Illustrators Hangout

[Akito01]

Cabaret Voltaire - manga style

On the subject of music and art, I was rather impressed by the cover to Danger Mouse's 'The Grey Album', which featured cartoon renditions of The Beatles and Jay Z. I thought it was very clever, and set about to draw manga-style comic images of my own musical heroes. It began as a still incomplete experiment, of which this image of the band Cabaret Voltaire is one result. I much much cleaner version of this image was in the works using Flash, but I found I actually liked this rougher version much more; it felt a lot more in touch with the times of the immediate post-Punk era.

The people pictured are, in order, Stephen Mallinder, Richard H Kirk and Chris Watson.

Next to be done is an image of Cosey Fanni Tutti of Trobbing Gristle.

 

[Guest]

 

[Guest]

 

[Guest]

 

[Guest]

 

[whispering_surrender]

Those are just too cute! Thank you for sharing. Give her a big hug for me. I used to play a game like that with my daughter.

Whisp

 

[Akito01]

Cosey Fanni Tutti, manga style

Since this one was completed in Flash, it looks much cleaner than the previous image. The image is based around her time with Throbbing Gristle, thus the logo.

It's not easy trying to capture a real persons likeness with my drawing style (though it probably helps if one has never heard of these people before). In this case, I tried to get down her strong chin and hair style, though in most other respects she looks pretty much like all my other manga-style women. Of course, female characters are a lot more fun to draw anyway.

Although still incomplete pencil roughs, the next drawings from this series will be of a slightly later-era Cabaret Voltaire (just Mallinder and Kirk), and Genesis P Orridge of Throbbing Gristle.

 

[Guest]

 

[My Erotic Tail]

Wow some great work coming out here...

hey rino~

 

[Guest]

 

[Guest]

 

[Guest]

 

[Guest]

 

[McKenna]

.

 

[Guest]

 

[McKenna]

.

 

[Guest]

 

[Justa375]

I am of the opinion that visual art in literature is intrusive. Its fine - even essential - for children's literature becasue it serves the dual purpose of communicating meaning and teaching. In juvenile literature, illustrations become less important but can still aid a young reader in composing an imaginative picture of the narrative.
I think the best literature - like all of the best art - is a subjective expression of the artist that should be specific enough to communicate meaning, while allowing for interpretation by the patrons of the art.
The best writing paints broad strokes and outlines. It pulls back the veil but does not completely expose. It is up to the reader to fill in the details. Its in this murky area of filling in the details that a reader, in effect, enters into dialogue with the writer. And good literature is dialogue, I think. As a writer, particularly a writer of fiction, you want to invite a reader into your imagination but allow a degree of freedom to enable the reader to employ their imagination so the two realms meld and one manipulates the other.
The reason I believe visual images in literary art are intrusive is that the introduction of images restricts the scope of the reader's imagination. It strikes me (almost) as a form of tyranny - the imposition of the author's intentions and ideas rather than the invitation to dialogue and interpretation.
That having been said, I do think visual art can be very evocative/provocative standing alone, or in conjunction with words in the form of comics or visual stories. The human mind is more open to images (pictographs, heiroglyphics, modern advertising) than it is to abstract interpretation. Letters and words, numbers and symbols, are abstract. Their meaning is dependent on context, current usage and culture, etc. Writing is more suggestive than it is concrete communication. This is true of visual art also - suggestion of meaning - but visual art makes no bones about it and is candid in its approach. Writing is a Trojan Horse, in a way. It appeals to the mind but desires to to change the soul once inside.
This abstractive quality is the danger of written communication, but it is also the beauty of writing. In our imagination, we are always manipulating words and numbers (stock prices, blood pressure readings, bank balances, weight gain or loss, politicians speeches, newspaper articles) to bring us comfort or to provoke us to action. This abstraction or interpretive quality of literary art is also its beauty in that it engages our imagination and a subjective expression of an author can become a subjective interpretation of a reader.
I love good drawings, pictures, paintings, sculptures. The have a remarkable ability to pentrate the mind to reach the soul directly. They can strike like a bolt of lightening to our very core. Literature is more crafty, while no less evocative, in its approach. Its effects are often cumulative, progressive and lasting.
I'm sorry I've gone on so long but it is a topic that holds great interest for me. I guess I should note that I am a voracious reader, a writer and a recreational artist. Writing and drawing have their own separate thrall and I enjoy them in different ways. But, for me, there is nothing that can enhance the beauty, the possibility, the invitation of a page crammed full of words. My vote is to keep the pictures out of the stories. Allow the stories to stand alone. And, allow the pictures to stand alone.
Phew!

 

[McKenna]

.

 

[My Erotic Tail]

I disagree~

Take literary Art and create images is wonderful
in the since that well...lets take lord of the rings
for example, the book is marvelous in its self
but the various movies and images that have
come from the imagination of the literary Artist
mixed with Graphic Artist has only made it better
and with different movies, images, concepts of
meaning and this is only one example of how Art
can aid in a literary scripture.

I don't know if you have seen part three of Lord
of the rings, but first let me say I was made to
read it way back in school so I did get images
from reading it and always reflect back on them.
But now there is computer graphics and my god
the images and cretures they have created with
Art, surpasses anything the human mind will
conjure up in one read. They had spent years
making these images and ideas that went into
it are awesome. Eagles attacking dragons and
those non human charactors are works of art.

So I disagree with just literature, the combination
can be mind boggling. and very entertaining. It
also allows the literary artist a chance to show their
perspective of what they mean in words.
I write and I draw, I love to mix the two...smile

Well thats my two cents....thanks...Art

 

[Guest]

 

[cantdog]

Justa, how wonderful to hear a fresh voice. You are as the crocus in the springtime, believe me.

What we need, then, is to collaborate on a graphic-art story!

I love this idea.

-----

But of course it wasn't what you said at all.

-----
I think we have to factor in the idea that here we are, aren't we?, on the web. Web publishing, as people point out to each other all the time here, is different from the confines of a book. The format in which my stories appear here, with no tabs, and all that extra paragraphing, would be wearing in a book. And the opportunity exists here to add the visual so easily.

I still agree with McKenna (I find it better always to agree with McKenna, unless there is a cogent reason otherwise; things go so much smoother) that the illustrated story, even on the web, is more in tune with itself than the photo-illustrated story.

Anything more wordy than captions drags a photo set down, and photos never do a piece of wiritng much of a service; they seem tacked on.

Sooo.....

Howsabout more calls out there for illustrations? We are masturbating here! Making drawings for ourselves, and pathetically sticking a copy in this thread like a street corner fille, catching the interest of strangers with long-drawn sighs. Help us! Let us illustrate your works!!

cantdog

 

[Guest]

 

[Guest]

 

[cantdog]

Yeah, please, pretty please, Justa?

I'll give you some of my steak au poivre.

cantdog