Fairytale Reservation 2014

Illustration for the Fairytale Reservation project (Заповедник сказок).

The Fairytale Reservation, in its fourth year now, is a collaboration between writers and illustrators. Writers submit stories, illustrators pick the stories to illustrate, and the whole resulting collection ends up published as a book. Fantastic stories of all kinds are encouraged.

I ended up illustrating an actual Christmas carol, believe it or not. I mean it as a genre, not a religious holiday thing - a story of redemption and new life triumphant that happens around the longest night at the turn of the year. Here an old ex-military officer who all but lost his will to live after his wife died, finds it again after deciding to play an impromptu, awkward Santa Claus for his grandchildren.

The book is going to come out in the middle of 2014. You can subscribe here: http://kroharat.livejournal.com/381309.html

Print testing

New prints in making. Strips of test printout laid over originals (and in a couple cases, previously calibrated printouts) for color matching by eye.

There is no other way to achieve color fidelity. No matter how good the hardware is, in the end you have to test the actual printout - and tweak, tweak, tweak. You can see my notes on the test strips, specifying what needs to be done to the spot colors and the source images overall.

Primary colors

The pink of sakura flowers is precisely the same pink of spring kimono fabric.

We also have all primaries - red, green and blue - here.

(Photographed in Jerusalem arboretum yesterday. Girl in kimono from here. )

Old books: Manual of Graphic Techniques

I have a number of old (and sometimes odd) books in my library.

Now, my library is heavily skewed towards books on art, picture books for children, art manuals and reference material. And I love used book shops, so I have accumulated a few old and mostly forgotten specimens of treatises on how to make art.

One of these is the Manual of Graphic Techniques for Architects, Graphic Designers, and Artists by Tom Porter, Bob Greenstreet and Sue Goodman. I had first encountered it in a friend's collection, and knew I had to find one of my own.

The Manual is not a single book, but rather a set of four numbered volumes. It was published in 1978.

This is probably the single most disorganized art manual I had ever seen. Its volumes are not thematic; it jumps from topic to topic like a wild antelope, covering bits and pieces on everything from what kinds of pen nibs there are and how to construct the quick-and-dirty perspective plots from an elevation to fine points of silk-screen printing and mixing plaster of Paris. Then it starts all over again, discussing other ways to do perspective plots, page layout for print, using a modelscope and ways to simulate halftone in ink drawings. And so on. Some topics (like silkscreening) are presented only once, but some (like perspective) get sections in several volumes. It is organized somewhat thematically (most of presentation technique is concentrated toward the end, most of the drawing toward the beginning), but is still haphazard enough to make finding something for quick reference a bit difficult.

But what it lacks in organization of material, it makes up in thoroughness.  It covers topics from abstract composition and type design to marbling paper, etching glass and tips on working with glue when making models.

There is little wonder that the contents are heavily leaning towards architect's interests - I was not able to locate Tom Porter with certainty, but Robert Greenstreet teaches at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning of the University of Wisconsin. But there is a lot of general drawing, plotting and presentation techniques. Not everything here is of use to an artist, but nearly every artist could find something of interest in this book.
Speaking of presentation, the book itself is beautifully designed. It forgoes long text for short, clear snippets with relevant illustrations, arranged in almost comic-book panel layout. The graphics are more reminiscent of technical manuals than of art books, all crisp black and white, relenting for only a few pages to color. Even the typeface the text is set in is reminiscent of a typewriter: each page feels like an architect's presentation. And the condensed but very readable layout matches the very practical content. This is not a theoretical book; it is hands-on and focused on you getting the job done.

Of course, any art manual dating from before the personal computer revolution inevitably reads a little like a history of forgotten techniques. There are a lot of pages in the Manual dedicated to methods which are no longer used or fallen into disfavor. But for me, it only adds to the charm. And just like knowing how to do calculations in one's head or on paper is slower than using an electronic calculator, but gives you a ground on which to base your intuitive grasp of arithmetic and predictive skill, knowing how to plot a perspective by hand greatly enhances your intuitive grasp of its laws. History is not dead; the past still influences the present with tradition, terminology, context.

That's why I love old books.

Africa

In 1903, the British government had offered the revitalized Zionist movement a strip of land in Uganda.

The Ottoman empire held what is now Israel, Jordan and parts of Syria under its rule. They weren't in any hurry to let the Jews live there, and large parts of Europe, especially Russia, also didn't like the Jews much. By early 1900s, another wave of pogroms in Russia sent the Zionist Congress seeking an urgent escape way, and they did consider Africa as a very possible venue. Some considered it as refuge  until the return to the actual historical Land of Israel could be made; some thought that any place to live in peace would be better than living in hostile countries, historical ties or not; and some thought that temporary solutions often become permanent, and agreeing to go to Uganda would de facto void their claim to the Land of Israel. Nonetheless, the Zionist Congress went as far as sending a investigatory expedition there, which found that the climate was suitable but the land was wild, and the local Maasai warlike. In 1905, they decided to decline the Uganda solution.

This tiny piece of history is still remembered in Israeli politics, however.  Uganda is tossed around whenever someone gets accused of not caring about the historical ties of the Jewish nation to the Land of Israel, and putting the importance on a safe haven alone.

So you occasionally get little puns like this final project of design student Yoav Gati, fusing the Israeli paraphernalia with African motifs. Not that it would really happen if the Jews had settled on the Mau Escarpment in what is now Kenya: they insisted on carrying their old colors and symbols everywhere, and though the orange-green-yellow-blur-violet flag is quite decorative, they'd probably still fly the same blue-and-white one anywhere.
 

I find it highly ironic, though, that Yoav's takes on the African-Israeli currency actually look better than the real modern Israeli currency:

Dancer lighting study

Lighting calculation for a picture in progress. This is easily the most complicated study of this kind I've done to date.

Drawn in black and grey pencil. The stroke direction follows the light angle: this is to keep track of the correct angle at all times.