Fade Away to Black

Month of Daily Downloads No. 28+

Today's freebie is a tribute to Coles Phillips, an American artist I learned about from one of my new customers, Mary of Spokane. I had never heard of Phillips before but he is known for what is called the "fade-away" style in art. The minute I read that term -- fade-away -- a light bulb went off in my head and I thought: Yes!! A perfect way to describe this style of French postcard!

You may not have heard of Phillips either, but once you see his art, you'll pick it out of the crowd. Here is a 1910 cover of Life magazine featuring his art:

The above image is from the Library of Congress and below is a cutout from a screen shot doing a Google search of Coles Phillips' images.

According to Wiki, Phillips was born in October 1880 and sadly, he died quite young from tuberculosis of the kidney (!) at age 47 in June 1927. While we might simply think of this as an art style,  Wiki's article is most interesting, pointing out the money-saving benefits! 

Phillips' use of negative space allowed the viewer to "fill-in" the image; it also reduced printing costs for the magazine, as "the novelty of the technique and the striking design qualities masked the fact that Life was getting by with single color or two-color covers in a day when full-color covers were de rigueur for the better magazines". 

Now, my French postcard was mailed in April 1915. So I'm not sure if the postcard designer was imitating Coles Phillips or if he got his idea from the postcards?  I have blogged before about Mary Engelbreit's style mimicing a 1930s Italian artist named Bertiglia. Whichever came first, the chicken or the egg, we may never know, but I certainly like to think that you get a lot of your bright ideas and inspirations from what you see in postcards:) 

Below is a 'warmer' toned version of my fade-away. Although I have left the hand-painted gold leaf design on the woman's dress, I'm guessing that you will print this out and cover that gold up with your own lace or ribbon.

This image makes me think of the new movie that's out, The Artist, a (mostly) silent film made in black and white. The French romantic comedy has nabbed many awards and I'm looking foward to seeing it!

Hmm... I suppose I should have saved this post till tomorrow, which will be my last daily download for February. Because after tomorrow, this blog is going to fade away to black.....for a little while anyway. You're going to be busy entering my contests and I'm going to be busy recuperating!:) But ... I've still got to post more details about the Kissed Again! contest -- such as the prizes. So will definitely see you tomorrow!