Illustrating History
Before the invention of computer-aided design, illustrators used traditional techniques to bring stories to life.
Brushes, pencils, watercolours and pens were part of an illustrator’s kit in the 19th century, goache and photography in the 20th.
Book Illustration
Barnett Bibbero was Mira’s grandfather. Alive in the 19th Century until the early part of the 20th he was a well-known Freemason, also a keen sportsman he rode Norton motorbikes through the streets of Hull.
Barnett’s portrait is in pen and ink and shows him in a 19th century Freemason’s costume wearing a stiff, white collar and a dark V-shaped tie.
Barnett Bibbero
Illustrating Vintage Fashion
The earliest fashion plates used woodcut and block printing, oil paintings showing opulent designs however it was in the 20th century fashion illustration had its golden age.
In the early part of the century newspapers and magazines exploded with brightly coloured artwork until in the 1950s and 1960s they were gradually replaced by photographs and styles of the modern age.
Pictured in black and white, this illustration was created in watercolours, pencil and ink.
Carrie says, “The art of fashion is as important to get right as the book. Drawings have to show details of an outfit accurately but also suggest an atmosphere sympathetic to the era in which the original outfit was worn or viewed in the pages of newspapers or magazines.”
For many years photographers were not allowed to take photos in fashion shows. As a result late 1940s photography mixed with hand-drawn renditions of outfits like that which originally advertised this Spectator Sports outfit for sale in 1949.