Artist Analysis: Ernest Howard Shepard

Ernest Howard Shepard (1879 – 1976) was an English artist and book illustrator. He was mostly known for his human-like animals in illustrations for The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame and Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne. I have a particular interest in his illustrations for The Wind in the Willows. I chose this illustration, The Valiant Friends, to analyse because I felt that it was a good example of his human-like animals and I think that I will enjoy responding to it.

Shepard created this illustration sometime in 1933. During the year 1933, in England, there were quite a few big events that happened which may or may not have inspired Shepard’s work. For example, on 28th March 1933, the Imperial Airways Armstrong Whitworth Argosy biplane airliner catches fire in the air over Belgium and crashes. This resulted in killing the crew of three and all 12 passengers. This incident is said to be the deadliest accident in the history of British civil aviation up to this date. Many people say that the fire on-board may have been started deliberately.

However, this illustration that I have chosen to illustrator doesn’t look as if it was inspired by the biplane incident. In this illustration, there are four animals dressed in human clothing, holding weapons in their hands and around their waist. The main weapons that I can see are swords and pistols. The two animals on the right hand side look as though they are in a conversation, which shows another human feature that Shepard is incorporating to his human-like animals.

It looks as though they’re in quite a confined area with not a lot of space, like a cave. There is a light in the middle of the photo which adds a lot of tone, although, the light doesn’t look that big but it seems to light up the entire area that they’re in which means that this area must be small.

Shepard’s use of line is exquisite. It adds so much texture to the animals, their clothing and the surroundings. It makes the animals look very realistic, as does the natural colours that he has used. There is also some pattern being used on the two animals clothing to the right.

I am looking forward to responding to Shepard’s work as it really interests me. I will use Shepard’s lines and texture technique to create a successful illustration in response to this piece of work. To do this, I am going to take primary images of animals such as dogs, cats and humans. I will then use the images to create my own character by using processes such as water-colour painting and the computer program Illustrator.