underwater chicken here @helpmeamigo - Tumblr Blog

my favorite part of impressionism is when artists just hung out and painted each other painting.

oil paint isnt cheap, but john singer sargent wanted to paint his homie claude havin a nice day. thats sweet.

and heres gaugin’s painting of van gogh painting the sunflowers. damn he knew it would be #iconic and he memorialized the event. what a good friend

unearthedviews

SCOTLAND. Stonehaven. 2009.

shoomlah

I love the art style of your Valentina piece; you said you were "looking at a lot of 50s lifestyle art with graphic black". I love that art style too! Do you have some artist names I could look up? I never know who does all that gorgeous advert art other than Rockwell and Leyendecker--especially with that use of black, that's my favourite.

oh yeah, absolutely! Leyendecker and Rockwell are absolute masters, but there are a ton of illustrators to look at for later, more graphic mid-century work. A couple favourites of mine include Al Parker:

Jon Whitcomb:

Coby Whitmore:

Earl Oliver Hurst:

Pete Hawley:

…and not entirely of the same school, but Mead Scheaffer is killer at large swaths of black and value grouping throughout a composition:

…ditto that for Tom Lovell:

….and a million other artists that I’m sure I’m forgetting. But hopefully this is a good starting point! And here are some great compendium books to check out as well:

Masters of American Illustration

Lifestyle Illustration of the 1950′s

Lifestyle illustration of the 1960′s