CALAMITIES OF THE LAST PAUPER
- CALAMITIES OF THE LAST PAUPER - A pen and black ink drawing on an 11 x 14 size coquille board. It appears in the magazine, "FANTASY BOOK, Nov. 1982".
My library has a section devoted to collecting the works of artists that I admire. There are hundreds of them, from Murphy Anderson who painted covers for Planet Stories, to N.C. Wyeth whose artwork decorated lots of books and magazines during the Golden Age of illustration.
What I notice about most of them is that they developed a style and technique that was comfortable for them and stuck to it throughout their careers. Their individual and uniquely wonderful artwork identifies them and gives them the high reputation they deserve. I don't think I'd want Edd Cartier to change a thing about the way he went about doing his marvelous drawings. I can say the same thing about every one of the other hundreds of artists I like.
But there was one artist, Kelly Freas, who liked to change the tools he worked with to produce different kinds of visual effects in his artwork, especially in his black and white drawings. I also found myself looking for different ways of making pictures; using different kinds of paper, different kinds of tools, different kinds of styles. But not because I wanted to be another Freas, the idea just came naturally to me, that using a variety of tools would make the job of illustration more interesting.
This "Calamity" drawing is an example of my deliberately changing paper type and drawing style from that which I had used on a drawing I had done preceding this one. On that one I had used a stipple paper and a black color pencil for halftone shading. Changing styles and techniques did make the art of illustration more interesting and challenging for me.
Feel Free to add your Comments about this Artwork
Please do not abuse this feature or it will be removed, Keep it clean, keep it classy, keep it respectful