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The Blue Devils of Blue River Avenue by Poe Ballantine
“The Blue Devils of Blue River Avenue by Poe Ballantine is included in The Best American Short Stories 1998. It kick started the author’s career, leading to a book contract. (Poe Ballantine is a great penname, don’t you think?) Australia’s Richard Fidler interviewed Poe in 2014 when he was here in Australia for the Byron…
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Bathroom As Horror: Here There Be Tygers by Stephen King
Toilets are inherently scary. This holds true across cultures, even though different cultures (and even genders) experience public toilets differently. Below I take a look at a short horror story by Stephen King with a few examples of toilet horror by other authors, in which the public bathroom is utilised for storytelling purposes as a…
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Miracle Polish by Steven Millhauser Short Story Analysis
“Miracle Polish” is a (possibly) fabulist short story by American author Steven Millhauser, published in the print edition of the November 14, 2011 issue of The New Yorker. More recently, Stuart Dybek joined Deborah Treisman on The New Yorker podcast to read and discuss this story. This short story is a great example of: We…
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Illustrations Of The Forest At Night
Some of my favourite paintings and illustrations of the forest at night.
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Table Scenes in Illustration and Composition
Table scenes are notoriously difficult to film in TV and movies. Live action presents its own challenges, but static images of characters around tables aren’t exactly easy, either.
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Catching Fish In Art And Illustration
Illustrations of people out fishing. But sometimes you get what you don’t expect.
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Illustrating Underwater Scenes
Although blue is the first colour that comes to mind when we think ‘underwater’, the range of hue available to illustrators is wider than that. Here are some examples.
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A Sock Is A Pocket For Your Toes by Liz Garton Scanlon and Robin Preiss Glasser Analysis
A Sock Is A Pocket For Your Toes (2004) is a picture book by Liz Garton Scanlon and Robin Preiss Glasser, published by HarperCollins. A cave is a pocket for a bear,a breath is a pocket full of air.A hat is a pocket for your hair,and a seat is a pocket called a chair… A Sock…
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Illustrations of Art Studios
Sometimes artists don’t need to travel far to find inspiration for their work.
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Warm, Bright, Sunny Colours in Art and Illustration
A collection of illustrations which convey that warm, sunny feeling… mostly. The same palette can work to the opposite effect.
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Messing About In Boats
Ursula Le Guin once had a conversation with Halderman, which is ostensibly about boats but is actually about writing. ALISON HALDERMAN: You do invent wonderful landscapes. The Earthsea trilogy creates such a vivid picture of the sea — have you done a lot of sailing? URSULA LE GUIN: All that sailing is complete fakery. It’s…
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Body Language by Diane Schoemperlen Short Story Analysis
Body Language is a short story by Canadian writer Diane Schoemperlen. You can find it collected in The Best American Short Stories 1998. The story comes ‘illustrated’ with anatomical drawings: of the head and larynx, the eyeball and nose cavity, the ribcage, musculature of the arm, a sperm, a brain. This story is an example…
