E.H Shepard

The final exhibition I went to see whilst in London was that of illustrator E.H Shepard which was held in House of Illustration. Most prominently known for his illustrations of Winnie the Pooh and numerous cartoons for Punch magazine. However this exhibition focused on his works as a war artist during the first world war. Not solely sent out as an artist Shepard was a soldier who had wanted to serve and just happened to draw and paint whenever possible. The army was aware of his talents and would sometimes ask for him to produce landscapes to help them in making plans for attacks etc. He had already been working for Punch magazine prior to the break out of war, and continued producing work for them during the course of the war when possible. There is correspondence from his agent shown in the exhibition to his wife asking if she had heard from him as a deadline was looming.
The war seemed to have help develop Shepard as an artist, he truly had to sketch quickly and become even more observant which can be seen through his art. Sketching several rough in pencil would finally lead to a finished image done in ink. Again the term economical use of line was used in describing his work. I understood this even more now as I use ink pens to sketch but I find that I probably try to draw too much. My overuse of line can sometimes kill the drawing, this is probably the most important factor that I picked up from this exhibition. I noticed that when sketching people later that day it was very evident that something had triggered me to think differently, to consider the line I was putting down. Also I realised that the best artists are usually the most observant, looking for shadows, glimmers of light, what makes that person them, what their features are. During my time in the exhibition I tried to imitate some of the images I seen mainly as an exercise in trying to reduce my line work and produce more effective illustrations. These drawings interested me in either composition or the characters within them, these are shown below.