Shadows Cast Against Walls in Art and Illustration
Shadows cast against walls in illustration tend to make a character look larger than life. This can be utilised to horror effect. Below, a big sister tells little brothers a bedtime story. The boys are clearly terrified.
Seymour Joseph Guy – Story of Golden LocksN.C. Wyeth from The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Published by Scribner’s 1940 The VigilEmbossed postcard published by John Winsch, 1912. The profile of a man relates to the superstition that a young woman would dream of her future husband on Hallowe’en.
The shadow in the Arthur Rackham illustration below catches the eye more than the head of the man.
Arthur Rackham – Jack Sprat could eat no fat, Mother Goose 1913
Carl Friedrich Moritz Muller (German, 1807 – 1865) Christmas Eve, 1848The Apparition, 1973 Charles W. Stewart; 1915-2001
Art by Edward F. Smith for Woman’s Home Companion April 1918
PATHS OF GLORY (1957)for ‘Trapped In A Tank’ in the Wide World Magazine May 1920 illustration by G.P. Carruthers
Arthur Rackham, The Story Teller, watercolour, pen, ink on paper, 1905
Laurence Schwinger’s cover illustration for ‘I Married a Dead Man’ by Cornell Woolrich
‘The Spell’ Poster by Antonio Ballester, 1946
Maxwell Gordon Lightfoot Study of a Girl c.1910
A couple in candle light, illustration of ‘ Les Liaisons Dangereuse s’ by Pierre Chodlerlos de Laclos (1741-1803) published 1920; (pochoir print), Barbier, Georges (1882-1932)
The Ladybird Book Of Bedtime Stories Geoffrey Lapage, Illustrations George Brook (Wills & Hepworth Ltd., Loughborough UK, 9th edition 1950)Kodomo no kuni (“Children’s Land”), 1922–30from Gorilla by Anthony Browne
The shadows on the wall in the illustration below come from an unseen source of small man-like creatures on horseback. They may or may not be shadows.
Svend Otto – The Snow Queen
Charles Alston, an African American painter and illustrator, part of the Harlem Renaissance
Shadows are used to comical (or possibly scary) effect below.
‘Shadows’ 1850 Charles Bennett (1829-67) rooster shadow
Henrietta the Faithful Hen by Kathleen Hale, 1943‘Shadows’ 1850 Charles Bennett (1829-67) duck shadow‘Shadows’ 1850 Charles Bennett (1829-67) alligator shadow
‘Shadows’ 1850 Charles Bennett (1829-67) parrot shadow
h! You Devil! Aida Overton Walker sheet music, 1909
The shadow in the illustration below forms a dark frame around the characters, closing them in, enfolding them into the darkness.
William Rothenstein, The Doll’s House, 1899–1900Charles W. Stewart (1915 – 2001) On The Way To The Doctor, 1974 illustration for Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast
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