Victoriana

Victoriana

Victoriana definition 

Materials and paintings that use styles and themes inspired the period of Queen Victoria’s reign, which was from ‘1837 to 1901’. ', are considered as Victoriana. The imagery on the drawings and paintings featured fashionable items and objects related to the period of time. The Victorian age was a period that is remembered for the industrial revolution, cultural expansion, The British Empire, and economic change. Many drawings either originate from the is period or  inspired by the art style protray the Victorian upper class society as clean and vibrant.  There are many design that include a unsaturated colour scheme.

As digital technology enable people to create vector drawing, Victoriana is used online, particularly with Steampunk. Examples of Victoriana drawings are dresses, Victorian technology, such as lamps, toys, food, drink, people and other essential equipment.

Victoriana artists

Here are a list of artists 

• Sabina Lindemann
•  Allen Williams 
• Gary Walton
• Arthur Boyd Houghton (1836–1875) 
• John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836–1893) 
• Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836–1912) 
• James Tissot 

 

Examples of posters with Victoriana art style  

 This is the images that were created by Gary Walton. His Victorian drawings consists of famous familiar landscapes in Britain. In this case, both drawing shows the seaside with boats, a Victorian designed pier, one symbol of Victorain Architecture, and a light house. Unlike the drawings that feature elements from the industrial revolution, these images come across as calm. This is due to the use of the colours, white and blue, which represents the feeling of calm and the bright light source. 

What draws me into the overall design is the use of elegant drawings. The lamps, the shape of the boat and the houses look unusual and partly distorted due to the positioning; for example the houses tilt towards the right. These design attributes which  an impression that the imagery partly looks something from the world of imagination.

As for the technique  the artists must be skilled at collecting everyday drawings and distorted their appearance  Due to the imagery looking far from pixelated, these were created in a vector based program known as Illustrator. 

Victoria Book of Spells

The imagery on this posters includes a woman with white hair who is holding hands with a unusual looking human being.  The female is wearing old Victorian clothes and a large top hat whilst the male is covered with a very heavy looking jacket. The background contains intimidating looking ravens flying above the characters. To intensive the feel of terror, dark brown smock surrounds them, which makes it impossible to see their lower body. This also suggest that  power stations and stream train are featured in this story.

In the middle of the smock, there is a light source, which is where the characters are positioned, that makes the background look more interesting. The purpose for lighting effect in the center is to allow the characters to become the main focal point. The most noticeable element is the large contrast between the woman's white hair to brown dull background.  The white forces the audience to look onto the woman, who has a elegant face and the

To make the text visible, the text is positioned on the below the main attraction. The style of the typography catches my eye because the San serif text is clear and conveys the Victorian theme. Victorian text comes across a traditional, historic and elegant. 

Both Photoshop and Illustrator have been used to create the fantasy designed cover. The use hair and smudges suggest that the paint brush was used. All of the character looks as if they were hand drawn and then traced on Illustrator. Setting  the correct contrast and brightness is a skill to have in order to produce this artwork.

Sherlock Holmes by Sabina Lindemann

This poster promotes a crime story involving Sherlock Holmes. The poster features a faceless Sherlock Homles smoking a pipe with a magnifying glass as his neck. There is the title and the author of the story at the bottom of the poster.  The old fashioned hat and pipe symbolises a Victorian icon that is well known for solving mysteries, therefore, it should be relevant to use objects from the Victorian period. The path of smoke makes this poster have characteristic from elegant Parisian drawings. As the visual language includes glass and smoke, there might be elements of smoke and mirrors.

The positioning of the illustrations form a shape of a human head and neck. The structure looks quite busy because some of the equipment are overlapping on other imagery.  To make the smoke look organic, the streaks go off screen.

In this circumstance, it benefits the design because the objects are visually detailed, which draws the viewer's attention. Placing the drawing of a gun, and a magnifying glass inside the head effectively promotes that the main character as very clever and is very capable of providing advice.  The brown colour scheme represents the polluted air in London whilst black symbolises the colour of the Victorians clothes. The old fashioned san serif designed typography is legible due to the large contrast of color, which enables the poster to convey the historic theme efficiently.

This was found on a artist's profile this would have used digitally and for print. To prepare to create this piece of art, the artist had to conduct research into existing detective book covers and Victorian objects. As for the skill, the typography has been costumed made, which suggests that it was made in Illustrator.

Due to the historic value and the colour scheme, it conveys a feeling of seriousness. The black colour scheme comes across as mysterious and rough. 

Transport for London

This is  a recently new image of Transport for London promoting the use of bicycles.  The poster uses a well-known Victorian cycles that featured one small and one large wheel, which act as the eyes on a invisible face. Above the the cycles, there is a top hat that was worn by upper class Victorian Society. To represent the mouth, there is a curly mustache that gives an impression that this is a face of a upper class person. The word of Victoriana speaks for it's self, the features already human technology created in the 19th century.  However, the positioning of these objects create something out of imagination, which is a invisible face. The quote "Look after your jam tart and jump on your dick van dyke' encourages the target audience, the people living in London and commuters to use their bicycle. It makes a reference to a famous actor who appeared in a Victorian themed movie known as Mary Poppins. This is in fact a cockney phrase for saying, 'Today I did my jam tart a right world of good after riding my Dick Van Dyke a mere 65 km'

In terms of structure, the positioning of the objects are kept to the centre to prevent image from looking disorganised. Every object is consistently scaled in order make the effect look 
 realistic and effective to the viewer. The tag line is positioned between the logo and the image to give to allow the message draw the attention of the audience.

The large contrast of colours and the objects used are the main features that make the art work looking enticing to look at. Placing red on black results in the outline of the bicycles and the hat standing out, which makes the most important feature visible. Without the logo of TFL, the colour would be one indication of a TFL product because the London Underground features red on the logo.  Without the colour, the tag line would have been meaningless because it make a reference to jam tarts.

As this consists of geometrical shapes, like square and circles, this was developed in a vector based program known as Illustrator. This features makes the imagery look clear. The skills included to complete this object is being able to produce tag lines relevant to the imagery and being able recognise good colour schemes.  

The overall design introduces historic values and shows a clean style. Applying no textures to the background causes the poster to across a empty, relaxing and smooth. 


References that helped me with my research:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoriana

http://www.ehow.com/about_5045826_definition-victorian-art.html
http://blog.petertheatre.com/2013/08/araf.html

References to the existing artwork


http://www.cmykmag.com/portfolios/sabina.lindemann.html

http://www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/category/advertising/

http://booktionary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/cover-unveiled-for-queen-victorias-book.html

http://starsunflowerstudio.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/graphic-web-and-ui-design-freebies-of_13.html

http://www.bathartgallery.co.uk/artist-gary-walton.asp