vince’s ear

L. Frank Baum, author of the Wizard of Oz books once complained that his books were better than Lewis Carroll’s Alice books because the stories in the fantasy world of Oz actually meant something while the Alice books were just nonsense. It appears the joke was on him, as the books such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass literally were literary nonsense. The style Lewis Carroll used was all about playing with language and logic with a careful balance of sense and nonsensical elements. This type of literature therefore knows no limits but the imagination, which we all know has no boundaries. This gives us wonderful characters which, with the help of illustrators, come to life on the page.

Alice was first published in 1865 after inspiration from Alice Pleasance Liddell and others to write some of the stories Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) had told them. In 1871 Through the Looking Glass And What Alice found there was published which also included illustrations by John Tenniel. The original early Alice’s Adventures Under Ground manuscript is published in 1886- with drawings by Lewis Carroll. The Nursery Alice is published in 1890 meant to be a shortened version for “children from nought to five,” and included colored Tenniel plates. In 1998 one of the surviving first editions was sold at auction for $1.5 million making it the most expensive children’s books ever traded. This would be topped when J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books sold for $3.9 million nine years later.

In 2000 American McGee’s Alice is developed by Rogue Entertainment and features our character in a story based on a merging of the Alice books. The excellent artwork is supplemented by the music by Chris Vrenna, the drummer for rock band Nine Inch Nails, to give the game play an eerie atmosphere. Many movies have been made from 1903 to 2004, most notably the Disney version.

Few classics have had the illustrative scope as the Alice books through history. Since it was written in 1865 hundreds, if not thousands, of publications have been made with the illustrative talents of hundreds of artists gracing the pages. We all know the famous Sir John Tenniel version, the first to illustrate Alice, and then the legendary Arthur Rackham gave us his version in 1907 (see above). Did you know even Salvador Dali did some Alice illustrations? Many wonderful illustrations of Wonderland can be found and they all have their distinct styles and qualities.

See also Illustration, and Spotlight on Arthur Rackham.

Read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Gordon Robinson illustrator), and Through The Looking Glass on Project Gutenberg.

One look at one of Sidney’s Sime’s wonderful illustrations and I was intrigued. His fantastical imagery is superb enough to adequately complement the writings of any great author.

Hailing from England, Sidney Sime lived and worked in the Golden Age of Illustration along with other illustrator greats as Sir John Tenniel and Edmund Dulac. He was even born in the same year as the legendary Arthur Rackham. Educated at the Liverpool School of Art, Sime illustrated for such humourous London magazines as Pick-Me-Up and later for the more prestigious Pall Mall and The Idler. He even purchased and co-edited The Idler after a rich uncle left him a sizable fortune.

In just under two years, however, The Idler went out of business. But, with the help of his dead uncle’s estate, the illustrator still had no troubles staying financially afloat himself. Without the need to work, he found the time to work on his illustrations with an ever enhanced fervor.

Though magazine work was his forte, Sime would catch the eye of a certain up and coming Irish aristocrat author. Lord Dunsany at the time was only 26 years old and was working on The Gods of Pegana, and knew of only one illustrator alive who could possibly complete the task of effectively illustrating the work. Lord Dunsany approached the artist and eight plates were completed for the book, which was published a year later. This started a fifteen year collaboration between the two.

Lord Dunsany was so impressed with the illustrations he would eventually write an entire book based on the Sime artworks called the Book of Wonder. Besides providing frontispieces for two other books, Dunsany’s were the only books Sime illustrated. When Sidney Sime died in 1941, his works were left to his wife who later created a memorial in Surrey, England.

“The Golden Age of Illustration,” is the period from the 1880s until right after World War I. New technology allowed illustrators to use vibrant colors, and produce clearer, better pictures. Newspapers, magazines and book publishers all sought the best of the trade to give the consumer what they wanted: witty cartoons, comical parodies and satires, and entertaining pictures to go along with their reading. And gave it to them they did indeed. The people ate it up, all while making celebrities of some illustrator greats such as Howard Pyle and N.C. Wyeth.

Around this time in Europe the print media was dominant as well and creative illustrators also found themselves in the spotlight. In France Edmund Dulac was delighting children with his illustrations such as Hans Christian Anderson stories, and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. John Tenniel was popular for his cartoons and caricatures for the London magazine Punch, as well as illustrating many books including Alice’s Adventure’s In Wonderland. England also gave us Arthur Rackham.

Rackham was mostly known for doing children’s stories but he also did some work such as a Midsummer Night’s Dream and other Shakespeare works, and Wagner’s Ring of the Niblung. I was able to find a version of the Ring of the Niblung with full Rackham illustrations for you here.

As I said in the post about Old Book Illustrations, there are numerous resources available to you for finding decent illustrations, especially if they’re in the public domain. One of my favorite sites for surfing public domain material is Project Gutenberg. You can find their main site at projectgutenberg.org. You’ll see a search field to your left which will search thousands of books that have been scanned, including illustrations. There’s a treasury of good books available. You’ll find some Rackham illustrated ones such as Aesop’s Fables, with several color illustrations, as well as a whole bunch of good black and white ones too. He also did A Christmas Carol, English Fairy Tales, and Tales From Shakespeare. And they’re all worth checking out.

So I could go on about Arthur Rackham but you’ll probably find out more about him for yourself, just look at the books above. His illustrations speak for themselves.

I can’t get enough of illustration. I hope you’re getting your fill too, you can read the other posts Illustration and the Illustrations of Edmund Dulac (check it out). You don’t have to take my word for it; there are oodles of illustration resources at your fingertips. I’ve been getting into the public domain for some time now, and it’s absolutely filled with images of all kinds for you to use any way you see fit. Of course I have the responsibility to tell you to make sure any images you use, (outside of “fair use,” i.e.- viewing, or teaching about) you have the right to (copyrights, and so forth- depending on where you live).

Now, the internet being a reference source is akin to taking a card catalog and throwing all the cards on the floor for you to sift through. If you’re not sure exactly what you’re looking for, it’s not so easy to find it! Know what I mean? Luckily there are organizations who take the time to categorize and showcase the public domain material for you.

If you’re not looking for anything in particular (and have the idle time to browse), a good source is wikipedia. I call it “the people’s encyclopedia:” by users, for users. Most of the images they use are already in the PD. If you go to their images in the public domain database you’ll find thousands of images in alphabetical order from everything from photographs to maps to illustrations. That’s where I ran into Edmund Dulac. So you can find book illustrations and artwork of all kinds in there.

You can just google “illustrations in the public domain” or look in wikipedia if that’s what you’re looking for. But you have some better options. One of my recent discoveries is a site called Old Book Illustrations. The name says it all, and its loaded with illustrations and most importantly information on them. One of the drawbacks to using wikipedia or other databases is you rarely are given much information on the image in question. You may find a decent picture, but it may not even tell you the author or artist, let alone explain what’s going on in the picture.

Old Book Illustrations takes care of the misinformation for you. They have a running blog that seems to keep updated several times a week with a new entries on seemingly random illustrations. The illustrations come from books of all kinds such as old encyclopedias, to science and technology journals (pretty comical way back then), and fiction and non-fiction alike. The blog entries will show the image, and give either an explanation of it or an entry from the original book. I like this one about a Monkey and a Miser, from “La Fontaine’s Fables.”

Another great source for books is Project Gutenberg. This database is filled with thousands of books belonging in the public domain available for download in a zip file, or html, or you can just read it on your screen right then and there. I’ve stumbled across plenty of nicely illustrated classics there with all original illustrations. You can find Aesop’s Fables, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and whatever else you want to find, I’m sure it’s there.

Maybe these resources can help you find some decent illustrations. Happy hunting.

Technorati Tags: illustration, illustrator, john tenniel, edmund dulac

Surfing the image archives in the Public Domain can be very tedious and uneventful. Mostly you find pictures of people long dead and forgotten, some famous but you probably wouldn’t read about anyway, and a lot of obsolete maps and whatnot. But after a while you’re bound to strike oil, and struck I did in the form of Edmund Dulac. I came across a good dozen or so images of his illustrations and I was enthralled to say the least.

I don’t recall ever hearing about him before but looking at his pictures they struck as very familiar. Had I known about him before I would have included him in my post about Illustration in general. The pictures remind me of some well illustrated books I remember reading as a child. Come to think of it, he very well could have graced the pages of my bedtime stories.

Edmund Dulac was born in France in 1882 and was popular during the “Golden Age of Illustration” of the early 20th century. Some illustrator greats of that era were Sir John Tenniel , Howard Pyle, Beatrix Potter and others. Akin to such artists as Wassily Kandinsky later on, he started studying law before eventually getting bored with it and turning to art. Winning prizes for art competitions early in his career certainly motivated him to pursue what he truly wanted to do. When he was 22 he was commissioned to illustrate the books of the Brontë sisters. This would start a prolific and successful career.

He went on to partner with galleries to illustrate books and sell the paintings out of the gallery. Some books from this arrangement were stories from the Arabian Nights, Sleeping Beauty, and the Poems of Edgar Allen Poe. The illustration above was from a story I remember called The Princess and the Pea by Hans Christian Anderson, where a pea was under all those mattresses and she could still feel it, proving she was indeed a true princess.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and I think illustrations like these add value a thousand-fold to each story. At the end of this post I’ve added a link to the other illustration images. Some of the others include “The Mermaid,” “The Garden of Paradise,” and “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” and are definitely worth checking out.

My recent interest in illustration goes hand in hand with my personal goal of illustrating some of the classic books in the public domain. I plan on attempting a shot at illustrating “Alice’s Adventure’s In Wonderland,” and “Aesop’s Fables” among other things. I just recently picked up a pen for the first time in a while; I’ve mainly been using the brush for the most part recently when at all. So, we’ll see how they turn out.

Although, my most likely method would be to actually paint the illustrations on canvas as many illustrators do, and scan the canvases as needed, to make prints or to resize. I’ll keep you informed of my progress.

Also see Illustration

Image Gallery at Wikipedia of Edmund Dulac

Technorati Tags: illustration, illustrator, art

Book illustrations should never be considered a sideline or a part of the background of the book. Good illustrations should be just as good as the story if not better than the actual reading material. Perhaps this would worry the author that the illustrations would detract from the writing. Sometimes the illustrations are what make a book.

But authors needn’t worry that much because the pictures can complement the story nicely and add quality to the material. In the case of younger readers the pictures are an integral part of the book. Illustrations of children’s books are valuable introductions to art, and could inspire lives of artistic creativity.

Classic Storytelling

Ever since Gutenberg invented the printing press children have been picking up volumes of classic stories good or bad to look at the pictures. Many young imaginative children, including a certain blog writer you know, would make their own stories up in their heads as they go. These were the best stories.

When we read Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland as children the depictions of all the strange characters led us through the tale and allowed us to put ourselves in the story. Zany as the story itself is, you can expect some zanier pictures. The one at the top of this page is by the book’s original illustrator Sir John Tenniel, whose interpretations of the story are probably the most famous. This delightful fellow above is the Mad Hatter. His hat says “In this style 10/6″ meaning it costs 10 shillings and sixpence.

Another good version is by Arthur Rackham, who also did the Brothers Grimm, English Fairy Tales, Shakespeare works, some King Arthur illustrations and much more. Ignoring the danger of going too off subject, I will take this opportunity to plug some fine video game art. In this modern age you can actually be in the Alice in Wonderland story, such as in American McGee’s 2000″Alice” computer game. Coupled with the music of Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Vrenna, the eerie artwork makes for a good experience.

Animals In Clothes, and Morals

We all know of Aesop’s timeless fables, personifying animals and always teaching a lesson. The illustrations do help to, well illustrate the point. Making little cautionary stories with interesting pictures to accompany them has long been a way to trick kids into heeding the morals, which come as kind of subliminal. these fables have an almost infinite amount of publishings and just as many illustrators, and are always fun to look at.

Another good “animals as people” is the classic Old Mother Westwind books of the early 20th century. You can read one volume here, illustrated by George Kerr. Once again, there’s usually a moral behind the stories but they always had interesting illustrations to go with them.

American Illustrators

No article about illustration would be complete without the mention of Howard Pyle. Born in 1853, he illustrated for magazines such as Harper’s Weekly, taught at Drexel University, Philadelphia, and would influence many of America’s most notable illustrators. Some of his most famous works are the Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates, and the famous picture the Nation Makers.

One of Pyle’s students was Newell Convers Wyeth of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. N.C. Wyeth was the father of Andrew Wyeth and the grandfather of Jamie Wyeth, one of the most prominent family of painters in the Philadelphia region. N.C. Wyeth was noted mainly for his illustrations doing such work as Treasure Island.

Scary Stories, Even Scarier Pictures

No book illustrations, however great and classic, compare to the art in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Illustrated by Stephen Gammell, this gem’s pictures would haunt everybody to set eyes on them. In grade school, you would be lucky to be able to take this out of the library because it was constantly out. There were three books, and one compilation of the three, and told ghost stories, urban legends, tales of woe, and even morbid jokes and songs.

The best part without a doubt are the pictures. The one above is the story of a bride who played hide and seek on her weeding day and got trapped in a trunk only to be found years later. Some good ones were the story of a dream, a big toe that a kid found, floating heads, strange occurrences, and my all time favorite, the story of a scarecrow named Harold.

Every Boy’s Dream

I’ll finish this article off with a little unknown gem called The Magical Drawings of Mooney B. Finch. This was one of my favorites growing up, as was I’m sure of many others who have been lucky enough to read it. It’s the story of a child who discovers that everything he draws on paper comes to life. What kid wouldn’t kill for that ability?!

He draws a bubblegum machine and there it is, he draws a big green dragon to be his friend, and his wish is the crayon’s command. Of course, as with every super power, there are serious drawbacks. The town folk catch wind of this and ceaselessly seek the favor of the boy. He gives them a treasure chest of gold, a limousine, even a simple comb for a fellow with a bad hair day. The boy eventually gets fed up with all this materialism and has enough of it, destroying all the drawings. I believe before he retires he draws himself a tiny dragon on a leash for a keepsake from his little adventure.

I think its books like these and many others, too many to include here that have sparked my curiosity of art. At such a young and impressionable age, a young child’s picture books are worth their weight in gold.

Technorati Tags: illustration, illustrator, books, Tenniel, Pyle, Wyeth

See also The Illustrations of Edmund Dulac

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