9 inches by 12 inches
acrylic paint and ink on watercolor paper
April 26, 2012
Monday, April 30, 2012
HEART OF DARKNESS, page 002
Title: Marlow sat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the mizzen-mast. He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and, with his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembled an idol.
9 inches by 12 inches
acrylic paint and ink on watercolor paper
April 26, 2012
9 inches by 12 inches
acrylic paint and ink on watercolor paper
April 26, 2012
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
HEART OF DARKNESS, page 001
If you're impatient, the illustration for page 001 of Heart of Darkness is the third one in this post, down near the bottom. If you'd like to know more, read on.
I'm often a slow starter but a brutal finisher. Heart of Darkness was at times agonizing to conceptualize because this is the first time I've created something specifically for publication and profit. That kind of thing can sometimes mess with my head, and part of the struggle is fighting back against worries about expectations and finding ways to once again follow that inner voice. Finishing this first illustration, for page 001, took me over a week and three tries before I finally felt like I got it right. And even then, what I thought was "right" turned out to be wrong at the last minute. I'm following my gut instinct instead, as I always have.
First, some details. This is how it's going to work. I'm going to create 100 completely new illustrations to accompany Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. These illustrations will be collected and published, with Conrad's complete text of the novel, in a beautiful new edition of the book in late in 2013 by my publisher, the esteemed Tin House Books. Once again, I will be creating these illustrations in a linear manner, starting with the first page and ending with the last. This time, however, I will not be creating one illustration each day. That almost cost me my sanity and my life with the Moby-Dick project and I will never walk down that road again. I'll finish the last piece for Heart of Darkness some time this year, but I anticipate taking most of 2012 to finish these so you won't see a new piece of art posted on this blog every single day. Additionally, these illustrations will be far more focused, unified and consistent, unlike my Moby-Dick illustrations where I allowed myself to explore a wide variety of styles and media. Finally, while I will be using a variety of media again, these illustrations will all be on thick white watercolor paper, not found paper.
I will be posting the first 50 to 60 illustrations on this blog and on my web site Spudd 64, but I will keep the remaining 40 or 50 under wraps until a few months after the book is out. So I suppose you'll have to acquire the illustrated version to see how I deal with "The horror! The horror!" I do hope you will though. I've been obsessing, pleasantly, about that piece for quite some time now.
On to the art. As I mentioned, I created three versions of the illustration for the first page, trying very hard to pin down just how I wanted this visual journey to proceed. Ultimately, like with my Moby-Dick illustrations, this is how I, Matt Kish, see the novel. This is what it means to me. This is my version, and is as much about me as it is about Conrad and Marlow and Kurtz. I had a remarkably clear vision of this immediately, but I doubted myself. I forced myself to explore other avenues. I second-guessed my intentions and I worried, as embarrassing as that is to admit, what people would think. Up until the very last minute, seconds before typing this post, I was in flux. Finally, I decided it had to be mine and I knew which way to go.
So this was my first attempt. I am happy with some elements of this piece, but it is far too subtle and does not reproduce well digitally at all. I knew this would be more of a study than a final illustration the moment I completed it.
Title: A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless...
8.75 inches by 10 inches
acrylic paint and ink on watercolor paper
April 15, 2012
I completed what would become the final version next, so I'll share that at the end. After a few days of doubt and corrosive worry, I pushed myself into trying something vastly different. Heart of Darkness is a tremendously atmospheric and psychological novel and I began to worry that any overly precise drawings would rob the work of its subtlety. I was concerned they would anchor it too greatly in some kind of specific reality that would in the end do the book a disservice. Thinking about how to represent this darkness and horror viscerally and visually, but in some kind of less direct and specific way, I created this piece last night.
Title: A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless...
9 inches by 12 inches
acrylic paint and ink on watercolor paper
April 23, 2012
And I liked it a great deal. I still do. But it really is not true to my own vision. It's a grudging concession. It's what I worried I was SUPPOSED to do. I agonized over this, especially since I like working loose like this. Finally, I had to admit to myself that the 10 illustrations I created last summer for the book, and the second version of page 001 I had created, were simply much closer to how I see this story in my head. And that, whether viewers liked it or not, I had to be true to that or this project would take more from me than it would ever give. So here, fully of very sharp and precise shapes and lines, is the official illustration for page 001 of Heart of Darkness...
Title: A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless...
8.75 inches by 12 inches
acrylic paint and ink on watercolor paper
April 19, 2012
I'm often a slow starter but a brutal finisher. Heart of Darkness was at times agonizing to conceptualize because this is the first time I've created something specifically for publication and profit. That kind of thing can sometimes mess with my head, and part of the struggle is fighting back against worries about expectations and finding ways to once again follow that inner voice. Finishing this first illustration, for page 001, took me over a week and three tries before I finally felt like I got it right. And even then, what I thought was "right" turned out to be wrong at the last minute. I'm following my gut instinct instead, as I always have.
First, some details. This is how it's going to work. I'm going to create 100 completely new illustrations to accompany Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. These illustrations will be collected and published, with Conrad's complete text of the novel, in a beautiful new edition of the book in late in 2013 by my publisher, the esteemed Tin House Books. Once again, I will be creating these illustrations in a linear manner, starting with the first page and ending with the last. This time, however, I will not be creating one illustration each day. That almost cost me my sanity and my life with the Moby-Dick project and I will never walk down that road again. I'll finish the last piece for Heart of Darkness some time this year, but I anticipate taking most of 2012 to finish these so you won't see a new piece of art posted on this blog every single day. Additionally, these illustrations will be far more focused, unified and consistent, unlike my Moby-Dick illustrations where I allowed myself to explore a wide variety of styles and media. Finally, while I will be using a variety of media again, these illustrations will all be on thick white watercolor paper, not found paper.
I will be posting the first 50 to 60 illustrations on this blog and on my web site Spudd 64, but I will keep the remaining 40 or 50 under wraps until a few months after the book is out. So I suppose you'll have to acquire the illustrated version to see how I deal with "The horror! The horror!" I do hope you will though. I've been obsessing, pleasantly, about that piece for quite some time now.
On to the art. As I mentioned, I created three versions of the illustration for the first page, trying very hard to pin down just how I wanted this visual journey to proceed. Ultimately, like with my Moby-Dick illustrations, this is how I, Matt Kish, see the novel. This is what it means to me. This is my version, and is as much about me as it is about Conrad and Marlow and Kurtz. I had a remarkably clear vision of this immediately, but I doubted myself. I forced myself to explore other avenues. I second-guessed my intentions and I worried, as embarrassing as that is to admit, what people would think. Up until the very last minute, seconds before typing this post, I was in flux. Finally, I decided it had to be mine and I knew which way to go.
So this was my first attempt. I am happy with some elements of this piece, but it is far too subtle and does not reproduce well digitally at all. I knew this would be more of a study than a final illustration the moment I completed it.
Title: A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless...
8.75 inches by 10 inches
acrylic paint and ink on watercolor paper
April 15, 2012
I completed what would become the final version next, so I'll share that at the end. After a few days of doubt and corrosive worry, I pushed myself into trying something vastly different. Heart of Darkness is a tremendously atmospheric and psychological novel and I began to worry that any overly precise drawings would rob the work of its subtlety. I was concerned they would anchor it too greatly in some kind of specific reality that would in the end do the book a disservice. Thinking about how to represent this darkness and horror viscerally and visually, but in some kind of less direct and specific way, I created this piece last night.
Title: A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless...
9 inches by 12 inches
acrylic paint and ink on watercolor paper
April 23, 2012
And I liked it a great deal. I still do. But it really is not true to my own vision. It's a grudging concession. It's what I worried I was SUPPOSED to do. I agonized over this, especially since I like working loose like this. Finally, I had to admit to myself that the 10 illustrations I created last summer for the book, and the second version of page 001 I had created, were simply much closer to how I see this story in my head. And that, whether viewers liked it or not, I had to be true to that or this project would take more from me than it would ever give. So here, fully of very sharp and precise shapes and lines, is the official illustration for page 001 of Heart of Darkness...
Title: A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless...
8.75 inches by 12 inches
acrylic paint and ink on watercolor paper
April 19, 2012
Monday, March 19, 2012
My next book: Heart of Darkness
It is with great excitement that I can finally announce that my next published book will be a fully illustrated edition of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
I am especially pleased that this edition will contain the full text of Conrad's novel as well as 100 of my illustrations. I am honored once again to be working with publisher Tin House Books, and they did such an incredible job with my book Moby-Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page that I am confident this book will be a truly unique version. The tentative publication date is October 2013.
The illustrations accompanying this post are from a series of ten pieces I created illustrating Heart of Darkness for an upcoming anthology titled The Graphic Canon, volume 3. These will function more like studies for what I plan to explore with this complete, definitive Heart of Darkness that I've begun work on, so you are seeing what is the beginning of how I want to approach this. Unlike my Moby-Dick illustrations, these new Heart of Darkness pieces will be on plain white paper and will be in a much more consistent visual style.
I'm simultaneously excited and frightened. Heart of Darkness, along with Melville's Moby-Dick, David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus and Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan, is one of the books that has fundamentally shaped my thinking. Exploring it visually like this, journeying through it line by line, page by page, image by image will be extremely intense. Heart of Darkness is such a complex, multi-layered, psychological narrative that the prospect of illustrating it is immensely challenging. And yet I am excited to start, and to share these pieces.
While I shared each and every one of my Moby-Dick illustrations on this blog, at the rate of around one each day, I will only be posting 30 to 50 of the 100 Heart of Darkness pieces. That's primarily because I see the text of Conrad's novel as being an indispensable part of this project and the best way to experience the art will be in conjunction with a reading of the book. Nonetheless, you will still be able to see almost half of the art before the book is out, and I will continue to work on other projects as well.
I do hope you'll continue to visit. I have a few more older pieces of art I'd like to post on this blog for posterity, and you will see a lot of Heart of Darkness this spring and summer. The pace of posting will slow a bit as I spend more time drawing, but that will only make the art more lush.
I am especially pleased that this edition will contain the full text of Conrad's novel as well as 100 of my illustrations. I am honored once again to be working with publisher Tin House Books, and they did such an incredible job with my book Moby-Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page that I am confident this book will be a truly unique version. The tentative publication date is October 2013.
The illustrations accompanying this post are from a series of ten pieces I created illustrating Heart of Darkness for an upcoming anthology titled The Graphic Canon, volume 3. These will function more like studies for what I plan to explore with this complete, definitive Heart of Darkness that I've begun work on, so you are seeing what is the beginning of how I want to approach this. Unlike my Moby-Dick illustrations, these new Heart of Darkness pieces will be on plain white paper and will be in a much more consistent visual style.
I'm simultaneously excited and frightened. Heart of Darkness, along with Melville's Moby-Dick, David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus and Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan, is one of the books that has fundamentally shaped my thinking. Exploring it visually like this, journeying through it line by line, page by page, image by image will be extremely intense. Heart of Darkness is such a complex, multi-layered, psychological narrative that the prospect of illustrating it is immensely challenging. And yet I am excited to start, and to share these pieces.
While I shared each and every one of my Moby-Dick illustrations on this blog, at the rate of around one each day, I will only be posting 30 to 50 of the 100 Heart of Darkness pieces. That's primarily because I see the text of Conrad's novel as being an indispensable part of this project and the best way to experience the art will be in conjunction with a reading of the book. Nonetheless, you will still be able to see almost half of the art before the book is out, and I will continue to work on other projects as well.
I do hope you'll continue to visit. I have a few more older pieces of art I'd like to post on this blog for posterity, and you will see a lot of Heart of Darkness this spring and summer. The pace of posting will slow a bit as I spend more time drawing, but that will only make the art more lush.
Friday, March 16, 2012
THE ALLIGATORS OF ABRAHAM: Book III
Illustration for Book III of Robert Kloss' upcoming novel The Alligators of Abraham.
title: And they had alligator for stone, and slime for mortar.
6 inches by 9 inches
ink on Bristol board
December 28, 2011
title: And they had alligator for stone, and slime for mortar.
6 inches by 9 inches
ink on Bristol board
December 28, 2011
Thursday, March 15, 2012
THE ALLIGATORS OF ABRAHAM: Book II
Illustration for Book II of Robert Kloss' upcoming novel The Alligators of Abraham.
title: And the alligators went up all over the land, and they rested in the coasts: very grievous were they; before them there were no such alligators as they, neither after them shall be such.
6 inches by 9 inches
ink on Bristol board
December 28, 2011
title: And the alligators went up all over the land, and they rested in the coasts: very grievous were they; before them there were no such alligators as they, neither after them shall be such.
6 inches by 9 inches
ink on Bristol board
December 28, 2011
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
THE ALLIGATORS OF ABRAHAM: Book I
Robert Kloss' upcoming novel The Alligators of Abraham is divided internally into three books. The publisher was able to find room for me to include three black and white illustrations as title pieces for each book. Each of the illustrations reflects to some degree my perceptions of and reactions to the themes and allegories in the novel. This is the first of those three...
title: Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.
6 inches by 9 inches
ink on Bristol board
December 27, 2011
title: Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.
6 inches by 9 inches
ink on Bristol board
December 27, 2011
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
THE ALLIGATORS OF ABRAHAM: final cover
The editor at Mud Luscious Press and author Robert Kloss both liked first cover rough the best, so that was our weapon of choice. I re-drew it with more polish and here is that process, from black and white to color to final cover. All, of course, done completely by hand, with no computer trickery.
First, the black and white. This is ink on illustration board...
Next, color added. Mostly Winsor & Newton inks laid down with a brush, but some Pentel marker added for highlights...
I was quite nervouse about hand-lettering the title since I had come so far on the finished piece. I knew I only had one chance to get it right so there was a lot of pressure. Fortunately, it turned out exactly how I wanted it to look. This is the finished cover, as it will be printed...
First, the black and white. This is ink on illustration board...
Next, color added. Mostly Winsor & Newton inks laid down with a brush, but some Pentel marker added for highlights...
I was quite nervouse about hand-lettering the title since I had come so far on the finished piece. I knew I only had one chance to get it right so there was a lot of pressure. Fortunately, it turned out exactly how I wanted it to look. This is the finished cover, as it will be printed...
Monday, March 12, 2012
THE ALLIGATORS OF ABRAHAM: cover rough #3
My third and final cover rough for Robert Kloss' upcoming novel The Alligators of Abraham. This image might look slightly familiar to you but I have made no secret of the fact that I frequently draw inspiration from my own art...
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Saturday, March 10, 2012
THE ALLIGATORS OF ABRAHAM: cover rough #1
Last fall, I was invited to create a cover and three interior illustrations for Robert Kloss' remarkable upcoming novel The Alligators of Abraham which will be available later this year from Mud Luscious Press. I was absolutely floored by the book, a bizarre and surreal vision of the American Civil War. With alligators. It is an astounding work and a true honor to be a part of.
I sent three cover roughs and then polished one of them for a finished cover, plus three black and white interior pieces. One of the most exciting aspects of this was that I was encouraged to use a hand-lettered font for the title and cover info, not a computer generated font. It's a pleasure to be able to share these. Here is the first cover rough...
I sent three cover roughs and then polished one of them for a finished cover, plus three black and white interior pieces. One of the most exciting aspects of this was that I was encouraged to use a hand-lettered font for the title and cover info, not a computer generated font. It's a pleasure to be able to share these. Here is the first cover rough...
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Moby-Dick art book hardcover preview
The wonderful designers working for my publisher Tin House Books have really created an exceptionally beautiful object for the slipcased hardcover version of Moby-Dick in Pictures. Some time ago, they sent me some photos of the mock-up, and I'm pretty sure these are now floating around out there online so I can finally share them. Remember, these images are of a mock-up they made with color printouts and a fake book, but they'll give you an idea of just how incredible the hardcover version is going to look.
First, a spread showing the front and back covers and the spine...
Next, the way the book will look peeking out of the slipcase...
Here is the front cover of the book, leaning against the slipcase...
And finally, the front of the hardcover adjacent to the back of the slipcase...
Keep in mind, these are still prototypes. There could be some changes, major or minor, and I've been told there will be some additional tweaking and clean-up of the art. But this should give you a good idea of what the hardcover edition will look like. I really couldn't be more excited...this thing is going to be gorgeous.
First, a spread showing the front and back covers and the spine...
Next, the way the book will look peeking out of the slipcase...
Here is the front cover of the book, leaning against the slipcase...
And finally, the front of the hardcover adjacent to the back of the slipcase...
Keep in mind, these are still prototypes. There could be some changes, major or minor, and I've been told there will be some additional tweaking and clean-up of the art. But this should give you a good idea of what the hardcover edition will look like. I really couldn't be more excited...this thing is going to be gorgeous.
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