Sir Joshua Reynolds specialized in portraiture and apprenticed under Thomas Hudson in 1740. He left his apprenticeship in 1743. in 1749 he joined the ship the HMS centurion on a voyage to the Mediterranean well with the ship he traveled broadly but eventually he settled in London where he became an extremely prolific painter and spent most of his career. 

his detailed style of portraiture didn’t shy away from the reality of his sitters. He left in imperfections and captured the sitter’s likeness with incredible skill. He used natural colors and captured his subject’s human beauty. as someone who enjoys portraiture and appreciates how difficult it is his works amaze me. 

The Invention of Braille

The last class focused heavily on typography, we learned about the invention of the printing press, display typefaces, and typography in art. But we didn’t learn that much about how type and even just literacy have developed in visually impaired people so I chose to do my blog post on Braille and the invention of Braille its cultural impact was incredibly significant and I would argue that it still counts as a type of typography. 

Culture

Braille was invented by Louis Braille in 1824 when he was only 15 years old. It was a modified version of something the military was already using to allow people to read communications with no light. This invention allowed visually impaired people to read which was something nearly unimaginable to the community up to this point. Louis Braille invented himself was blind. Even though this was a world-changing invention it would not be adopted universally until 1932. Braille has since been adapted for many languages besides English around the world. 

Typography

Braille as a type is fascinating. It is written from right to left using a slate and read from left to right. The slate uses 2 metal plates with cell-sized holes that you punch with a poking tool to create each letter and then the paper is flipped so the raised parts are on the top. A cell is one letter, which is made using a maximum of six raised dots. 

Each letter of the alphabet plus punctuation is represented with these dots. When red, all one does is run your fingers along these cells distinguishing each letter. Even though it is usually representing English it is truly a unique language in and of itself. 

Before doing this research I didn’t really have any idea how braille worked or how it was read. It was fascinating to be able to grasp a better understanding of Braille since it was such an important invention.

The part of the lesson I found most fascinating was the invention of the printing press and Johannes Gutenburg.  

Books laid the foundation of our society, they allowed us to spread knowledge, track historical events, and teach lessons through stories. We wouldn’t be where we are today without them. Gutenburg, with the invention of the printing press made knowledge accessible. People were able to read the bible themselves and decide on their faith without the watered-down interpretations of the church in their way for instance. Previously books were hundreds of dollars each and had to be made one by one, sometimes taking years to create, now you could make hundreds, or even thousands of copies of the same book, and you could even hire illuminators to make the books just as beautiful as something hand written.  

In 1445 the demand for books was high, people wanted something affordable and uniform. This demand went hand in hand with the first ever universities. More and more people were literate and wanted to use this to their advantage. Gutenburg saw an opportunity and had a world changing idea.  

He found financial backers and began prototyping. By 1450 he had invented the Gutenburg press. It worked by carving out individual letters, punctuation, and ligatures, pressing those into a soft copper block, then, using a hand casting tool also invented by Gutenburg, casting the letters into lead. These lead pieces were then organized into a mirror image of the desired page, covered in ink and pressed onto the pages. Once a page was organized it could be used repeatedly to produce copies of the same page.  

The first things printed by Gutenburg were small official documents and decrees, but it didn’t take him long to take on much more ambitious projects. He spent months creating copies of the Lain bible, having them illustrated and selling them. It is one of the most important books in history to this day because of the innovation of Gutenburg. 

Finally, books were available for ordinary people and reading and education were no longer exclusively for the super-wealthy. 

I liked this assignment in theory. the topics I was researching grabbed my interest, I had an opportunity to find images and make connections I wouldn’t have otherwise made, I liked the content quite a bit. I managed to pick three topics that all had to do with new beginnings and breaking free from the status quo. I had a lot of problems with Invision. I felt like I was never taught how to use the took and it seemed to work against me rather than for me, especially within the context of making a nice layout and having everything look cohesive and nice. It was very hard to find any resources to help me understand the tool better as well. it seemed like it could work well if you were only working with images, but text kind of broke it. 

Hugo Van Der Goes

Hugo Van Der Goes is said to be one of the most influential Flemish artists of the early 15^th century. He was often commissioned by the church, so often in fact that one of his most recognizable works of art is a nativity scene. Not much is known about his life before he was a master painter but since gaining his fame, he gained many copycats. Many of the works thought to be his were eventually reassessed and determined to be done by people who worked for him or simply people trying to copy his style. Some of his more well-known pieces are, Portrait of a Man (ca.1475), Adoration of the Shepards (1480), The Portinari Triptych (1475), the adoration of kings (1470), and The Fall and Redemption of Man.