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Low Horizons, Big Skies
I am the horizonyou ride towards, the thing you can never lasso Margaret Atwood I love it when the night sky makes me feel insignificant. Colleen Hoover | It Ends With Us Header illustration made with Midjourney using the prompt: alien arrival, big sky, low horizon, silhouette of city along skyline, interesting cloudscape
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Sunsets and Sunrises in Art and Illustration
I can’t be sure which of these illustrations depict sunrise and which sunset, but it’s funny how sometimes you still get a sense of the hour of day. How do artists do that?
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Clouds In Art and Storytelling
“I like the clouds… the clouds that pass… there… there… the wonderful clouds!” Charles Baudelaire, the stranger “As a cloud crosses the sun, silence falls on London; and falls on the mind. Effort ceases. Time flaps on the mast. There we stop; there we stand. Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame. Where there is nothing, Peter…
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Symbolism of Bridges and Rainbows
Why bridges and rainbows? What have they got to do with each other? Well, the archetypal bridge is an arc shape, like the rainbow. Symbolically, bridges and rainbows can be similar.
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Aurora In Art
Aurora are works of art in their own right. Of course artists have been reproducing aurora in paintings and illustration since it was possible. Below are some examples of aurora in art, including various media. It’s interesting to see how the aurora can even be reproduced using woodcut.
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A Woggle of Witches by Adrienne Adams Analysis
A Woggle of Witches is a picture book written and illustrated by American storyteller Adrienne (“Dean”) Adams in 1971. In total, Adams wrote six of her own books; mostly they illustrated for other writers. Adrienne Adams was a prolific illustrator through the 1960s and beyond, and a two-time winner of a Caldecott Medal (1960 and 1962). Adams was born in…
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Owl At Home by Arnold Lobel Analysis
Owl At Home is a 1975 picture book written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel. The book comprises five very short early reader stories about a kind, anxious and lonely owl. These owl stories, along with the frog and toad stories come from the second phase of Lobel’s creative career, in which he tapped into his own emotions and acknowledged he…
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Storms, Cyclones and Wind in Art and Storytelling
The wind blew as ’twad blawn its last; The rattling showers rose on the blast; The speedy gleams the darkness swallow’d; Loud, deep, and lang, the thunder bellow’d: That night, a child might understand, The Deil had business on his hand. Robert Burns In some parts of the world, wind is associated with a certain time of year. In parts…
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Illustrating Rain, Droplets and Rainclouds
A collection of art featuring rain, some realistic, some cartoonish, some stylised.
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Wait Till The Moon Is Full by Wise Brown and Williams Analysis
Wait Till the Moon Is Full is a 1948 picture book written by Margaret Wise Brown with pictures by Garth Williams. The story has carnivalesque elements, a gentle utopian storyline and a well-drawn mother figure, who is safe and warm but who also joins her son in his imaginative play.
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The Half-Skinned Steer by Annie Proulx Short Story Analysis
“The Half-Skinned Steer” by Annie Proulx is, as said by Mary Lee Settle “as real as a pickup truck, as ominous as a fairy tale.”
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What Colour Is Your Sun?
Different cultures view the sun differently. Ask a Western child to draw the sun and they will draw it yellow. Ask a Japanese child to draw the sun and they will draw it red. Our closest star is ‘actually’ white. I grew up in New Zealand and I drew it yellow. But when I lived as an exchange student in Japan,…
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Moon Symbolism In Storytelling
OVERSIZED MOONS There is a rule that moons in picture books must be bigger than the look in real life, from anywhere on Earth. I didn’t fully realise this was a rule until a beta reader for Midnight Feast asked me why my moon was so small. In fact, the moon was the ‘correct’ size, but then I realised why…
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The Colour Of Sky In Art And Illustration
In Western cultures at least, little kids first learn to draw with a blue or (black for night-time) sky, and a yellow orb for the sun. In reality, sky can be many different colours.
