Concept Art

Artist research: Lyonel Feininger


A German-american painter who also worked as a caricaturist and a comic strip artist.
He started a career as a cartoonist in 1894 and worked for several German, French and American magazines. His first strips were noted for their graphic experimentation and fey humour (crazy work). As a commercial caricaturist, he worked for 20 years for various newspapers and magazines both in the USA and Germany . He began work as a fine artist at the age of 36 and was associated with German expressionist groups: Die Brucke, the Novembergruppe, Gruppe 1919 and many more. He became the master artist of Bauhaus, in charge of the printmaking workshop. He designed the cover for Bauhaus 1919 manifesto and taught there for several years.
In addition to drawing, Feininger created art with painted toy figures being photographed in from of drawn background. He produced a large body of photographic works between 1928 and the mid 1950's.
I think that Lyonel's work is interesting, he uses shapes in a very clever way to construct landscapes. His work is simple yet detailed, there are simple shapes with precise shading and colours. His work is unique and he was clearly a successful artist.

A3 piece:
For this I crumpled brown paper to get the effect of the walls, I then gently rubbed over it with chalk and charcoal to give it a stone like effect. For the sky, I used masking tape and painted white emulsion over it, when it was dry, I tore some of the tape away and then went over the top with a very watered down grey. For the black gate, I used card dipped in ink ant used the sides of the card to create the lines and curved it to get the rounded edges.

Landscape ideas using rubbing effect:

We used masking tape to create a scene on a piece of glass and rubbed charcoal over the brown paper.