Pick of the Week

The picture of the week for this last full week of March is from the talented illustrator Oliver Herford (1863 - 1935). Herford was responsible for all of the wonderful illustrations in the book The Kitten's Garden of Verses published in 1911.

All of the pictures in this group look like pencil drawings and suffer in no way from a lack of colorization. Whether the scan or the original book had the peachy/pink-colored paper, the subtle color of the background adds a richness that a true white background would have lacked.

With spring just around the corner, I thought it would be fun for a reminder of those days when we loved winter and playing in the snow and in some ways were disappointed when the weather turned warmer.

This image has been on Reusable Art for some time but it continues to be one of my favorites.

The larger (266px X 200px) version of this image is available for free downloading on Reusable Art. Just follow the link to Playing In The Snow - Image 2.

This vintage drawing and so very many of the other charming drawings of children on Reusable Art was created by the talented children's artist Ida Waugh. Her work has a recognizable charm and whimsy to it that seems rather surprising considering that she never had children of her own. If you want to see some of her other children's book illustrations, just visit Reusable Art and type 'Waugh' into the search box.

This image was included in the book Mammy's Baby which was published in 1890. To find other charming illustrations from this book, visit Reusable Art and type 'Mammy' into the search box.

There are just certain letters of the alphabet that we use less frequently than others. And, when it comes to which letters we use to start a sentence, the list becomes even shorter.

Recently, several of these letters were used as drop cap images in a recent book I reviewed for Reusable Art. While I am still looking for the first drop cap X, I did add several other hard-to-find letter images this week.

Those letters are: J, K, and Z. So, this week instead of having only one picture of the week, I thought it would work equally well to have three. All three of these letter images are from the book Moja Beatrice which was written by Zygmunt Krasiski and published in 1878. There was no illustrator listed for this book but drop cap images were typically designed for and by the publishing companies.

Rather than point you to the individual images, I thought it might be more useful to show them to you and link to the category in which they appear so that you can see the other drawings of the letter.