept rather than lit­eral inter­pre­ta­tion of an arti­cle. I always won­der if the peo­ple who read these arti­cles seri­ously appre­ci­ate these illus­tra­tions as much as cre­ative folk do.

All images via her Flickr. Check out her web­site, too!

For years, I’ve been a huge fan of Andrea Wan’s work. And, with her lat­est series Fakelore, it’s no exception.

What draws me in is the sub­ject mat­ter.  Andrea’s paint­ings are sur­real. They are eerie. They are devoid of envi­ron­ment, giv­ing us lit­tle con­text for work that is very nar­ra­tive. She plays with scale, turn­ing the tables on who/what is large and small.

All images via her blog. Check out her web­site, too! Buy her work here!

I recently dis­cov­ered Flamingo Mag­a­zine, an illus­tra­tion pub­li­ca­tion based in Lon­don.  They have a phys­i­cal mag­a­zine as well as a blog, which is how I dis­cov­ered the work of Char­lotte Trounce.

There is a big focus on shape and stroke in Charlotte’s work. Her strokes are light and lines are incon­sis­tent, which gives her styl­ized shapes depth. Their sym­bol­iza­tion starts to bring them into the world of icons, which espe­cially works well in her map making!

All images via her web­site.

 

 

Image via Rose­bud Archives.

Har­ri­son Cady was an Amer­i­can illus­tra­tor and author, best known for his comic strip, Peter Rab­bit. He started his career as early as 1894 when his first illus­tra­tion appeared in the mag­a­zine Harper’s Young Mag­a­zine.

When Har­ri­son was 18, his father was killed in Boston. He and his mother moved to New York City, where he became an illus­tra­tor at the Brook­lyn Eagle news­pa­per. From there, he took on other free­lanc­ing posi­tions, even­tu­ally being hired as a staff car­toon­ist for Life magazine.

I first saw Harrison’s illus­tra­tions when I vis­ited the Library of Con­gress last year. The car­toony style (which has since been dupli­cated by numer­ous illus­tra­tors) and intense detail was what drew me in. His work is light­hearted and fun, and I like it when he charges ani­mals insects with act­ing like humans.

Two images above via Rose­bud Archives. (Click to see all of the details!)

 

Three images above via Ani­ma­tion Resources. Again, click for detail!

And finally, this is the first image I saw by Har­ri­son. This com­po­si­tion, with the details and var­i­ous scenes jam-packed into it, is impressive.

 

Image via Tusks Fam­ily.

Trey Wright is an artist work­ing out of Dal­las, Texas. He’s a pho­tog­ra­pher who cre­ates sur­real scenes from cut paper (like col­lage), tan­gi­ble objects (like a wig), and humans (who appear like giants).

Essen­tially, Trey is pho­tograph­ing assem­blages. I find them most inter­est­ing when he uses mag­a­zine cut outs. They are pho­tographs of pho­tographs, and since they are pho­tographs, they strad­dle the line between object and a pic­ture of an object. At times, it’s hard to tell what is cut out and what’s not.

Excel­lent color usage, too. It ref­er­ences a mid cen­tury aes­thetic, which I always enjoy, with its off-beat color pair­ings and all.

First four images via his web­site. Final images via his Tum­blr (which is updated often).

Kirsten Roth­bart very recently sent me a link to her Tum­blr. She’s a Ger­man illus­tra­tor study­ing Illus­tra­tion and Comic Art at the School of Art And Design in Kas­sel, Germany.

She is inspired by pop­u­lar cul­ture and fash­ion, two things that you can glean from her illus­tra­tions. The char­ac­ters are fash­ion­able, and her com­po­si­tions con­tain things that are a throw-back to the late 90’s/early 2000’s, like talk­ing on a land-line tele­phone and hav­ing a lava lamp.

As an emerg­ing illus­tra­tor, Kristen’s work is very cohe­sive. The color palette is an obvi­ous way she does it, but her char­ac­ters all feel like they are from the same world. Mov­ing for­ward, I’m excited to see where she goes from here.

All images via her Tum­blr.