Tuesday 4 September 2012

Silvy's Storm

Something a bit quirky from 2001. It was an attempt at a 'Gon' (Misashi Tanaka) type tale with no words, but minute detail in the surroundings. At the time I was completely bowled over by a book called 'Misha - A memoire of the Holocaust Years' (Mt. Ivy Press), by Misha Defonseca which was so shocking as it claimed to be autobiographical, a girl surviving the Second World War in forests kept alive by various packs of wolves. Must read it again! I decided to illustrate Misha as you will see, and the two projects merged quite a bit. There are some collaged pieces of rubbings as backgrounds and bits of twigs I placed straight on the scanner, looks like I was having fun.



























































































































2 comments:

  1. Silvy's Storm... wow, Chris, this is BRILLIANT! Really impressive art, and a moving story! I want more of this :)

    And the later watercolour for Misha: it's frenetic and wild and shocking. The gritty, distressing subject matter somehow (and I don't know how!) works perfectly with this style of art.

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    1. I remember looking to Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, which may as well have been called Understanding Images. You probably know it, unbelievably full of wisdom! He mentioned how an abstracted, cartoon face can carry a huge amount of range in emotion and meaning, which is steadily lost as more detail and realism is added. So if there is a harrowing story involving violence, war etc. like Spiegelman's Maus, the sparser the drawing, the more emotion is carried. Seemed counter-intuitive, but works! Just one of a thousand ideas in Understanding Comics!

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