The Last Night of the Festival
- THE LAST NIGHT OF THE FESTIVAL - A black ink and black color pencil drawing on an 11 x 14 size coquille board. It illustrates the story, "On the Last Night of the Festival of the Dead" by Darrell Schweitzer, in "Weird Tales, Sum.1998
I consider story illustrations to have two purposes; the first of course is to represent a part of the narrative, the second is to be an independent work of art.
Incredibly, during the 1920s-1950s Golden Age of illustration, book and magazine cover paintings and story illustrations were not considered to be "art," most of the original artwork was discarded after publication, thrown into the trash-bin. How sad.
But around 1965, just about the time I started getting interested in the illustration profession, fans of comic books and science fiction began to seriously collect the original artwork of their favorite illustrators. And that of course created a monetary value for illustration art where once it had none, or was at best a minimal amount.
By the time my artwork started getting into print lady luck had managed to create a substantial market for original illustrations, and when I went into it full time, the sale of my original drawings made up the greater percentage of my income. Without those lucrative sales I doubt that my income from the publishers alone, would have been enough to sustain me as a freelance illustrator..
So, while I have "accentuated the positive, eliminated the negative, and not messed with Mr. In-between," it is amazing how the direction of my life has been mostly governed by factors over which I had no control.
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