-
The Art Of Nightmares
Some dreams, some poems, some musical phrases, some pictures, wake feelings such as one never had before, new in colour and form—spiritual sensations, as it were, hitherto unproved… Lilith | George MacDonald How does an artist offer the viewer a sense of nightmare? Desaturation Over all, 12 percent of people dream entirely in black and white. … In […]
-
What is psychedelic art?
Basically, the word ‘psychedelic’ started out in pharmacology. Because of the visual hallucinations it can cause, the word psychedelic came to apply later to art.
-
Sequential Narrative Art In Picture Books
Sequential Narrative describes art which tells a story in a series of images making use of frames. Let’s say there are 7 main categories of Narrative art. Narrative art is art which tells a story. Monoscenic — represents a single scene with no repetition of characters and only one action taking place Sequential — very much like a continuous narrative […]
-
Flat Black in Picture Books and Art
If you’ve ever heard advice to avoid black out of the tube when painting, this article is a good explainer for what that actually means in practice.
-
Illustrating Ghosts
The day before the examination my father took me out for ice cream. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d done something together, just the two of us. He was always working, gone before the sun rose, sometimes not making it home at all, opting to sleep in the dorms at army headquarters. Like a […]
-
Illustrating Rain, Droplets and Rainclouds
A collection of art featuring rain, some realistic, some cartoonish, some stylised.
-
Illustrating Slopes and Hills
What it says on the tin.
-
An Entire World In A Single Illustration
Sometimes illustrators want to convey an entire storyworld within a single scene. These are useful as establishing shots in stories. Some call these illustrations ‘panoptic‘. Panoptic refers to ‘showing or seeing the whole at one view’. Panoptic narrative art is often a bird’s eye view. The ‘camera’ is above. This is the art world’s equivalent of an all-seeing […]
-
Interesting Ceilings In Illustration
EXPOSED BEAMS CATHEDRAL CEILINGS Header: Interiors of The Winter Palace, The Small Winter Garden of Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna illustratrated by Konstantin Andreyevich Ukhtomsky (1818-1881)
-
Rocks, Stones, Brick, Paving and Concrete In Art
I grew up in Christchurch, New Zealand, and occasionally visited The Christchurch Art Gallery. In the viewing room to the left of the entrance hall there was an especially memorable painting. Every now and then I come across a piece of art which takes my breath away, and this was one of the first. When […]
-
The Home Hearth in Art and Storytelling
In his book Home, Witold Rybczynski describes a typical European house: Heating was primitive. Houses in the sixteenth century had a fireplace or cookstove only in the main room, and no heating in the rest of the house. In winter, this room with its heavy masonry walls and stone floor was extremely cold. Voluminous clothing, […]
-
Umbrellas In Art And Storytelling
The oldest umbrellas, as we know them today, were used not to keep off the rain but to avoid the sun.
-
Haystacks In Art and Storytelling
Haystacks and haybales are multivalent symbols in storytelling, utilised in horror as well as in cosy pastoral stories.
-
Death Symbolism in Art and Literature
For Death must be somewhere in a society; if it is no longer (or less intensely) in religion, it must be elsewhere; perhaps in this image which produces Death while trying to preserve life. Contemporary with the withdrawal of rites, Photography may correspond to the intrusion, in our modern society, of an asymbolic Death, outside […]
-
Archways In Composition
As a framing device, arches, archways and arcs are useful to illustrators. Below are various examples of archways in art and illustration.