I came across David Wiesner’s book Tuesday in my illustration class about a year ago. I loved the book and have since gotten it for a number of kids in the family, including me. It won the Caldecott award for children’s illustrated books in 1992 from the American Library Association.
I suppose I’m dating myself, but I first saw a version of Le blanc-seing (The Blank Check) as the cover for the Styx album “The Grand Illusion” years before I read Understanding Comics. For this picture Magritte is playing with perception and the techniques we use all the time as illustrators. It’s a classic case of knowing the rules of perception well enough to know just how to break them. The two principles he plays with the most are occlusion and closure. (See the Leyendecker analysis for more on closure.)
This is a personal painting by Henning Ludvigsen. You can see a larger version of it here, as well as a step-by-step of its development at his web site. For this analysis I’ll talk about several things, including composition, eye guidance, values, process, and texture. The first question to ask about it, though, is what’s going on? What is the point of the illustration? While there is certainly information about character and hints at a story, my take is that the painting is most about setting a mood and presenting a concept: that of a bleeding wall.
Strangers In Paradise is a long-running series, now complete, by Terry Moore. His artwork is among my favorite in comics, so it’s past time that that I get to one of his pieces. (I almost chose one of his Art Nouveau covers, but I picked this one instead since I did an analysis of Mucha so recently.)
Terry Moore did the inks, with colors by Brian Miller.
Daybreak was the 20th century’s single most popular print in America. According to Alma Gilbert, the House of Art (which handled the printing) estimated that 1 out of every 4 homes in America had a copy. When I first started reading up on this painting I constantly ran across the term “Dynamic Symmetry.” It was the system that Parrish had used to lay out the composition and arrange the elements. When I looked around for a good description of it, I didn’t turn up much. However, Jay Hambidge’s book on it from 1920 was available through Amazon, so I ordered it. This is, I believe, the same book that Parrish would have read on it.
Since Dynamic Symmetry is so important to the composition, I’m going to focus on that rather than on palette or other topics.