Traditionally I think this’d have been done in inks (fat calligraphy pens), very few colours, high contrast, with black being the common denominator. More recent ones I can tell being created with software as, with example above, there’s an element of feathering to some of the shading. I’ve seen the style most often in graphic novels and it’s at it most impactful when conveying shock/fear/horror. I can’t for the life of me though recall, indeed if I ever knew, the style. Tritone? I want to describe it accurately and briefly in a piece I’m working on and have its name contextually within. Ideas/help?
It looks like a woodcut illustration, though probably not done that way but in imitation of it. Those were often done in black and white, but could be colored.
I did a Search image with Google Lens on it, and came up with a few others done in the bright red and blue with black, including the one below. Here is the description of it: A modern work, realized in strong and contrasting colors, which highlights the well-known Pavlovian Effect. https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Painting-Pavlovian-Effect/838313/6956169/view?utm_campaign=2427&utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic
Hmm.. the left side reminds me of pop art, looks a little like it's from a comic. I'm not sure what to call the right side. Makes me think of like.. The Very Hungry Caterpillar a little.
Perhaps inspired by those weird-hue shots from old horror movies. I know exactly what you're getting at, and have seen it in comics. In particular read a bit of Punisher War Journal as a kid and I think I saw it a lot there. Spoiler: Comics like this. Can't find any panels online that fit your example unfortunately. After a lot of Googling, I'm convinced it doesn't have a particular name though. High contrast, high saturation, with few colours amid hard (crushed?) black.
Here's why I said woodcut art: Of course referring to the left side and only the black lines. There's a more modern technique called scratchboard that can get the same look but doesn't involve carving into blocks of wood.
When you say it's used to convey fear/terror, many modern graphic novels are inspired by the Expressionists who did a lot of woodcuts: Here's one with some color added:
I would call it something like a "stark Expressionist woodcut style" and maybe mention that two or three bright colors had been printed onto it.
You might be thinking of certain silent movies, in particular from Germany—which were Expressionist films—like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or Metropolis. The original Frankenstein was based on that off-kilter look, but toned down quite a bit. Or possibly later movies that were based on them.
Here's a page from a graphic novel called Pixie by Max Andersson: Spoiler: Pixie (Big image) And here's Black Hole by Charles Burns: Both inspired by woodcut techniques, but obviously one is more expressionistic and the other more realist.
Possibly. I think there is a difference between what the OP is getting at and hard lighting that is apparently called chiaroscuro. Spoiler: Horror lighting tactics Just hard lighting is more a depth technique, where (see below) seems to incorporate colour as much as it does contrast for a very acute stylistic touch. Spoiler: Something like this Edit: though the inking does not quite match the OP's example like your woodcuts do.
Chiaroscuro actually means "light emerging from darkness". It isn't hard or stark lighting. There's a gradual falloff or fade into darkness to create a strong 3-dimensional effect. An example: There's usually a good range of values (grays) in chiaroscuro, but the background is black or very nearly, and the figure is highlighted to stand out from it. And parts of the figure(s) fade into blackness as well. That stark, hard-edged black and white is very close to early printing techniques, which could use nothing but solid black ink on white (or tinted) paper. So they used tricks like the feathered edges you see in the woodblock prints I posted above, and in comic book drawings.
Maybe Tenebrism is the better term (neither words are ones I'd necessarily drop on a reader, but still). Dramatic illumination... still doesn't seem to incorporate strong hues (but the term is general enough to possibly encompass), which is why I think the OP won't find a specific word or phrase for it.
Thanks for engaging brains and putting time into this good people of the forum. @Xoic , you're right, the elements of the woodcut are there for sure so perhaps this is an indicator of the style's origins. Thanks (it might make the cut ). The lines though (in my example) seem to have flawless (improved) geometry in their curves. I'm seeing, in woodcut, evidence of the way the hand tools are used and while looking a shade more crude in quality, it carries its own charm. @Louanne Learning , preddy I'm minded too of the reds, the blues.. the Obama 'Hope' poster. (Ta for Pavlovian art intro, spent a while drooling over it). @Set2Stun , popart on roids? IDK pop (the word) bit soft. Pop Art meets Penny Dreadful? OO, some kinda 'stark pop art' . Cheers. @Not the Territory , the graphic novels (comics too) also seem to have a hand in the style's evolution. I'm recalling now 2000AD and the old Judge Dredd stories. @Seven Crowns , posterised — I used a tool in photoshop many moons past that could apply this effect to full colour drawings. Essentially pare something down by averaging shades and tone to the extreme. I think it came in handy for ad setters when say preparing something for print and the printers were only offering a limited amount of inks or even monotone. I don't remember it though applying the style in the way the lines flowed. Certainly looks like artist intervention. Sure that too though would be a good base for the style and,.. I figure there may well be filters out now that could closely mimic it. < Pretty sure of that, I mean I seem to looking better these days when someone points an iPhone at me. The results don't tally with the mirror. I've just found this: https://www.debutart.com/artist/joe-wilson/guillermo-del-toro-the-guardian , the guy, Joe Wilson, seems to embrace the style over and over. I wonder if a cheeky email to him may garner a learned reply.
The expressionists definitely wanted to show the human hand in the art, so they distorted and made things look clunky. Some woodcut artists went more for slick perfection. Then engraving was developed using metal plates rather than wood, which allowed for much more precision, resulting eventually in familiar images like these: And modern computer programs like Illustrator allowed for rasterized images (smoothed out by the computer) for even more slick artificial perfection. That would be what the Guillermo Del Toro drawing and similar ones are, like the Charles Burns Black Hole work: They're definitely slicker, modern renditions of what began as wood block prints and then steel or copper plate engravings, like the ones on our money. Another modern vriation would be Mike Mignola's Hellboy style: Though he goes for a flatter image without the feathered shading for the most part. But he really loves the flat graphic style using nearly solid colors. @SethLoki it seems what you're inerested in is artwork done in modern digital techniques imitating those graphic printing techniques of yesteryear like the block print, engraving, and pop art, which also imitated printing techniques and enlarged them so you could more clearly see the dots or the feathered lines, and with an emphasis on the flat graphic nature of it and solid field colors or maybe just some slight color variation like they used to get by applying watercolor or dyes or transparent inks over a black and white print. You might call those hand-colored or hand-tinted prints. They're all variations of printing techniques, created so artwork could be duplicated without the need for laborious hand copying, so masterpieces could be seen by more people and hung in multiple galleries, and printed in pamphlets and then magazines. Usually they were done by engravers carefully copying a painting, rendering it into black and white, or occasionally adding some color if the print run allowed for it (it multiplied the expense). Another beautiful and sometimes similar type of printing was the lithograph (stone drawing), done using a flat stone with the surface etched away in places by acid.
Of course there's also a love of the comic book image in many of these. That was another printing approach that had to use special techniques like feathered lines to get the illusion of three dimensions, and that used flat field color, at least in the early days. Poster printing was very similar, and also used deliberately flat graphic style and bright fluorescent or neon colors to make a visual impact. Some of the most striking images ever seen were psychedelic posters made in the 60's: Many were done by the team of Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelly:
Semi-relevant, and strangely ironic. I just hit up YouTube and found this video had been uploaded this morning: Fun stuff.
Appreciate your knowledge and searching @Xoic So... Above the fireplace, as if lit from its flames, glowed the starkest artwork. Description (brain dump) that follows, that's to follow the above sentence, I'm working on. In the mini-phrase thesaurus I gots: Watchmenesque, if Warhol did horror, jet black ceded by parallel hatching to the most vivid reds and blues, torch under the chin highlighted, modern take on the woodcut. < I just wish the artwork style had a name and a super famous artist, can't help feeling I'll be unable to express via un-purple prose. The picture needs the attention as its key to the scene and I'm not one for concision unfortunately.
Hey, I love this stuff, and talking about it. I might call it "A hard-contrast black and white style using feathered linework for shading and overprinted with flat poster or comic book colors. Something like a Warhol or a Lichtenstein."
