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Tales from the Island of Serendip
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However, the greatest artist ever to work in black and white [even more than Rembrandt], is Goya in his extraordinary series of etchings. He has been called the first truly modern artist, prefiguring expressionism and surrealism. His technique was masterful.What really counts here - what blows away any comparison with the worthy illustrators above, is the depth and weight of humanism embodied here. Goya's world is horrific and beautiful. Goya reflects upon the human condition and his eye is unflinching.

 

 

 

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Edited by alanna
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Some beautiful work there; I have seem some of the Goya originals in Madrid and they are indeed masterful. Another couple of American artist that also evoke some great feelings of depth and beauty are John Sloan and Edward Hopper. Both from the early part of the last century.

 

You made some interesting comments about Photoshop; I was just wondering yesterday about the point of view of someone trained in art today in regard to this media. Is it as natural to use as a brush, a pen or chalk?

 

 

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Some beautiful work there; I have seem some of the Goya originals in Madrid and they are indeed masterful. Another couple of American artist that also evoke some great feelings of depth and beauty are John Sloan and Edward Hopper. Both from the early part of the last century.

 

You made some interesting comments about Photoshop; I was just wondering yesterday about the point of view of someone trained in art today in regard to this media. Is it as natural to use as a brush, a pen or chalk?

 

 

 

Sadly, I've never made it to the Prado. I'd especially like to see Velasquez Las Meninas. Which sets off an entirely different train of thought. Maybe I'll come back to it later.

 

Edward Hopper has always been my favourite American painter and I guess I'll get to him as well.

 

Regarding Photoshop - let me tie that into what I was saying about pen and ink [and what happens when you try to convert a black and white drawing into a full colour image in Photoshop.

 

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I love comics obviously, or I wouldn’t even be here. Might not even have chosen to become an artist [however mediocre].

 

But comic illustration is a language that has evolved to tell a story.

 

They are often done with great artistry and astonishing skill.

 

 

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In terms of technical accomplishment, the above examples would be hard to equal, let alone surpass.

 

 

By way of contrast, here are some of Balthus' illustrations for Wuthering Heights. Technically, they don’t compare to Frazetta et al. But they tap into the emotional substrata that make the novel so darkly compelling, and did more to fuel my fascination with pen and ink even than comic books I read as a child.

 

And that's because they don’t just tell the story. They embody what is underneath. They resonate with our own abiding sense of humanity. And to help bring this out I have interspersed them with some words from the writer John Berger [which, to clarify, have nothing to do with Emily Brontë!]

 

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“When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to suffer the experience of total loss. It was more than that. It was the period in which we suffered more total losses than in all the rest of our life put together.”

 

 

 

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“All stories are about battles, of one kind or another, which end in victory and defeat. Everything moves toward the end, when the outcome will be known. Poems, regardless of any outcome, cross the battlefields, tending the wounded, listening to the wild monologues of the triumphant or the fearful. They bring a kind of peace. Not by anaesthesia or easy reassurance, but by the promise that what has been experienced cannot disappear as if it had never been. Yet the promise is not of a monument. (Who, still on a battlefield, wants monuments?) The promise is that language has acknowledged, has given shelter, to the experience which demanded, which cried out”

 

 

 

 

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“When I was a child her sureness enraged me (regardless of the argument involved). It was a sureness that revealed - at least to my eyes - how, behind the bravado, she was vulnerable and hesitant, whereas I wanted her to be invincible. Consequently, I would contradict whatever it was she was being so certain about, in the hope we might discover something else, which we could question together with a shared confidence. Yet what happened, in fact, was that my counterattacks, made her more frail than she usually was, and the two of us would be drawn, helpless, into a malestrom of perdition and lamentation, silently crying out for an angel to come and save us. On no such occasion did an angel come.”

 

 

Balthus6.jpg

 

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