Sunday, November 7, 2010

After-Woods

Please forgive the dreadful pun! Another illustration-in-progress from the book I'm working on. In this scene, the morning after the storm, the old man is carving a flute from wood recovered from the tree that was struck by lightning.

Acrylic on text & maps on canvas, 8x11" detail of the full painting, which is 14x18".
Please click for a closer view-- do you see the hidden cat? (And the not-so-hidden flute?)

For The Old Man and the Cat, by Anthony Holcroft, to be published in 2011 by Penguin NZ.

14 comments:

Nancy Bea Miller said...

I like it! Pun on!

Anonymous said...

Quite beautiful!!

On a professional note...Do you know if it is a common and acceptable practice to show paintings from a book that is being published by a publisher soon? Or one that an artist is "shopping around?"

Thanks for your thoughts!

Coreopsis said...

The pun is just fine, and the illustration is marvelous--luminous! I really really like it.

To Susan: I don't know professionally, but I don't think that one should show paintings from a book that's going to be published--it is "publishing" to put them on the web, and the publisher has already bought those rights.

Morph Waffle said...

So beautiful and I like the pun.

dex mission said...

Wow...very nice. Thanks for sharing.

Curious Art said...

Thanks so much for the kind words, folks! I already responded to Susan, but for other readers, here are my thoughts on showing work on the web:

I would only post images from a book under contract after checking with the publisher to make sure they're okay with it. And then only with credit to the book & publisher. If they are smart they'll appreciate the media presence, but everybody's different. Look at the way Warner Brothers goes bonkers over music on YouTube, versus the way many other music publishers welcome the publicity.

If it's being shopped around, I wouldn't worry about posting a couple of illos (in fact I would highly recommend it!), but probably wouldn't show the whole project in a public forum. But that's just me... I'm not sure there is anything really wrong with it so long as you don't mislead anyone about the situation (for instance if you mention the blog or whatever in your cover letter). Things are changing rapidly from the days of my youth when showing a book to more than one publisher at a time was considered absolute anathema!

One other note: definitely do not post the story itself without the author's permission!!

Curious Art said...

Oh yes, & it's a good idea to use images that are lower resolution than the ones you'd use for print, & be sure to mention somewhere on the site that the images are under copyright.

WilsonW said...

Wonderful textures and rendering! Great job! SO glad I found you on IF!

gatheringwonder said...

such fabulous art work - wonderful style. come and play at Whimsical Wednesday. More here:
http://quotidianjournal.blogspot.com/p/whimsical-wednesday.html

Elizabeth Parsons said...

i love how you use the scanned pages as background - and thank you for the instrucitons on how you do this- I've wanted to paint on ephemera for quite some time. I've tried the real stuff- collage it down and then paint matt medium over it and used watercolors - some success but not quite what I was looking for - i'll try acrylics next.

poppylocke said...

Absolutely gorgeous colours and detailing!

Angela Matteson said...

hee hee, I love the pun! This is so gorgeous! Your work is always so rich with color and texture.

Michelle Henninger said...

Gorgeous piece! I love the rich texture!

Ken said...

Awesome painting!