The Guild of Bezalel

Lugete, O Veneres . . . Catullus Postcard No. 2

2012-02-14T08:41:00.002-08:00

On a day already populated by so many “Venuses and Cupids”, it seems fitting to unveil this self-promotional postcard design, the second of a series of such inspired by the work of the classical Latin poet Catullus. (More background on both the project and on Catullus can be found here.)

This poem is a classic example of melodrama, though without any real hint of sarcasm: Catullus manages to convey genuine sympathy for the loss of the sparrow and the distress that it causes for his lady love, while at the same time, the reader can detect at least a faint curl of the lip and a wink of the eye that would seem to say: “Oh come on, already! Seriously?!”

For those familiar with the Scottish poet Robert Burns, Catullus has frequently been compared with him. The works of both, though nearly two millennia apart, display a correspondingly gentle (though playful) sensitivity, combined with a devotion to the quaint colloquialisms of everyday speech and conversation that the average person in their respective cultures could readily identify with. (This poem, by Burns, serves as a fine parallel example.)

Below is the full text of Catullus’ poem in Latin, followed by an English rendering in the style of Robert Burns by G. S. Davies, taken from A First Book of Latin Poetry (which is a really delightful volume, if you can manage to get your hands on a used copy).

Lugete, O Veneres Cupidinesque, 
Et quantum est hominum venustiorum: 
Passer mortuus est meae puellae, 
Passer, deliciae meae puellae, 
Quem plus illa oculis suis amabat. 
Nam mellitus erat suamque norat 
Ipsam tam bene quam puella matrem, 
Nec sese a gremio illius movebat, 
Sed circumsiliens modo huc modo illuc
 Ad solam dominam usque pipiabat. 
Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum 
Illuc, unde negant redire quemquam. 
At vobis male sit, male tenebrae
 Orci, quae omnia bella devoratis: 
Tam bellum mihi passerem abstulistis 
O factum male! O miselle passer! 
Tua nunc opera meae puellae 
Flendo turgiduli rubent ocelli.

Weep, weep, ye Loves and Cupids all,
And ilka Man o’decent feelin’:
My lassie’s lost her wee, wee bird,
And that’s a loss, ye’ll ken, past healin’.

The lassie lo’ed him like her een:
The darling wee thing lo’ed the ither,
And knew and nestled in her breast,
As ony bairnie to her mither.

Her bosom was his dear, dear haunt—
So dear, he cared na lang to leave it;
He’d nae but gang his ain sma’ jaunt,
And flutter piping back bereavit.

The wee thing’s gane the shadowy road
That’s never travelled back ony:
Out on ye, Shades! ye’re greedy aye
To grab at aught that’s brave and bonny.

Puir, foolish, fondling, bonnie bird,
Ye little ken what wark ye’re leavin’:
Ye’ve gar’d my lassie’s een grown red,
Those bonnie een grow red wi’ grievin’.

The New JCPenney Catalogs Are Here!!!

2012-02-06T13:11:00.000-08:00

When I was growing up, JCPenney was the go-to retailer of my dear grandmother. The arrival of their tome-like seasonal catalogs tended to get her rather, shall we say, worked up. And the Christmas catalog—well, its appearance always caused a stir amongst the entire household, especially the younger members, as we pored over its pages, each individual dog-earing, initialing, and notating items of particular interest, confidently hoping to stake out our claim on a small-but-generous share of the unfathomable bounty displayed therein.

But alas, that was decades ago. Never in a zillion years would I have expected to be even mildly excited again about a JCPenny catalog. But when I saw the newly redesigned look sported by their February “book” on my parents’ coffee table this weekend, it was the Death Star, and I was the Millennium Falcon.

While not quite the debacle that Gap hurled itself into back in 2010, when they made an abortive attempt at re-branding via a logo redesign that relied heavily on crowdsourcing, JCP drew corresponding ire from the design community last year for using similar methods which yielded, if not quite so ghastly, undeniably mediocre results. But rather than slinking off, tail between legs, back to the familiar same-old-same-old (as its aforementioned competitor has done, for the most part) JCP clearly managed to regroup and press forward (not backward) with much better results, no doubt owing to much sounder methods (i.e. hiring some real designers to tackle the problem with proven craftsmanship).

The new logo is certainly very smartly iconic: the company’s initials, placed within an arrangement of red, (white), and blue squares, which unmistakably but not too heavy handedly evokes the U.S. flag. That’s clever enough, but what really impresses me is the comprehensive re-brand considered as a total package. Of course, the classic motif of the logo-derived square weaves itself into the overall design readily enough. But beyond that, I really enjoy the way this design pulls off the clean, uncluttered, sans-serif-dominated look without the cold, uninviting, and antiseptic blah! that contemporary devotion to that particular canon so often engenders. The strategic interspersing of ample white space with splashes of bright color, the inventive but radically economical use of a single typeface (Gotham!) in contrasting weights and sizes, and the thoughtfully balanced implementation of models, clipped-out objects, and product beauty shots, all combine to create an atmosphere that is both sharply clean and warmly inviting, reassuring in its lack of complexity and yet alluringly playful. And there’s just the right amount of friskiness, where it seems called for, without the crass, voyeuristic enticements that other major brands have aspired (or rather, de-spired) to.

A comparison of the print catalog and the website leads me to believe that the former was definitely driving the latter and received more attention. That’s not just a print vs. web sideswipe (though I am admittedly somewhat biased): I think the translation onto the web could have been better (rather too much white, and rather too caged-in, it seems to me), and there’s no reason why it couldn’t have worked in the other direction with equal success. We’ll see, maybe that angle will improve.

Apparently we don’t yet know who to credit for this handsome effort, but one thing is clear: as some companies continue to experiment with the notion of placing their brand’s direction in the hands of technology-spawned fads such as crowdsourcing and other on-the-cheap gimmicks, the results produced by an individual designer, or team of individual designers, with eyes trained carefully on the bigger picture as well as the details, continues to stand out, even amidst a consumer culture that all too often seems to have lost whatever ability it may have once had to distinguish between a thoughtfully executed master design and a hacked-up mish-mash. And they always will.

Is That Really Reggie Jackson?!

2012-02-01T12:44:00.000-08:00

I was thumbing through an old (August, 2010) issue of Print today, looking for inspiration on a project, and ran across this short but laugh-out-loud hilarious article on the history of baseball card design, from the adept pen of Drew Dernavich, who also posted a follow-up here. Take a laugh break from whatever you're doing and enjoy.

Pencil Illustrations: Yosemite and San Francisco

2012-01-19T08:41:00.000-08:00

Last month, I did a number of 5" x 7" pencil sketches based on photographs I took during my trip to California back in the summer of 2010. I gave the originals, matted and framed, out to my "Top Ten" clients as Christmas gifts. (Wanna be on my list next time around? Better send me lots of good work in 2012!) Here are some samples - the cream of the crop, if you will.

A Typographical Reading of Revelation

2012-01-13T09:49:00.000-08:00

I just had to vent. I feel a little better now. Thanks for indulging me.
Carry on.

Cartographic Near-Perfection

2012-01-05T13:40:00.000-08:00

Okay, I confess to being something of a map nerd. I have quite a few hanging on the wall of my basement/office-space. In fact, one of the highlights of my holiday season was that I finally got around to framing and hanging my 1979 National Geographic map of Medieval England, which I think is one of the best they've ever done.

A good map is rich in both visual interest and information. The cartographic tradition, at its best, weaves together a number of different strands that have always interested me greatly: illustration, design, history, the allure of the distant and exotic, and storytelling, to name a few. (I would have added “geography”, but suppose that would be rather redundant. And if your talking about celestial maps, which is a favored sub-category of mine, you could also throw in “astronomy”.) A map tells a story about the region it depicts—and I don't just mean the ones with all kinds of extra tidbits crammed into the marginalia, although, if handled expertly, that can be a nice approach (as with the England map, again). No, even a more “straight-forward” map tells a story, and tells it well, poorly, or (most frequently) just so-so, based on how it handles the information conveyed within the map itself: which features and details it emphasizes and which it downplays, and the methods it employs for doing so.

Solo cartographer David Imus painstakingly created a new map of the United States which was recently awarded Best of Show at a very prestigious cartographic exhibition. The map, as well as the creative process behind its creation, is a real testimony to the time-honored values of craftsmanship, careful—even loving—attention to detail, and profoundly thoughtful and insightful artistry.

Indeed, from a design standpoint, I am absolutely blown away by this map. Just like a painting by a great master, it’s obvious that it was meant to be appreciated both from far away and very close-up. I’ve also never seen a map that struck such a delightful balance between the natural and the man-contrived, celebrating both with equitable and complementary enthusiasm. Hats off indeed to David Imus, and also to Slate author Seth Stevenson, both of whom offer encouragement to me, quasi-Luddite that I am, as I plug along at my own ponderous pace, in my own quaint way, with my own little projects, occasionally asking myself how hard I really want to (or should want to) continue trying to keep pace with the contemporary world and its rather obsessive predilection for gussied-up novelty and bespangled gee-whizzery. (Not that it’s all bad, now—I fessed up to being a quasi-Luddite, but that is all. Case in point on this topic: I really do like interactive maps, and it’s only rigidly imposed self-discipline that keeps me from becoming a total Google Earth junkie.)

Anyway, I hope to acquire a hard-copy of Imus’ map for myself soon, which apparently can be done here. (At least on a good day, one hopes. As of this posting, the link wasn’t working, but I trust that will get ironed out soon.)

(Closing hint to my wife: Christmas is over, but my birthday is coming before too long!)

Chesterton and Calvinism

2012-01-04T09:51:00.000-08:00

Having posted on G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy here before, I thought this insight from John Piper to be right on the money and worth sharing. No doubt there were folks who went by the appellation of “Calvinist” in Chesteron’s own day who were cranks, just as there are today. Notwithstanding, failure to distinguish the straw man or the caricature from the genuine article is a fault that even the most brilliant of men can commit. In Chesterton’s case, it is a most forgivable one.

Spem in Alium

2011-11-23T11:20:00.000-08:00

England, the mid-sixteenth century. The large, splendidly decorated banqueting hall in which you and your fellow guests are seated is octagonal in shape, with galleries situated on four of the opposing walls. Soon you and your fellow nobles (perhaps even the Queen herself is also in attendance) will be feasting on sumptuous delicacies. But amidst the hushed banter that precedes the opening of the banquet, you notice that some preliminary musical entertainment has apparently been appointed, as is not uncommon for such events. In groups of five, singers are gathering, on the lower level with the guests, and also up in the galleries, forming eight groups of forty singers, arranged all around the perimeter of the hall, above and below. The choir master makes his way to the center of the room as a hush falls over the throng of guests.

At his signal, a single alto voice from the five-person choir at the north end begins to sing, joined quickly by a soprano from the same group. After a few bars, the baritone, tenor and bass from the same ensemble have entered in. And then, the choir in the neighboring gallery takes up the theme, as gradually the music spreads around the room toward the east, weaving up and down as it goes.

Spem in alium nunquam habui . . .

As the music continues to make its way to the southern end of the hall, the realization begins to dawn on you that none of the singers is doubling the other - each of the exquisitely intertwined voices is singing a unique part. The choirs at the southern end awaken, and the swelling chorus of voices echoes off the walls—and the floor, and the ceiling. But then, just as the progression begins to make the turn round to the heretofore silent western side of the hall, the choirs to the north and east begin to fall silent, in successive order: a sonorous wave is encircling the entire room. When it reaches the northern end again, the choirs at the opposing southern side re-awaken. For a few moments, the stereophonic interplay of the northern and southern choirs continues and grows to an anticipatory crescendo, until suddenly, all forty voices burst forth together for the first time in a great, beatific roar.

Praeter in te, Deus Israel! . . .

After a few bars, the roar subsides and, as the text continues to unfold, the musical wave resumes, circumnavigating the hall again, this time in the opposite direction. Another forty-voice outburst ensues. And then, pairs of adjoining choirs begin a call and response with opposing choirs at opposite ends, and the music is hurled across the hall, back and forth from north to south, then east to west, then south-west to north-east, etc. As the thundering voices echo from end to end and reverberate from on high and down below, the dining hall is transformed into a musical microcosm of the universe itself, resounding the Creator's praises throughout.

Domine Deus! . . . Domine Deus! . . .
Creator! . . . Creator! . . .
Coeli et terrae! . . . Coeli et terrae! . . .

The musical kaleidoscope swirls for a total of about ten minutes, closing as all forty voices unite one last time, rapturously appealing to God for mercy. The sound reverberates throughout the hall for a long while after the last note is sounded, as you and your fellow guests sit in dumbfounded amazement at what you have just heard and experienced. No matter how sumptuous the food or delightful the entertainments that are yet to come, the rest of the evening - perhaps, in some sense, the rest of your life - can only represent a declension. At the very least, you know that, this side of heaven, you will never hear such music again—a hope far too audacious for mortal ears.

The man responsible for this musical miracle was Thomas Tallis, who died on this day in 1585. The above account is an imaginary recreation of what the original performance may have been like, based on sketchy circumstantial evidence. The earliest manuscripts of the work are associated with Nonsuch Palace, which may be where it was originally performed, though the exact occasion is uncertain. This fabulous palace, built by Henry VIII, no longer stands (it eventually passed into the hands of one of the mistresses of Charles II, who had it demolished and sold off in piecemeal fashion to cover her gambling debts), but it is known to have had a banqueting hall situated in one of its large corner towers, fitting the above description.

The Latin text is adapted from the apocryphal Book of Judith:

Spem in alium nunquam habui
praeter in te Deus Israel
qui irasceris et propitius eris
et omnia peccata hominum in tribulatione dimittis.
Domine Deus Creator coeli et terrae
respice humilitatem nostram.

An English translation:

Never have I placed my hope in any other
save in Thee, O God of Israel,
who may be wrathful, yet will turn again unto graciousness,
and who absolveth all the sins of suffering man.
Lord God, Creator of Heaven and Earth
look upon our lowliness.

Composers and other artists often play numerical games within their works (Bach, most famously) and it is likely that some of the numbers involved in this composition were not mere happenstance but rather bore some significance in Tallis’ mind, especially when considered in light of the text. Five has long-standing mystical associations (quintessence), forty is the biblical number of judgement and suffering, while eight is the number of regeneration and renewal. The numbers could thus be seen to reinforce the theme of the text: hopeful expectation of deliverance in the midst of some sort of Divinely-appointed tribulation, perhaps related somehow to the violent religious upheavals of sixteenth century England. Some have even put forth evidence that Tallis may have inserted his own musical signature into the piece.

It is worth trying to follow along with the score while listening to a performance, though no recording techniques or surround-sound equipment currently in existence could come close to replicating the effects of a production in anything like its original setting and context. To experience that first hand would be nothing short of a dream realized.

EHCS: Open House postcard

2011-10-27T10:04:00.000-07:00

This concept, a promotional postcard design on behalf of my alma mater, turned out rather nicely, if I do say so myself. Sounds like they'll be wanting to use the “little red schoolhouse” on some other material in the near future.

Alfred the Great

2011-10-26T09:19:00.000-07:00

Today is the Feast Day (in the Anglican Communion) of Alfred the Great, the greatest of the pre-Norman, Anglo-Saxon kings, and in fact the only British monarch in history to be honored with the appellation “Great”. He died on this day in 899 A.D. During his remarkable life, Alfred exemplified the virtues of a Christian leader: boldly and successfully defending his people from the invading hordes of pagan Vikings, yet showing noted kindness and generosity to the enemy once their threat was neutralized. (Guthrum, the Viking king, became a Christian and Alfred assumed the role of adoptive father toward his one-time foe.) Alfred the Great also did much to establish justice, to encourage and reform the church, and to promote learning in his realm. (Leading by example, Alfred himself took up the task of learning Latin at the age of 38.)

The ancient images of white horses carved in various hillsides of south-central England are often associated with Alfred. G.K. Chesterton’s epic poem The Ballad of the White Horse celebrates his reign, and was probably a significant inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien.

The Walker Party

2011-10-21T05:36:00.000-07:00

On this day in 1833, a party of about forty men, in the command of native Tennesseean, mountain man, and trail blazer par excellence Joseph Walker, were trying desperately to find a way down from the Sierra Nevada mountains, where they had been wandering for almost two weeks, in search of a new and convenient route into central California. The men, exhausted by the steep, snowbound terrain and famished from dwindling supplies and want of game, were inching their way westward along a broad, high ridge between two steep river valleys to the north and south (now known to be the Tuolumne and the Merced, respectively). One member of the party, Zenas Leonard, kept a journal of the expedition and records the day’s events thus:

We travelled…still on the top of the mountain, and our course continually obstructed with snow hills and rocks. Here we began to encounter in our path, many small streams which would shoot out from under these high snow-banks, and after running a short distance in deep chasms which they have through ages cut in the rocks, precipitate themselves from one lofty precipice to another, until they are exhausted in rain below. Some of these precipices appeared to us to be more than a mile high. Some of the men thought that if we could succeed in descending one of these precipices to the bottom, we might thus work our way into the valley below—but on making several attempts we found it utterly impossible for a man to descend, to say nothing of our horses.

Based on the above description, it is concluded that the Walker Party were almost certainly the first non-natives to set eyes upon the incomparable Yosemite Valley, nearly twenty years prior to its official “discovery” by the Mariposa Battalion.

Walker is buried in a small pioneer cemetery, which overlooks an inlet of the San Francisco Bay. Here is a shot of me at the site, taken during a trip to the area several years ago.

Tours

2011-10-10T05:47:00.000-07:00

The Battle of Tours (or Portiers) was fought on this day in 732 A.D., wherein Charles Martel (Charles “The Hammer”), the de facto King of the Franks, clashed with an Islamic expeditionary force under the command of Abd-er-Rahman. Barely a century following the birth of Islam, the Umayyad Caliphate controlled all of the Middle East and North Africa, and its leaders conspired to seize upon Europe through concurrent, pincer-like invasions from both the east and the west. Their way upon the eastern front was checked, however, by the still powerful Byzantine Empire, with its glittering capitol at Constantinople. Following a second attempt to lay siege to the Byzantine capitol, the Arab forces were soundly defeated on both land and sea by Emperor Leo III in 718.

The situation in western Europe, however, was far less sure. Much of Europe was still pagan or only recently converted to the Christian faith. A great deal of instability prevailed in the centuries following the collapse of the western Roman Empire, as one barbarian tribe vied with another for supremacy across the whole continent. In fact, the Muslims first set foot on the Iberian peninsula at the invitation of the warlord Rodrigo, who, in 710, foolishly sought their aid in gaining the upper hand over a rival faction in a squabble over control of the Visigothic throne. Once gaining a foothold, the Islamic forces quickly swept Rodrigo and the rest aside, overran the entire peninsula, and began pouring over the Pyrennes, where they made mincemeat of the ramshackle collection of provinces and duchies which then constituted western Gaul (France, as we know it today).

But Charles, in his capacity as Mayor of the Palace (comparable to a modern-day Prime Minister) to the “do-nothing” Frankish King, was determined to oppose them. Despite the disorganized political atmosphere, and the fact that Charles' army consisted only of infantry while the Saracen host included a substantial contingent of cavalry, the Franks were victorious, driving the invaders back over the Pyrennes and into Spain, where they would hold sway for another 700 years, before the last remnants were driven out by Fredinand and Isabellla in the fifteenth century. As for Charles, his son Pepin the Short and grandson Charles the Great (Charlemagne) continued his legacy, and, upon the foundation made possible by the victory at Tours, established a Christian empire in central Europe marked by political stability and a revival of learning and the arts. This Carolingian Renaissance, encouraged greatly by two men from Britain, the missionary Boniface and the scholar Alcuin, would provide seed for the propagation of the gospel and of Christian culture all throughout Europe in the coming generations.

Lepanto

2011-10-07T07:28:00.000-07:00

Four hundred and forty years ago today (October 7, 1571 A.D.) the Battle of Lepanto was fought in the Gulf of Patras, off western Greece. The naval forces of the (Christian) Holy League decisively crushed those of the (Muslim) Ottoman Turks, who for neither the first nor final time were threatening to overrun all of Europe if left unchecked. A young Miguel de Cervantes was a participant in the battle, in the course of which he was severely wounded, permanently losing the use of his left arm. The battle also inspired a wonderful poem by G. K. Chesterton, first published a century ago, whose final lines pay homage to Cervantes.

Bye, Steve. Thanks.

2011-10-05T18:16:00.000-07:00

Urn, Belmont University

2011-10-03T19:38:00.000-07:00

I’m trying to cultivate the discipline of drawing and sketching more, as well as committing to some “art for art’s sake” time at least once a week or so. Here’s a sketch (pen) I made of an urn during some down time on this gorgeous autumn afternoon, on the campus of Belmont University.

30th Anniversary, The Concert in Central Park

2011-09-19T13:29:00.000-07:00

Thirty years ago today Simon and Garfunkel reunited for an historic free concert in New York’s Central Park, before an enthralled audience of half a million. The iconic poster art promoting the event was created by (now) legendary designer/illustrator Michael Doret.

2011 AIGA CASE Awards, Think Tank

2011-09-18T20:31:00.000-07:00

I had a great time this weekend at two events sponsored by AIGA Nashville. At Friday night’s CASE Awards Show I had the privilege of rubbing shoulders with over a couple hundred fellow designers from the local scene, while enjoying a first hand, up close look at all the pieces that I had only gotten a glimpse at previously, during the online judging. It was so good both to catch up with a number of old friends and to make some delightful new acquaintances as well, all in the context of some really incredible work. What a talented bunch of creative folks! I was very honored to receive the Best of Illustration award for my work on the HCSB Study Bible. Thanks everyone, and congratulations to all the other winners!

Saturday’s Think Tank Conference included an impressive lineup of speakers, each of whom had some very interesting and inspiring things to say: Raphael Grignani, Kate Bingaman-Burt, Justin Ahrens, and Joe Duffy. I found Joe Duffy to be especially impressive and inspiring: here’s a guy possessed of jaw-dropping talent who, while exhibiting an unmistakable-yet-understated confidence in his own abilities, displays surprisingly down-to-earth humility as well.

If you’re in the Nashville area and in the creative industry, don’t miss these events next year!

The Legacy of Bosworth

2011-08-22T09:33:00.000-07:00

On this date in 1485 was fought the Battle of Bosworth Field, in which Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond (subsequently King Henry VII), heir of the Lancastrian line, defeated the Yorkist usurper of the throne, King Richard III (portrait at left). It would prove to be a watershed event in English history; many, in fact, point to it as the line of demarcation between medieval and modern England. Richard, who was slain in the melee, holds the distinction of being the last English king to die upon the battlefield. Richard is also regarded as the last of the Plantagenet line, whose dynastic rule had extended through thirteen monarchs and endured for more than three centuries.

For Henry’s part, his claim to the throne, though legitimate, was somewhat tenuous: on his father’s side, he was descended from Henry V’s widowed Queen, Catherine of France, but this connection served merely to buttress the real claim, which came via his mother’s heritage as the great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, noted son of King Edward III. This link was solidified beyond all doubting (if not quite all disputing) when Henry married Princess Elizabeth, the only surviving child of Edward IV and heiress of the rival House of York. The battle, the marriage, and a few subsequent skirmishes brought an end to the Wars of the Roses, which had torn England apart for three decades. Despite changes in houses or family names, the heirs of Henry Tudor retain the crown of England to this day, as evidenced in the current Royal Arms by the inclusion (at the lower portion) of the red and white Tudor Rose.

It is impossible even to imagine how English and world history might have been altered by a different outcome at Bosworth Field. Without Henry VII, there could have been (most notably) no Henry VIII, and no Elizabeth I. There would have been no English Reformation, or at any rate, there would surely have been a decidedly different one, for better or for worse. And not to be forgotten is the extent to which the arts flourished under the Tudors. The Renaissance was first introduced into England during the reign of Henry VII. Both the strikingly vivid bust of Henry and the paired funeral effigies of Henry and his wife, Elizabeth, shown below, are the work of Italian sculptor Pietro Torrigiano.

Architectural innovation flourished under both Henry VII and VIII—indeed the royal house of Tudor lent its name to an enduring architectural style. Henry VIII is remembered for his patronage of the great portrait artist Hans Holbein, and the Tudor-dominated sixteenth century gave rise to incomparable luminaries in both music (e.g. Thomas Tallis, William Byrd) and literature (e.g. Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare), thus enriching by incalculable degrees the cultural heritage of England, the West, and, indeed, the World.

All this divided York and Lancaster,
Divided in their dire divisions,
O, now let Richmond [i.e. Henry] and Elizabeth,
The true succeeders of each royal house,
By God’s fair ordinance conjoin together!
And let their heirs, God, if thy will be so,
Enrich the time to come with smooth-fac’d peace,
With smiling plenty, and fair prosperous days!

—William Shakespeare, from King Richard the Third

Fire and Water, Nature and Grace

2011-07-30T10:47:00.000-07:00

I just saw Terence Melick’s much-talked-about film The Tree of Life this past week. More like cinematic poetry or an art house film than a typical mainstream movie, it is both euphorically beautiful and intensely thought provoking. Above all, it portrays a creation that is super-charged with wonder, and spends much of its two-and-a-half hour length inviting us simply to bask in that wonder in true Chestertonian spirit.

There are so many avenues worth exploring and commenting on. (My friend Brian McLain has some keen insights, especially regarding the film’s reliance upon the viewer’s own participation via his or her own subjective experiences, relationships, and memories, which I commend to you.) Perhaps I will get around to surveying some of those other perspectives as well, but for now I want to start at the shallow end and speak to those aspects that I feel most qualified to deal with, which have to do with the nature of some of the visual symbolism engaged in the film.

First of all, with the noted exception of the evolutionary framework employed (though even that is intriguingly toyed with, raising some issues that I will shelve for later discussion, perhaps) the symbolism that Melick employs is pervasively and explicitly Christian and scriptural. The film opens with a quotation from the Book of Job, Chapter 38:

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation...while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

The themes of Job resurface again and again as the narrative unfolds, and there is also a very early and explicit reference to the tension between “Nature” and “Grace”. Taken simply at face value, this is obvious and potent enough. However, I think it also helps to reflect that within the Christian tradition, this fundamental dichotomy (at times pushed to dualistic extremes) has gone by a number of other names, at least some of which I think there is good reason to believe that Melick is also intending to conjure up at various points. These would include, but are by no means limited to: Law vs. Grace, Justice vs. Mercy, Righteousness vs. Sinfulness, Love vs. Judgement, Forgiveness vs. Discipline and/or Punishment, Free Will vs. Predestination, Salvation vs. Damnation, Flesh vs. Spirit.

Visually speaking, two of the most recurring images employed in The Tree of Life are fire and water. It’s really essential to have a self-conscious grasp of the biblical associations of these two metaphors in order to adequately appreciate how Melick employs them throughout his own work here. To give a brief biblical catalog: Water is primordial (Genesis 1:2). It is mysterious (due, at least in part, to its hidden depths and to its elusive, undulating motions). Water is most often associated with its life-granting and regenerative qualities—with birth and with re-birth, but it also has to be remembered that it can easily be turned into a threatening instrument of judgement and destruction. When contrasted with dry land, for instance, it often represents the forces of wickedness threatening to submerge and wipe out the people of God (Isaiah 8:7-8). Fire likewise is thought of first and foremost as an element of judgement, condemnation, and ruination, which it certainly is. But fire is also associated with holiness, and with testing and purification (Exodus 3:1-6, Isaiah 6:1-7, Psalm 12:6). Following this line, its implementation is often towards radically transformational as opposed to purely destructive ends (II Kings 2:11, Malachi 3:1-4, II Peter 3:5-13). Significantly, both water and fire are associated with the Holy Spirit. (Bird images are as well, which is also worth noting with respect to Melick’s film.)

As should already be apparent by this point, it is essential to consider that the relationship between these two “elements” and their various associations is not one of pure or simple antithesis, but rather, the antithesis is dynamic and complicated—wondrously so. To illustrate this point, let me turn to the work of another visual artist who explored these same themes to great effect in his own work: the nineteenth century landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church. (Gene Edward Veith offers an excellent critique of Church and the other prominent painters of the Hudson River School in his book Painters of Faith, and I owe the following observations to him.) I was reminded a number of times during The Tree of Life of Church’s painting Cotopaxi.

Here we have fire: the volcano, the smoky ash cloud, the sunset, and the eerily glowing foothills. We also have water: the waterfall, obviously, but also (possibly) the cool tones of the sky (the waters above the firmament) in the extreme background. Interestingly, the two elements intermingle in the mid-ground, as the fiery sun is reflected in the lake behind the falls. The question to be posed is this: when it comes to “fire” and “water” which of these forces is destructive and which is regenerative? Meditate on this painting, and think about it some more. Are you sure? Is the question, and its answer, a simple one after all?

Yosemite Valley, Tunnel View

2011-07-18T06:56:00.000-07:00

A year ago this month I got to fulfill a long-time dream: my brother Jared and I spent three days and two nights backpacking in Yosemite National Park, culminating in a climb to the top of famed Half Dome. I’ve intended ever since to celebrate the occasion with some artwork but, the tyranny of the urgent being such as it is, only within the last few days have I been able (prompted both by the anniversary and a bit of a lull in paying work) to produce the first of what I hope will eventually be several pieces on the subject.

This illustration was executed on scratchboard with watercolor. The view is toward the west-facing mouth of the valley as seen from the lower end of the Wawona Tunnel. There are three different roads that lead into the valley, but this one, which connects to Hwy. 41 towards Oakhurst and Fresno, provides the most spectacular and dramatic view all the way up the length of the valley. Take this route into the park, and you’re just driving along through wooded hillsides and then, all of a sudden you turn a corner, there’s a break in the trees, and there it is—and you realize that all the paintings and photographs you’ve ever seen of it haven’t even come within fifty miles of preparing you for the arresting beauty and overpowering immensity of what is presented to you at that moment. El Capitan thrusts its enormous bulk straight up into the sky, Bridalveil Fall thunders, and Half Dome, that most peculiarly-shaped mountain, transfixes your gaze, beckons, and looms large, even from a distance of seven miles.

Logo Design: Parish Presbyterian Church

2011-07-14T07:04:00.000-07:00

Another new logo design, this one for Parish Presbyterian Church in Franklin, TN. Working at the moment on some printed material that looks like it has the potential to carry this design forward into some pretty cool directions, so hopefully stay tuned for more on that before too long.

Gillian Welch: The Harrow & the Harvest

2011-07-08T05:46:00.000-07:00

After a wait of eight long years we at last have an album of new material from alternative country queen Gillian Welch. I ordered my copy last night. (Had to have the CD, of course.) In fact, it’s hard to say which I’m more excited about: listening to the music for the first time, or getting to hold the one-of-a-kind, letterpressed, hand-stained-with-coffee cover art (printed on, or rather into, extra-thick, 100% cotton paper). Check out this nifty video chronicling the production process.

GW and partner Dave Rawlings (one of the most underrated guitarists around, in my opinion) put on an unforgettable show for my brother, myself, and approximately 200 other patrons who managed to cram into the legendary Station Inn on St. Patrick's Day several years ago. (That place isn’t much bigger than my basement, which is a plus, in my opinion. I’m glad I got to catch them early enough in their career when they could still play little joints like that.) I don’t make it out to many shows any more these days, but I might have to spring to see them again when they take the stage at the (also-legendary) Ryman Auditorium in December.

Brochure: Franklin Classical School

2011-06-16T13:09:00.000-07:00

Here’s a very recently-designed 4-panel brochure for the fine scholars at Franklin Classical School.

The Lark Ascending

2011-06-14T08:38:00.000-07:00

Ninety years ago today saw the premiere of this stunningly beautiful work for orchestra and solo violin by perhaps the twentieth century’s greatest composer. Ralph Vaughan Williams was inspired to compose The Lark Ascending by George Meredith's 122-line poem of the same title. Vaughan Williams first wrote the piece for violin and piano in 1914, but work on the second and more familiar orchestral version was interrupted by World War I. In fact, in a somewhat humorous episode, the composer was actually arrested on suspicion of espionage after he had been seen jotting down what someone took to be a secret code (actually musical notations for the work here considered) while observing a large troop embarkation across the English Channel at the war’s outbreak. (My own artistic endeavors have caused similar run-ins with the authorities on at least one occasion, so I can relate, though that's another story for another time.)

The dream-like beauty of the music really speaks for itself, and its accessibility makes it one of the most popular pieces of classical music around (especially in England, not surprisingly). For my part, I’m intrigued by the way it somewhat paradoxically evokes both Olde England and (by prominent use of the pentatonic scale) the Orient.

Steal Like and Artist, and Other Sound Advice

2011-06-08T08:29:00.000-07:00

Dang, the last several weeks have just been crazy. Seeing that life, for the time being, continues to prevent me from posting much of anything of my own devising, I’ll redouble my efforts to at least, with some regularity, point out the notable contributions of others.

Blogger Austin Kleon has some really valuable insights to share in his recent post HOW TO STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST (AND 9 OTHER THINGS NOBODY TOLD ME). In the course of this thoughtful treatise he challenges a number of myths that I also have taken aim at (or at least intend to take aim at, when I find time and opportunity for a clear shot). These would especially include what I like to lampoon as The Cult of the Artiste, referring to the modern image of the artist as a radical, bohemian purveyor of strident originality, inherently superior to the rest of us mere mortals.

Jonathan Rogers: Concerning Beauty

2011-05-02T09:14:00.000-07:00

My friend Jonathan Rogers just posted a brief but wonderfully articulated reflection on the indispensable role of beauty. Man, do I need to be reminded of this more often—like, several times a day!

Barry Moser and The Pennyroyal Caxton Bible

2011-04-25T07:59:00.000-07:00

At some point during my work on the HCSB Study Bible I became aware of this awe-inspiring project by master illustrator Barry Moser (with some help from other luminaries, such as renowned typographer Matthew Carter). As the prospectus claims, The Pennyroyal Caxton Bible is probably the most significant edition of a fully-illustrated Bible since that of Gustave Doré, in the mid-nineteenth century.

Working in a medium called Resingrave, Moser produced a vast series of black and white images to accompany the biblical text that are arresting in their graphic intensity. Considered on the whole, their undeniable beauty is offset by a jarring—sometimes even disturbing—coarseness and realism. The images range from the nearly abstract, to the poetically symbolic, to the indelibly human, and the work manages to exude, at the same time, a sort of timeless grandeur and an immediacy that is strikingly contemporary.

Another thing to appreciate is that, despite its lofty aspirations, this really is an edition of the Bible designed with reading in mind. The text of the Authorized/KJV translation is set in double columns with subheads to mark each chapter, but without verse notations, paragraph breaks or indents (pilcrows are employed instead) and italic type (used in most AV editions to denote words not present in the original text) to impede smooth and fluid reading.

I wish that I could convince someone, among the very few individuals I know who might actually possess the means coupled with the inclination, to invest in a Primary or Deluxe edition, so that I might have the borrowed privilege of perusing such an exquisite masterpiece of printing and binding. For those of us who don't have ten (for the Primary) or thirty grand (for the Deluxe) to spare, there is a reasonably priced, single-volume facsimile edition available in both hardcover and perfect-bound paperback. I ordered the latter a few weeks ago and was delighted to discover that the large format (8.25" x 11.812") faithfully replicates the text and illustrations at their original size. Only slightly disappointing is the fact that the margins are trimmed in a bit, so you don't quite get the benefit of the generous white space and luxurious page proportions of the original, which are a historical feature of Bibles and other “showcase” bound texts ever since the age of illuminated manuscripts, but given the need to economize that’s understandable, I suppose.

One slight word of caution to those who might consider a purchase: as alluded to above, several of the images are at least a bit disturbing and some might be said to push the boundaries of propriety. (One image depicts a woman kissing the feet of the crucified Christ, and possibly gulping blood flowing off of his toes.) There is a good deal of nudity depicted as well, though I would’t characterize any of it as gratuitous. Just take that into consideration—at any rate, it’s still a worhwhile addition to your library, in my opinion, and a very notable artistic endeavor.

Logo Design: Cornerstone Presbyterian Church

2011-04-20T08:41:00.000-07:00

Here’s a “hot off the griddle” logo design for the saints at the newly organized Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Franklin, TN.

Chestertonian Musings, Part One

2011-04-12T13:09:00.000-07:00

Recently, I actually got around to reading G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, which has been on my “to read” list since time out of mind. As I suspected, I found that I’ve had considerable exposure already to direct quotations of various passages (particularly Chapter Four: The Ethics of Elfland) or have absorbed many of his ideas by osmosis, via my reading of others who were thinking his thoughts after him. At any rate, it was very enjoyable and refreshing to get to absorb these notions in their original context of Chesterton’s masterful and brilliant prose.

There were strains of Chesterton’s thought, however, that I, with a mixture of delight and dismay, discovered that I was encountering for the very first time. Most memorably, in Chapter Six: The Paradoxes of Christianity, I was enthralled to find a brilliant articulation of a notion that has crept in upon my own consciousness over the last several years, but which I have never really attempted to explain or put into words. In that chapter’s introductory paragraph, Chesterton writes:

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.

As a visual artists who dabbles in other disciplines, this whole idea resonates with me very deeply. Indulge me here in a brief and somewhat random excursus:

Is it not very odd, for instance, that shapes so fundamental as the square and the circle, which can be drawn with exactitude using a ruler and/or compass, defy precise mathematical definition and analysis (at least when one takes the very first steps in trying to peel them apart)? I’m referring to the fact that &pi (3.142…), the ratio of a circle’s diameter to its circumference, is an irrational number, one that cannot be expressed as a ratio of two whole numbers, no matter how large. The same goes for √2 (1.414…), which is the ratio between one of a square’s sides and a diagonal drawn between opposing corners. Other very important—and naturally prevalent—numbers have the same slippery characteristics: &phi (the “golden section”, or .618…), and √5 (2.236…), to cite two additional examples. The point is this: I encounter and use things like circles and squares all the time. How can something so basic, simple and ubiquitous be, at the same time, so downright elusive and mystifying—so irrational?

This stubborn refusal of the natural order to be brought into perfect conformity with nice and tidy logical definitions drove some of the ancient Greeks to the point of maddened distraction (the Pythagoreans). But the eventual acquiescence on the part of some to this paradox yielded some real aesthetic triumphs, such as the Parthenon, whose subtle and deceptive entasis and unevenly spaced columns testify to the awareness that a bit of carefully employed non-conformity here and there proves more satisfying than strict adherence to mathematical and logical notions of orderliness and “perfection”.

I think I will have to further explore some of the rambling rabbit trails this topic tends to generate in some additional posts, hence the “Part One” label above. Let me just wrap this one up by expressing my delight in discovering that Chesterton, who possessed a mind and a soul (to say nothing of a body!) far broader and deeper than my own, also acknowledged, exulted in, and reveled in this same phenomenon—and also felt within it the same spur towards faith that I feel. While this hardly constitutes some objective proof of the existence of God, I, like Chesterton, detect an audible echo of the Divine in these things—and a decidedly Trinitarian echo, at that.

Signs of the Times

2011-03-21T14:49:00.000-07:00

These difficult economic times certainly call for…well, economy. People (yours truly included) make do with less and find creative ways of cutting corners. More power to us all. Be that as it may, I’ve seen some rather striking examples recently of this sort of thing played out in some local establishments’ efforts to re-brand themselves—efforts which push the whole phenomenon almost to the point of a kind of graphical cannibalism. High scores are certainly in order for their creative bids to save a few dollars on signage, though the jury is still out I suppose on their effectiveness from a marketing standpoint.

Yes, brick and mortar video rental chains are fast going the way of the miller, the cooper and the blacksmith, but I think we’re still pretty far away from being able to offer a new hairdo via web streaming. So who knows, this Bride of Frankenstein-esque re-appropriation of the Hollywood Video brand might actually stick around longer than the original incarnation. Lucky us.

This used to be a little t-shirt shop called T-MAX. Now it’s home to—of course! Just a little switcheroo to the sign and, Voila!—a bookkeeping/income tax preparation service that has a decidedly laid-back and casual vibe going. (Not sure that’s exactly the kind of mojo I want working on my own 1040. I personally prefer my accountants to wear shirts with collars—and ties, pocket protectors and thick glasses in addition would’t exactly do anything to sink my confidence level either, but maybe my own personal preference in this regard is a bit off the ol’ bell curve.)

HCSBSB: New Testament Jerusalem

2011-03-18T05:07:00.000-07:00

And so we come at last to the mother of them all. This illustration of Jerusalem as it would have appeared in the first century A.D. was the last one which I completed for the HCSB Study Bible, and it was also the most technically challenging. This was due to the sheer amount of detail, exacerbated by the large size required for the final since this illustration would be doing double duty: a close-up, detailed view of the entire temple complex and surrounding areas would be shown on the same spread which features the two views of Herod’s Temple which I have detailed here previously, and another spread would feature the complete illustration of the entire city.

I proposed two possible views during the sketching phase. One view was from the same angle (southeast) that all of the other, Old Testament views of Jerusalem had employed.

This had the advantage of continuity, but I really felt that a view looking over the Mount of Olives from the east would be more dramatic and would better display the more interesting parts of the city, especially the temple complex.

In either case, I wanted to position things carefully so that (for the complete view) nothing of crucial interest would get lost in the gutter, which is always a concern when working across a full spread, especially in a book which has a large number of pages. Ultimately the second view won out, and then began the process, which progressed in fits in starts over several months, of executing a detailed sketch at full size (19" x 24").

Once this was approved, I backed the sketch up to a piece of bristol board and rendered the final using a technical pen, with the aid of a lightbox. (I couldn’t bear the thought of actually transferring the sketch directly to the board, which essentially would have meant having to draw every detail not twice but three times!) At this point point the deadline was drawing near and I spent several days on end at the drawing table. There were oh so many individual buildings and houses! My drawing hand was pretty sore by the time it was finished, and I had a distinctive callous on the last knuckle of my middle finger, where the pen rested—but it was all worth it!

Here is a final, detailed view—and with this my posts on this particularly, big, exciting and rewarding project come to an end. Many thanks to those of you who have eagerly followed these posts over the course of the past few months. Please continue to check back in on a weekly basis or so; I plan to keep posting regularly on other projects and other topics that will merit your interest and attention!

Bessie Gotto's 90th Birthday

2011-03-08T10:34:00.000-08:00

A special lady who is very dear to my heart turns 90 years old today: my maternal grandmother, Bessie Lee (Gray) Gotto.

My siblings and I orchestrated a big birthday celebration for her this past weekend as well as a surprise gift, both of which called for some custom design work by yours truly. First the invite to the party:

My Granny has written a handful of verses over the years, until recently recorded only by her own hand in various notebooks which she kept. As a birthday surprise, we decided to have them “published” and presented to her in a book-length format. I created a custom-designed photo book—hard bound with a dust jacket—which features one of her poems on each right-hand page, complemented by photos of her, my late grandfather, and other family members on each of the facing pages.

As expected, the book was a big hit not only with her, but also with many extended family members and friends who attended the party and were able to view some sample copies that were on hand. Orders for several more copies were placed at the gathering, beyond the initial set which was ordered for my Granny and for the immediate family. A pdf of the entire book (minus the back cover and dust jacket flaps) is available for download here.

As a final tribute to my Granny on this day, I will close with the following bio, taken from the inside flap of the book’s dust jacket:

Bessie Lee Gray was born March 8, 1921, in Davidson County, Tennessee, to Alex Turner Gray and Annie Elizabeth Hulan. Her parents, both having survived their previous spouses, brought a total of seven children into the new marriage, thus making Bessie, the only offspring of their union, the eighth child of the household and the baby of their blended family. Her mother died in 1936, just a month after Bessie’s fifteenth birthday. On February 28, 1938—just a few days shy of seventeen—Bessie married Clarence Gotto. Together they had one surviving daughter, Cheryl Janice. The couple spent most of their years together living in Nashville, Tennessee, until Clarence passed away in the summer of 1976. The sadness of her husband’s relatively early death tinges much of the poetry in this collection. But, despite this tragic loss, Bessie is recognized by all who know her decades later as a lively personality and an uncommonly quick wit—one who enjoys nothing more than a good time, spent with loved ones, and filled with smiles, laughter and fun. She continues to live out her remaining years in the company of her daughter and her family, which includes five grandchildren and (as of this writing) ten great-grandchildren.

Steve Jobs on Soulful Technology

2011-03-03T08:58:00.000-08:00

Technology alone is not enough. Technology married with liberal arts, humanities, yields the result that makes our hearts sing.

—Steve Jobs, at yesterday’s iPad 2 unveiling

I don’t (yet) own an iPad, nor an iPhone. In fact, I personally have never even owned an iPod. (There has been, since Christmas, an iPod Touch floating around our household somewhere, but I “touch” it only rarely.) But I’ve used Apple’s computers day-in-day-out for almost two decades now, and I believe Steve Jobs’ grasp of and commitment to the above principal is the number one reason behind the company’s phenomenal success and zealous customer loyalty.

Rookmaaker Syposium

2011-02-28T11:15:00.000-08:00

The Christian arts blog Transpositions is hosting a week-long online symposium on The Life and Work of Hans Rookmaaker, best known for his seminal work Modern Art and the Death of a Culture. Daily posts by noted scholars will chronicle Rookmaaker’s enduring influence on Christians who are devoted to practicing the arts as an essential God-given means for cultural transformation.

HCSBSB: Herod's Temple, Interior View

2011-02-18T10:09:00.000-08:00

It is very interesting to compare this rendering for the HCSB Study Bible of the interior of Herod’s Temple with the earlier one for Solomon’s Temple and to note both the points of continuity and discontinuity. As was noted in the post on Solomon’s Temple, the Scriptural descriptions are rather extensive, even if they are difficult to interpret on a number of points. With regard to Herod’s Temple, we have virtually no Scriptural information to go on. Our primary extra-biblical source, Josephus, gives a fair amount of information but it is quite selective, in some respects raising more questions than it answers.

Drawing upon Josephus, one overarching trend can be noted as a helpful guide to the would-be reconstructor: there seems to have been a Pharisaical trend towards austerity, simplification and abstraction that governed the decoration of this Temple. For instance, in the Holy Place, there seems to have been a return to one table and one lamp stand, after the manner of the original Tabernacle, whereas Solomon’s Temple had boasted ten of each. It also seems, based on some of Josephus’ comments, that any creaturely or quasi-human representations (e.g. cherubim) were deemed inappropriate (an interesting example of numerous and infamous Pharisaical attempts at a sort of “holier even than God” severity). With this as a backdrop, questions regarding the overall mode of decoration of the Holy Place, on which Josephus is pretty much silent, can begin to be begin to answered, at least with a fair amount of educated guess and conjecture.

Since the interior of the earlier Temple was decorated richly with garden and floral motifs, it seems reasonable to assume, given the symbolic importance of this imagery (Eden re-attained) and given that botanical representations seem to have escaped the pervading Pharisaical proscriptions, that these would have been retained in some form. We know that the Temple’s exterior employed the Greco-Roman Corinthian order, so it would be reasonable to transfer this to the interior as well.

Drawing on these assumptions, I developed a vision of the interior, worked out in the above elevation, which employs a three-tiered scheme of Corinthian pilasters interspersed with relief carvings displaying vegetative motifs. A good contemporary source of inspiration for these latter details can be seen in the Ara Pacis, in Rome.

The floor plan of Herod’s Temple followed the same dimensions as Solomon’s earlier temple, but the height was apparently even greater, which would have made for a very tall and slender sanctuary. Partly to help me get all the dimensions and proportions correct for the illustration and partly just for sheer personal satisfaction, I constructed a rough scale model and photographed it to use as starting reference for my sketches.

The Arch of Titus, also in Rome, which was built to commemorate the subjugation of the Jews and the destruction of the same Temple considered here in 70 A.D., includes a depiction of the lampstand, quite probably based on the actual artifact.

The publisher specifically asked that the veil separating the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies be featured prominently. The gospel accounts make special mention of this veil as being torn in two from top to bottom at the moment of Christ’s death upon the cross, indicating that man’s alienation from God had been overcome. The writer of Hebrews (4:14; 9:23-34) explains that Jesus, in His death and resurrection, “passed through the heavens” themselves, into the very presence of God as our true High Priest, and thus fulfilled in reality what the temple and the earthly High Priest merely represented in shadowy form. With this in mind, it is very interesting that Josephus states that many of the items depicted here had cosmological or astrological associations: the seven lamps of the lamp stand represent the seven “planets” that the Ptolemaic cosmology of the time recognized, the twelve loaves of showbread the twelve signs of the zodiac, etc. With respect to the veil (there was also another one of similar design at the outer entrance of the Holy Place), Josephus specifically mentions that it was woven with some sort of design that incorporated the twelve zodiacal signs (though again, the depictions were apparently abstract or symbolic—no literal pictures of lions, virgins, rams, etc.). He also associates the colors used (blue, purple, red and brown) with the four “elements” of air, water, fire and earth. Inspired by these descriptions and associations and drawing upon other sources, I created a design that incorporates a symbolic conception of the universe that was pretty common at the time: a square-shaped earth in the center, surrounded by seven planets in concentric orbits, in turn surrounded by the twelve signs of the zodiac, beyond which lies the ethereal fire of the “third” or highest heavens.

ACS Warriors Logo

2011-02-11T04:13:00.000-08:00

Here’s a new logo design, for the athletic program at Agathos Classical School in Columbia, Tennessee. Go Warriors!

R.I.P. Charlie Louvin

2011-01-26T15:41:00.000-08:00

Country Music Hall of Famer Charlie Louvin passed away last night at his home here in Tennessee at the age of 83. He and his brother Ira (who sadly and ironically personified many of the duo’s sin-denouncing numbers and who preceded Charlie in death by over 40 years) became legendary for their inspired harmonizing during the years in which they performed and recorded together. Charlie had a number of hits as a solo artist during the '60s and, in recent years, enjoyed newfound respect and a revival of his career thanks to his re-discovery by a new generation of old-school country and gospel music fans. But I will always remember him as the co-creator of this absolutely unforgettable piece of album cover art.

HCSBSB: Herod's Temple, Exterior View

2011-01-21T08:50:00.000-08:00

This exterior view of Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem would be a serious contender for my favorite out of all the illustrations I did for the HCSB Study Bible. The whole process, from research, concept sketching to final result was particularly enjoyable and highly satisfying for me.

There are a number of models and illustrations of Herod’s Temple in existence and they all bear a good deal of similarity due to the fact that detailed and accurate descriptions of the Temple’s appearance (primarily in the writings of Flavius Josephus) and even a few representations (albeit rather simplistic and crude ones—mostly from coins and ossuaries) have been preserved from antiquity. In spite of this overall continuity, however, I was able to identify at least a couple of aspects that lent themselves to some interesting interpretations which, to my knowledge, no other illustrator or reconstructor has exploited.

Virtually every modern depiction I know of presents a facade with a relatively small outer doorway of rectangular shape. There are two things that made the possibility of a more open and revealing facade an appealing interpretation for me. The first is the description Josephus gives of a vast ornamental vine wrought of gold which apparently occupied the space within the vestibule between the outermost entrance of the facade and the inner (veiled) doorway into the Holy Place. (It isn’t clear whether this was fully three dimensional or some sort of relief sculpture, but I chose to imagine the latter.) Especially given that the vine is a typical biblical metaphor for the nation of Israel (cf. Psalm 80; Isaiah 5:1-7) it seemed implausible to me that such a beautiful and potently symbolic piece of art would be entirely tucked away out of the general view behind a miserly opening. Secondly, I found this one ancient coin (above) which seems to depict a relatively tall outer opening with an arched rather than a horizontal top. This sent me off in the direction of having not just the doorway but the entire Temple facade conform to the proportions of a classical Roman triumphal arch. This solution was especially appealing given the fact that Herod himself was such a fawning afficionado of all things Roman.

After sketching it out I found that the measurements could be made to harmonize with Josephus and I went on from there to produce a complete front elevation (above). I chose a dramatic low angle for the final perspective rendering in order to emphasize the grandeur of what, at equal height and width of 150' and a surface finished entirely with white marble and gold, was no doubt a very imposing edifice.

Take that, all you two-spacers!

2011-01-14T06:53:00.000-08:00

“A page of text with two spaces between every sentence looks riddled with holes; a page of text with an ordinary space looks just as it should.”

Writing for Slate, Farhad Manjoo lucidly explains why typing two spaces after a period is not only completely unnecessary, but a crime, in fact (typographically speaking).

HCSBSB: Babylonian Invasion

2011-01-12T19:46:00.000-08:00

One of the items on the list of illustrations that Holman wanted me to do for the HCSB Study Bible was some sort of depiction of the siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians which occurred in the sixth century B.C. This could have gone in any number of directions: a battle scene, a view from behind the city walls looking out over the surrounding armies, another long view from above showing the layout of the city and estimated positions of the Babylonian forces, etc. However, upon considering the various options I felt strongly that, since most of the other illustrations highlighted architecture, it would be nice to do one in which people took center stage. After hashing this out with the publisher, it was decided that a depiction of the defeated captives leaving the destroyed city of Jerusalem on their way to exile in Babylon would be a fitting theme.

I wanted to convey not only the sorrow and despair but also the horror and brutality that no doubt attended such an event. The initial sketch above assumes a viewpoint somewhere close to the foot of the Mount of Olives looking back across the Kidron Valley toward the Temple Mount and the city of Jerusalem, with multiple columns of smoke rising ominously into the sky. Haggard, emaciated and stunned captives file by in a long column, past the dead and mutilated bodies of victims, with threatening—tormenting, even—Babylonian soldiers lining the way. Siege engines are visible beside the breached city walls above and the landscape bears the typical scars of war: sparse vegetation and the twisted and splintered stumps of hewn-down trees.

Not utterly to my surprise, my initial sketch pushed the envelope a bit too far. I was asked to refrain from showing dead bodies and any actual brutalization on the part of the Babylonian soldiers. I needed some good photographic reference of folks of all ages for this one, so every member of my family got to help out with modeling. (My kids love this part, and my wife—she REALLY loves it. The neighbors no doubt find it amusing as well. Oh yeah, and while I’m at it, I might just as will head any potentially snide comments off at the pass by acknowledging that the shirtless guy in the foreground of the above photo collage doesn’t exactly look “emaciated”. If this means a few blows to my vanity then hopefully it ratchets up respect for my skills as an illustrator to a commensurate degree.) The results of our back yard photo shoot are assembled in Photoshop®, and this serves as the basis for a revised, tight sketch. This second sketch is approved without further changes and so I move onto the final, which is executed on an 8"x10" piece of Claybord®, with color applied digitally after scanning.

Starbucks: the Logical Next Step

2011-01-07T04:46:00.000-08:00

With the unveiling of a new logo this week which features the brand’s iconic mermaid image sans the company name, or any words whatsoever, Starbucks Coffee has finally joined other luminaries such as Nike and Apple in attaining corporate identity nirvana—and it only took them forty years to get there. I’ve had more than one client over the years who had trouble accepting that a few hours and a few hundred dollars (or even if it were a few thousand, for that matter) for a logo design couldn’t exactly guarantee them a comparable level of branding gravitas right out of the gate.

HCSBSB: Hezekiah's Tunnel

2010-12-31T05:43:00.000-08:00

Well, I’ve mentioned my aversion to cutaway views before. This was actually one situation where a cutaway view would be really cool if someone could figure out how to pull it off, but I admit that I wasn’t up to it. (During my research, I actually did come across one or two attempts by other illustrators at a cutaway view, but they were not very successful in my opinion.) The difficulty is that the path of the tunnel—an engineering marvel of its day—is so circuitous that it practically defies representation in two dimensions. This would be a great project for a video-based or interactive virtual tour, and I’d love to see someone capable tackle that.

As it is, I used it as an opportunity to emphasize the growth of the city of Jerusalem from David’s time to Hezekiah’s with a dotted line representing the tunnel’s underground route beneath the Old City. This illustration appears on page 1183 of the HCSB Study Bible.

A God and Yet a Man

2010-12-24T18:29:00.000-08:00

A god and yet a man?
A maid and yet a mother?
Wit wonders what wit can
Conceive this or the other.

A god and can he die?
A dead man, can he live?
What wit can well reply?
What reason reason give?

God, truth itself, doth teach it.
Man’s wit sinks too far under
By reason’s power to reach it.
Believe and leave to wonder.

—Anonymous Fifteenth Century Verse

HCSBSB: Solomon's Temple, Interior View

2010-12-20T11:18:00.000-08:00

This interior view of Solomon’s Temple is featured, together with the exterior view featured previously, on page 706 of the HCSB Study Bible. The creative challenges posed here were the typical ones: imagining all the furnishings and the various motifs on the temple’s interior walls as they might have existed. Additionally, there were the technical challenges of rendering those same items in perspective, which becomes quite forced toward the outer edges of the picture plane, and also of conveying the desired lighting and atmosphere: a large interior space that was comparatively dark on the one hand (receiving light only from ten lamp stands and from high clerestory windows) and uniquely luminous on the other (the entire surface being covered with gold).

The walls of Solomon’s Temple were relief-sculpted with garden motifs as well as cherubim. (1Kg 6:18-29) This imagery is obviously intended to recall the Garden of Eden and the forbidden (or at least severely limited) access back into God’s presence which the temple and the high priest’s office symbolized. It was a big help to me—in fact it was virtually necessary—to work out an overall design schematically as a prelude to attempting a sketch for the three-dimensional rendering.

As we considered the influence of Egyptian aesthetics with the tabernacle, it seems reasonable here to assume a Phoenician influence, since we are told that Phoenician craftsmen were employed by Solomon in this enterprise. (The Phoenicians apparently borrowed from the Egyptians a good deal, so there is a high degree of continuity among some of their art forms, as the following examples attest. Cherubim and stylized “trees of life” were apparently common subjects in Phoenician art.)

A considerable interpretive challenge was posed in the rendering of the barrier that separates the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies, which constitutes the central portion of the illustration. The difficulty arises from trying to harmonize the following textual details: There was a veil separating the two areas. (2Chr 3:14) Doors or gates are also mentioned (1Kg 6:31-35), as well as golden chains (1Kg 6:21). These details by themselves would seem to suggest a walled partition, with an entrance surrounded by doors, which when opened would reveal the veil and the chains stretched across to form an additional visual barrier. But we are also given the additional detail that the poles of the Ark of the Covenant (which rested in the center of the cube-shaped Holy of Holies, between two gigantic carved cherubim with outstretched wings) were at least partially visible from the Holy Place. (2Ch 5:7-9)

The consulting architect and I went back and forth several times trying to sort all of this out. Ultimately, the most satisfactory solution was to imagine the doors as serving a purely ceremonial function—attached to freestanding posts, without a wall on either side—with the chains stretched all the way across the barrier and with the veil covering most, but not quite all, of the remaining surface area. This configuration is at least plausible in that it “saves the phenomenon” by allowing the ends of the ark’s poles (which must have been somewhat less than 10 cubits in maximum length to allow for placement in the original tabernacle) to have been glimpsed on occasion from outside, say by a priest caring for one of the lamps at the western end of the Holy Place. (This also assumes that the ark is oriented trans-longitudinally, that is with poles running north to south, which isn’t spelled out either.) The following sketches work all of this out schematically.

HCSBSB: Solomon's Temple, Exterior View

2010-12-08T14:55:00.000-08:00

Well, this next one was a pretty big deal. This exterior view of Solomon’s Temple was to appear along with an interior view and a small schematic of the same for a combined full-page illustration in the HCSB Study Bible.

Back when I began working on the Mosaic Taberncale, I started some schematics on graph paper to help me keep track of the relative sizes of all of the various features and items, and I added to it as the project progressed up through Solomon’s Temple and finally to Herod’s Temple.

Here also, is one example of several early rough sketches I produced in trying to work out the best possible vantage point:

As mentioned in these posts before, recreating many of these structures accurately from the measurements and descriptions given in the texts (biblical as well as extra-biblical) is extremely difficult, if not impossible. There are just enough gaps and just enough ambiguity in the descriptions to leave a good deal open to interpretation. Most significantly, the height of Solomon’s Temple is a matter of considerable debate. (There is perhaps a textual variance between the measurements given in Kings and those recorded in Chronicles, but it is also suggested that the temple proper and its vestibule were of differing heights and that this somehow accounts for the differing figures in a way that isn’t clear.) Most scholars stick with the more conservative figure of 60 cubits (90') for the maximum overall height and dismiss the references to a height of twice that amount as either a manuscript error or an exaggeration, symbolically motivated or otherwise. The illustrations I produced here are in keeping with this lower estimation, but I’m not at all convinced that 120 cubits (180'), as depicted here, for example, is out of the question. Indeed, I find the idea appealing on a number of levels. (Josephus, at any rate, writing in the 1st century A.D., also apparently takes the height of Solomon’s original temple to have been 120 cubits. Perhaps more on that when we get to Herod’s Temple.)

The two bronze pillars (Jachin and Boaz—they actually had names), the massive bronze “sea” on the twelve oxens’ backs and the ten “water chariots” are all point of interest and appeal. I had a lot of fun imagining them. Below is a composite of several exploratory sketches for Jachin and Boaz. There is an incredibly rich amount of symbolism bound up in each of these items, and in the temple as a whole. I would highly recommend the writings of James Jordan and Peter Leithart in this regard, and I tried to incorporate many of the insights I’ve gained from them into these illustrations. (For just one tantalizing example, check out these brief comments from Leithart on the “water chariots” and the lampstands (“burning golden trees” as he poetically refers to them).

Michael Praetorius: Mass for Christmas Morning

2010-12-06T07:10:00.000-08:00

If you’re looking to add to your own collection of Christmas music, there’s really nothing that I could recommend more highly. A copy of this CD came into my possession several years ago through slightly odd circumstances, and I could not be more thankful: over the course of the intervening years, this recording has grown so much in my affections that I would rate it not merely as my favorite Christmas album but one of my very favorite albums, period. Just read the consistently glowing reviews on amazon.com and you’ll see that I’m not off on a tangent here. (Personally, one of the reasons I most look forward to Christmas is that I can play this recording without that tinge of self-reproach which haunts me during those moments when I can’t help sneaking in a listen here or there throughout the rest of the year.)

If I could try to pinpoint one possible reason for the strong appeal of this production, which is an attempt to recreate a Christmas Morning church service as it would have been celebrated in a large German congregation in the early 1600s, it would be its juxtaposition of the sort of tender delicacy which is more typically associated with traditional and liturgical Christmas music in our own age with a rather arrestingly wild exuberance—bombast even. This combination, which seems to be a particular gift of the Lutheran tradition, is uniquely moving in its ability to conjure up more-or-less simultaneously the sort of meditative reflection and ecstatic celebration that the Incarnation demands.

The performance captured here is reconstructed based on the work of Michael Praetorius—a towering figure in the German musical heritage, one of those giants upon whose shoulders Bach, who lived a century later, stood and upon whose foundation the latter composer was able to erect his own musical edifice, leaving a legacy that would make his a household name today. Recorded at Roskilde Cathedral in Denmark, this production wonderfully apprehends what director Paul McCreesh refers to in the liner notes as the “kaleidoscope of changing textures” envisioned by Praetorius’ arrangements and copious supplemental directions and suggestions for performance. The singers and players are divided into several groups and positioned at strategic points throughout the church, both on the ground level and high up in distant galleries, in some instances, with the robust contribution of a full congregation of singers to answer them. The solo voices shine brilliantly. The variety of period instruments—strings (plucked and bowed), reeds (including shawms and crumhorns), brass (trumpets and sackbuts), cabinet organs and harpsichords—make for a musical texture that is arresting and even charming in its lack of homogeneity, as compared with a modern orchestra. The texts, many of them based on quite ancient sources, are all in German with a good deal of Latin interspersed, a common practice in Lutheran churches of the period, but thorough translations are provided in the liner notes.

Of course, all this could easily sound like a real mess in the the wrong hands, but McCreesh does a masterful job of bringing it all together. The entire recording is captivating (even the more “mundane” sections where the priest intones the liturgy), though certain individual numbers shine with particular brilliance: the mystery-encloaked Processional Christum Wir Sollen Loben Schon (based on a 5th century Latin text, with German translation from the pen of Martin Luther himself), the dramatic Introit Puer Natus in Bethlehem, the Pulpit Hymn Quem Pastores Laudavere, and the Final Hymn Puer Nobis Nascitur. But the crowning achievement of it all is the closing Recessional, the familiar In Dulci Jubilo. I say “familiar”, though I promise you have never heard it performed like this before, and probably never will again—this side of heaven.

HCSBSB: Iron Age Israelite Home

2010-11-30T08:15:00.000-08:00

I confess that, as an illustrator, I’ve never really gotten into doing cutaway views. In the right hands, they can certainly be quite engaging and done in a way that is both informative and beautiful, but I’ve also seen plenty of examples that offered the worst of both worlds, so to speak. For my part, I prefer whenever possible to stick with a more “straight up” depiction that most powerfully captures the aura of the thing and leave the other details to accompanying charts or diagrams. (That’s my aesthetic preference, but it also has to be acknowledged that the technical demands of creating a really good cutaway view will almost certainly multiply the labor involved by a significant factor as well.)

Be that as it may, I knew from the get-go that this was probably going to be one of those illustrations for the HCSB Study Bible that would indeed demand some sort of cutaway view, and so I girded up my loins and got down to it. Drawing upon my own research of domestic architecture from the region and the time period (which basically encompasses the time immediately following the Exodus and conquest of Canaan, ca. 15th century B.C, up through New Testament times), I submitted the initial sketch below.

Although I dare say that there probably existed at least one or two residences in ancient Israel that looked almost identical to my first stab (just a touch of wry sarcasm but no gall intended here), the archaeological consultant for the project suggested a more “typical” layout, and so the illustration was revised along those lines.

Rhyme of November Stars

2010-11-26T20:38:00.000-08:00

The noiseless marching of the stars
Sweeps above me all night long;
Up the skies, over the skies
Passes the uncounted throng,
Without haste, without rest,
From the east to the west:
Vega, Deneb, white Altair
Shine like crystals in the air,
and the lonely Fomalhaut
In the dark south, paces low.
Now the timid Pleiades
Leave the shelter of the trees,
While toward the north, mounting high,
Gold Capella, like a queen,
Watches over her demesne
Stretching toward the kingly one,
Dusky, dark Aldebaran.
Betelgeuse and Rigel burn
In their wide wheel, slow to turn,
And in the sharp November frost
Bright Sirius, with his blue light
Completes the loveliness of night.

—Sara Teasdale

HCSBSB: David's Jerusalem

2010-11-24T15:20:00.000-08:00

This was the earliest of several views of Jerusalem which I did for the HCSB Study Bible. I spent quite a bit of time poring over other maps and images from various periods in Jerusalem’s history. Google Earth (my favorite time-sucking software) also proved to be a very useful tool. The satellite imagery is modern day of course, but its 3D rendering capabilities are enormously helpful in providing an accurate representation of the topography, from virtually any angle imaginable! Choosing the most ideal vantage point was a big concern, especially given the fact that the city would be growing as shown in the subsequent illustrations, and we wanted to strive for consistency from one to the next, as much as possible.

HCSBSB: Israelite Encampment

2010-11-17T17:38:00.000-08:00

The arrangement of the tribes of Israel encamped around the Mosaic Tabernacle in the wildernes is described in Numbers Chapter Two of the HCSB Study Bible. This is one of those Old Testament foreshadowings that is just sort of concealed within the text, but really bowls you over when you see it worked out visually. I had Jamie Soles’ song Sign of the Cross in my head pretty much the whole time I was working on this one.

HCSBSB: Tabernacle Furnishings

2010-11-10T07:03:00.000-08:00

This next illustration for the HCSB Study Bible features a montage of the various items contained within the Mosaic Tabernacle: the ark of the covenant, the bronze laver, the bronze altar, the golden incense altar, the golden lampstand and the golden table of shewbread. (See Exodus 25-30; 36-40 for descriptions of their appearance and construction.) Although this illustration as a whole underwent very little transformation or development following the initial sketch (below), there was a good deal of thought and research put into each of the individual elements prior to that point.

In terms of general aesthetics, it is generally agreed among scholars that the tabernacle and its items would have been highly influenced by Egyptian art, since this would have been the only style that the Hebrews would have had exposure to for over 400 years. Furthermore, it is likely that the superintendent Bezalel and some of his fellow craftsmen would have been formally trained in the Egyptian canons and techniques. (Of course, God gave Moses very specific directions for the construction of each item, which probably went beyond the measurements and simple descriptions mentioned in the text itself to include detailed visions of the items in toto. These fully-realized visions could of course have employed any style whatsoever, whether known or unknown to the Israelites, or to any other people, prior to that time, and could have guided Moses as he in turn guided the craftsmen. Nevertheless, it seems likely that an Egyptian style prevailed, and the whole question of employing or importing a “pagan” style or aesthetic heritage into the worship of Yahweh makes for some interesting theological discussions, and has been treated by Francis Schaeffer, Gene Edward Veith, and others.)

At any rate, fabulous examples of Egyptian art from the time period abound, especially among the artifacts from the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, which include several items of similar construction to some of the tabernacle furnishings. Some items posed greater and more interesting creative challenges than others to my attempts to both faithfully and imaginatively represent them. The laver, for instance is scantily described (Ex. 30:17-21; 38:8), but it seems to have had a supporting base that was distinct from the basin itself, though the two presumably functioned and were transported as a single unit.

The ark of the covenant was of course an object of special attention. While it was tempting to make it look just like the version in the Indiana Jones movies, which I think is a splendid and probably a reasonably accurate representation, I did have a few twists of my own that I wanted to lend to my own interpretation. I worked some of these out in a larger sketch (below). First off, it seems that cherubim are presented, both biblically and extra-biblically, as winged, sphinx-like creatures, with the head of a man and the body of some four-footed animal, typically a lion or a bovine. (Parallel examples abound in the art of numerous cultures, including Egyptian, Phoenician, Assyrian, Babylonian and Greek.) The Bible speaks of the lid of the ark as the “mercy seat”, and a seat is actually what it was: the cherubim spread out their wings to serve as a throne upon which the presence of Yahweh Himself was seated. (Perhaps the cherubs’ wings surrounded or enveloped an actual throne or seat, though I did not include one.)

The question of the ark’s orientation (did the carrying poles go in the long or the short side?) is particularly consternating, as I’ll explain in more detail when discussing the sketches for the Temple of Solomon, and I’m still not settled on the answer to that one. (You can see that I actually switched the orientation even here.) The relief-sculptured motif on the ark’s front is purely my own imagining, but is an exploration of how the exodus event might have been captured in visual terms. You have the parting waters of the Red Sea, re-birthing Israel as a nation, and the two tablets of the Decalogue, overshadowed by pyramid-shaped mountains. These recall both the land of Egypt that had been left behind (pyramids are stylized, man-made mountains, after all) and Mount Sinai (with the glory of God streaming from the top), where Israel’s identity as Yahweh’s Covenant Nation was formally established.

Helvetica

2010-11-06T20:17:00.000-07:00

It isn’t too often that you see the labels Film and Typography juxtaposed is it? I finally got around to watching this one last night. (My wife is out of town for a few days. No way I would have gotten her to sit through this one.) I have to say it’s a really well-made and fascinating documentary—I daresay even non-graphic designers or typographers would find it interesting if they gave it a chance. (But maybe I’m just kidding myself.) Being one myself (a graphic designer, that is) I will confess that I’ve never really felt a strong attraction for this typeface, to say nothing of the adulation which it, being the ubiquitous and quintessential typographical encapsulation of the modernist movement, arouses within so many in my field. In fact, that goes a long way toward explaining why I found the film so pleasing: far from being the sort of one-dimensional encomium that I rather expected, the featured interviews with respected designers and typographers encompass the extremes of “love it” as well as “hate it”, with glimpses of the varying gradations of ambivalence which lie between. For my own part, I’ll say that in many respects my own reasons for not being in love with it were largely confirmed. (The virtual paeans offered on its behalf by the avowed disciples of modernism, lauding it as the consummately “neutral” and formless conveyor of pure and unsullied content, brought a simultaneous smile to my face and furrow to my brow. Associations with characters from C. S. Lewis’ novel That Hideous Strength kept springing to mind as I listened to some of these guys.) At the same time, and somewhat paradoxically I suppose, I have to say that my appreciation for it in some regards was enhanced. It definitely has its strong points and its place. So maybe, when all’s said and done, even as I eschew those principles which animate it, I might actually have to start using it here and there…every once in a while, at least.

HCSBSB: The Tabernacle

2010-11-03T14:06:00.000-07:00

This view of the Mosaic Tabernacle was actually the first illustration I completed for the HCSB Study Bible. The inclusion of all the tents in the background, which needed to look pretty numerous and vast, presented probably at least as much of a challenge as the tabernacle and associated items and persons in the foreground did. And, as is typical, I got just as caught up in rendering the sky, clouds and smoke as I did in any other part of the illustration. (That’s actually the case with a number of these. Sometimes the clouds and swirling smoke and flames wound up being my favorite parts of some of these scenes when all was said and done, oddly enough.)

This is also one of those scenes (there wound up being several) for which I built a crude model of which I could take some reference photographs from key angles that would serve as the basis for the final drawing. I felt a pretty heavy burden for making sure the relative scales and distances for all the components were accurately represented, and this was often the easiest way to accomplish that.

HCSBSB: Noah's Ark

2010-10-26T13:43:00.000-07:00

This was one of the earliest illustrations I did for the project and also one of the more straightforward. (As I post these, by the way, I'm going to proceed roughly in the order in which they appear in the HCSB Study Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, as opposed to the chronological order in which each illustration was executed. That chronology would be difficult to reconstruct anyway, since some of the simpler ones were begun and completed while some of the more involved ones were still in various stages of development.)

On the one hand, Noah’s ark just sort of is what it is: the text is pretty clear as to the dimensions involved, which leaves only minor details to guesswork and interpretation. Along those lines, there were a couple of things I wanted to try and capture which were perhaps a bit unique from any of the countless other renditions I have seen. First off, it bugs me a little bit that people almost always assume that antediluvian man was primitive and crude and that therefore the ark’s construction must have been quite unrefined and utilitarian. My own study of both history and the Bible leads me to believe that, on the contrary, ancient man possessed knowledge and (in some respects, at least) a degree of technical proficiency and innovation that eludes us still today, along with a flair for embellishment and adornment that our own utilitarian age has sadly lost sight of.

Inspired by the symbolic Scriptural links between Holy Spirit-wind-water-bird(dove) that are all in play here, I wanted to propose an ark with a prow that suggested a bird. Being a rather unconventional approach I knew that would be a hard sell to the publisher (and it was) but it was fun exploring the possibilities in the course of making the attempt.

The final still retains the swirling wave motif that I drew all the way around the upper portion. The storm clouds and gathering birds in the background are meant to dramatically anticipate what is coming.

HCSB Study Bible Illustrations

2010-10-26T09:51:00.000-07:00

This month witnesses the publication of a project that occupied me (in fits and starts) for two full years. Back in the spring of 2008, I was approached by B&H Publishing to execute over a dozen illustrations for their planned release of the HCSB Study Bible. This represented a virtual dream job for me as an illustrator, so needless to say I accepted the offer gladly.

The process involved an enormous amount of research. (Some would call it “painstaking” I suppose, but for me it was sheer delight. The real challenge posed to me at this stage was not to get too lost and absorbed in it all!) In a few cases I resorted to building some crude scale models to help me visualize with the greatest possible accuracy. There was also consultation with a professional archeologist for a number of the pieces, sometimes involving a number of revisions. The end results two-and-a-half years later are a pile of research drawings, notes and preliminary sketches big enough to fill an entire portfolio, and a final product in which I take great satisfaction - as I trust the folks at B&H do also - and which I trust will prove a most helpful and inspiring resource for students of the Scriptures.

In celebration of the event, I will be featuring here on this blog in the coming days and weeks, for the very first time, images of the final illustrations as well as, in many cases, sketches and other glimpses of the process involved in their creation. Lord willing, I will be making new posts of this material at the approximate rate of two each week over the next several weeks, so please check back in regularly. Hope you enjoy!

Stoney Heights Farm

2010-09-29T09:21:00.000-07:00

I got to revisit once again that era of late-19th-early-20th-century advertising which I so love with this logo for my good friends at Stoney Heights Farm. You can’t beat their “home grown” eggs and cheese, so check ’em out!

The Fall

2010-09-06T11:47:00.001-07:00

To what can one compare this film, one of the most magical I've seen in quite a while? Think The Princess Bride meets Moulin Rouge meets The English Patient (at least its better aspects) and you might be halfway there. This unique and enthralling movie—filmed over four years, in twenty-eight countries and at the director’s own expense (because the concept was too crazy to attract a producer)—presents a very simple but moving story at its center, surrounded by a swirling pastiche of visual imagery: audacious costumes, butterflies that morph into islands, a mystical shaman emerges from a burning tree, endless labyrinths and mazes of Escher-esque staircases, a bus-sized wagon propelled by a small army of slaves, a priest’s grinning face and elaborate collar morph into a surrealist desert landscape. And what is more, if the director himself is to be believed, no computer generated effects were used in the film! He apparently has an uncanny gift for finding and exploiting some of the most obscure and overlooked locations for scenes which one would assume could only have been realized through digital sleight of hand, or through the construction of wildly elaborate sets that would give Ben-Hur a run for his money.

Following an opening sequence (effectively accompanied only by the haunting Allegretto from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony) involving what we, after some puzzlement, discern to be a silent movie set where something has gone terribly wrong, the scene shifts to a Los Angeles hospital, apparently somewhere around 1920. Among the interesting cast of characters which constitute the hospital’s patients, caretakers and other employees are Roy Walker (Lee Pace), the stuntman who has apparently been paralyzed from the waist down in the accident depicted at the beginning, and Alexandria (Catinca Untaru), a young child of immigrant orchard workers, who is recovering from a broken arm. Though housed in different parts of the hospital, the two wind up meeting and, in what involves some clever twists on the classic theme, Roy plays Scheherazade to Alexandria’s Shahryar, whiling away their convalescent hours by weaving a tantalizing and epic adventure tale to her enthrallment.

It soon becomes apparent however that there is a dark ulterior motive behind his obvious gift for and enjoyment in storytelling: his desire to gain the girl’s unwitting assistance in his own suicide attempt. Alexandria, however, though teased into compliance by his strung-out fable, proves at once both too naïve and too clever for him. In a moving tribute to the power of narrative, Alexandria begins to insert herself into the story when she senses that Roy is faltering under the weight of his own despair, and, in a subsequent contest of wills, each in turn seeks to steer the plot toward alternately destructive or redemptive ends.

Some other miscellaneous tidbits and sub-themes we are treated to along the way include: Clever visual portrayals of cross-cultural and linguistic misunderstandings (Roy’s intended Native American “Indian” becomes an “Indian” from the subcontinent in Alexandria’s imagining.); A delightful exploration of the very fine line that exists between reality and imagination in the life of a child. (The scary x-ray technicians that Alexandria glimpses in the hospital’s dark corridors clearly inspire the villainous hordes of the fantasy world.); Religious symbolism, much of it specifically Christian, is interwoven here and there—some of it obvious and some of it more subtle. (Why, for instance, one might ask, is a worker shown cutting palm branches from high up in a tree during the initial shot of the hospital?)

For all the delightful excesses lavished upon the film, director Tarsem nonetheless shows remarkable gifts of restraint in this production just where it matters most. Most notably, the decision to keep the running time at just under two hours keeps the magic from souring into a tedious and self-indulgent sensory overload (à la Peter Jackson’s King Kong). And while there is a curse word or two and perhaps just enough violence and brutality to justify the R rating (though I’m sure I’ve seen worse in PG-13 films), there is none of the uber-bizarre, sexualized violence which (apparently—I haven’t seen it) marks his other film of note, The Cell. Lee Pace gives a really great performance, but Untaru’s performance is just splendid, thanks in large part to careful handling by both Tarsem and Pace. (This is illuminated, along with many other fascinating details, in the DVD Commentaries and Special Features, which are also well-worth watching.)

And finally, it has to be observed that the film’s difficulties in finding a distributor (it premiered in 2006 but wasn’t officially released until 2008) just testify once again to the debased cinematic establishment’s commitment to bland, mass-marketability over genuine creative merit. (Brings back to mind Kenneth Branaugh’s still yet-to-be-released The Magic Flute.)

The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th (and 1st) Editions

2010-09-01T13:44:00.000-07:00

The Sixteenth Edition of The Chicago Manual of Style—an indispensable tool for anyone involved in publishing—went on sale this week, available in print as well as by online subscription. To celebrate this newest edition, the publisher is also offering a FREE digital download of the original 1906 edition. Of special interest to designers and typophiles such as myself is the Specimens of Type in Use section at the very end, which offers a delightful compendium of turn-of-the-twentieth-century typefaces and ornaments.

Jonathan-Rogers.com

2010-08-25T10:42:00.000-07:00

My friend and some-time collaborator Jonathan Rogers has recently started his own blog (in addition to his frequent contributions over at The Rabbit Room) which I heartily commend to you. Delightful posts on the importance and power of stories, insightful commentary on the arts, smile-inducing anecdotes, character sketches of some of the real-life inspirations for the Feechie-folk who inhabit his novels, and more. Check it out!

Catullus Postcard No. 1

2010-08-23T05:22:00.001-07:00

As promised in my earlier, more detailed post, here is an online view of the final postcard art.

Vivamus, mea Lesbia . . .

2010-08-10T23:24:00.001-07:00

So, I’ve had this idea for a while now to do a series of pieces (partly for my own pleasure and partly to use for self-promotional purposes) inspired by the poetry of Catullus (ca. 84-54 B.C.). His lyrical verses explore a number of very interesting themes and subjects and provide a rich source of inspiration for visual interpretation. It being summer—and an uncommonly hot one at that—what could be more fitting than to turn to one of the most famous of his mildly erotic love poems to get things kicked off? With that in mind, I chose Number Five in his catalog of over one hundred surviving poems (Number Seven is also closely related). A variety of potential approaches came to mind for the piece—abstract or semi-abstract, typographically driven, a photographically-based design, etc.—but for this one I chose to stick with a more-or-less straightforward illustration executed in pen, watercolor and colored pencil, leaving some of those other angles for possible exploration in future installments of the series. The above detail from the pencil sketch serves as a bit of a teaser; I’ll post an image of the final in a few days, after the lucky few have had a chance to get their hard copy (in the form of a 5"x7" postcard) in the mail.

Just a little background: Most of what we know about Gaius Valerius Catullus comes directly from his poetry, which descends to us from antiquity by the thinnest of threads: a single manuscript of his surviving verses came to light in his hometown of Verona sometime during the 14th century. Other biographical details have been filled in by scholars with help from references and circumstantial evidence gleaned form other sources. He was a provincial, though well-off, small-town boy from northern Italy, his family’s villa being situated in the village of Sirmio (near Verona), on a lovely peninsula at the southern end of the stunningly beautiful Lake Garda. His father was apparently a friend of Julius Caesar. Sometime during young adulthood he moved to Rome where he became completely entranced by (and intimately involved with) a highly sophisticated, married woman whom most scholars identify as one Clodia Metelli, to whom he gave the pseudonym “Lesbia” in his poems.

That much suffices as a background for the poem under consideration here, so with that we shall leave Catullus there in the arms of his Lesbia until the next installment bids us follow his course further. The original Latin text below is followed by my own attempt at a rather loose translation.

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus, 
Rumoresque senum severiorum 
Omnes unius aestimemus assis! 
Soles occidere et redire possunt: 
Nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux, 
Nox est perpetua una dormienda. 
Da mi basia mille, deinde centum, 
Dein mille altera, dein secunda centum, 
Deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum. 
Dein, cum milia multa fecerimus, 
Conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus, 
Aut ne quis malus invidere possit,
 Cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love,
Reckoning all the rumors of the stodgy old men
As but a penny’s worth!
Suns will rise and suns will set in endless succession:
As for us, when once our brief light is extinguished,
There remains but one eternal night to be slept.
So give me a thousand kisses, and then a hundred more,
And then another thousand, and yet another hundred,
And still a thousand more—and yes, another hundred at least.
Then at last, after many thousands are tallied up,
We’ll confound the abacus—let their number be forgotten!
Lest any envious, evil eye should jinx us upon perceiving
Such an extravagant profusion of kisses.

Father Bach

2010-07-28T09:38:00.000-07:00

On this date 260 years ago, Johann Sebastian Bach, aged 65 years, blind and relatively unknown (except to his admiring fellow composers) outside of his native Germany, passed on to greater glory.

In the late nineteenth century, the French composer Emmanuel Chabrier offered the following meditation on Bach’s legacy as he recalled admiring a grove of magnificent and aged chestnut trees during an excursion in the French countryside:

“I stood there looking at these venerable trees whose roots have still enough strength and sap to bring forth young little chestnut trees, which grow there under the wings of their great-great-grandfathers. What power! They make me think of Father Bach who is still breeding new generations of musicians and will go on breeding them forever.”

From Garden to Garden-City

2010-06-27T05:10:00.000-07:00

“The Bible opens with a Garden and closes with a City. This simple observation points to the meaning of history, of process, of change, of time. Something has happened during the years between Genesis 1 and Revelation 22, and that something is the work of glorification. The world, the created good, has been transformed or transfigured. The potential has become actual. The raw material has been worked into art. . . . The natural glories of the Edenic world are reworked by man into the cultural glories of the New Jerusalem.”
—James B. Jordan, Through New Eyes, pp117-118

Don Draper They Ain't

2010-06-12T15:52:00.000-07:00

A very interesting glimpse—by turns both hilarious and disturbing—is available here at what are surely some of the dumbest ad concepts to ever see the light of day. Be sure to read the captions off to the right. I’m tempted to question the authenticity of some of these. . . .

Illustrations for The Charlatan's Boy

2010-06-07T22:02:00.000-07:00

Here are a frontispiece and map illustration I finished recently for the soon-to-be-released novel The Charlatan’s Boy, authored by my friend Jonathan Rogers.

Speaking of "Difficult" (Bad Type Sighting 100605)

2010-06-05T08:48:00.000-07:00

I dunno, maybe it should get points for sticking with the theme so well. To be fair, the book itself, a biographical sketch of early American preacher, theologian and genius Jonathan Edwards and his wife Sarah, is probably a decent read, at least. (HT to Joe Thacker and the Nashville Flood of 2010 for bringing this one to light.)

Artios Pancake Breakfast Promotion

2010-06-04T08:59:00.001-07:00

Here’s some promotional work I did recently for the good folks at Artios Academy. This design was used in both print and online promotion for the event.

Primary SCare (Bad Logo Sighting, 100604)

2010-06-04T08:41:00.000-07:00

I’m just sayin’, might want to revisit that.

The Flood of 2010

2010-05-05T09:29:00.000-07:00

In case y’all haven’t heard, things have gotten pretty wet here in my hometown recently.

Bright Star, Redux

2010-04-13T19:21:00.000-07:00

Upon further reflection, I have come to realize that my initial reaction was rather off the mark and that I’m now going to have to eat some of my earlier words regarding this film. Not that I’m now going to praise it as one of the greatest films ever made, but it does have a certain charm which really grew on me in the days following my initial viewing, and which was further reaffirmed upon a second. I think this is one of those movies that has to be evaluated on its own terms, something I failed to consider in my first review, forgetting that not every film aspires to the same level—or even the same kind—of greatness.

To reiterate some of the picture’s more obvious strengths: exquisite cinematography, delightful costumes, and several first-rate performances. (Paul Schneider is particularly effective and fun to watch as Keats’ friend and patron, Charles Armitage Brown.) My first time around, I thought the score was decent but too sparse; now I realize that this was an exercise in studied and wise restraint, one which increases the potency of the scenes where the music does make an appearance. (Bonus points too for the unique a cappella arrangement of the Mozart wind serenade, which is featured prominently. Come to think of it, that may have been the subliminal trigger that caused me to make the Amadeus comparison in the first place.)

Certain almost incidental elements, such as the interactions between Fanny and her siblings, are likewise subtly endearing. It’s also striking and refreshing, especially given the Romantic context in which the film is set, to be so boldly confronted by the presentation of two lovers who, though stirred by the most intense passions and forces of attraction, nevertheless resolve to act honorably (in sharp contrast to Brown’s character, it should be noted), remembering that their actions will have consequences far beyond the present moment. (HT to Jeffrey Overstreet for this observation, and to Joe Thacker,for pointing me there.)

And lastly, I was very much remiss in failing to mention the absolutely fabulous and right-on-the-money quotation about the nature of poetry, given by Ben Whishaw in his role as Keats.

A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore; it’s to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out. It is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery.

So my reconsidered take on this film is to approach it much on these terms. This is not a fast food flick; it’s a leisurely four course meal kind of movie. Watch it being prepared for a somewhat slower-than-normal pace, and without expecting any huge surprises—no innovative plot twists, or grandiose commentaries on the human condition. This is not one of those films which, as Keats also says of certain men at one point in the dialogue, aim to "make you start without making you feel". Be prepared, rather, to luxuriate in the sensation which each progressive scene conjures up, and I think you will find the experience a most enjoyable one.

Bright Star

2010-03-27T08:44:00.000-07:00

Though definitely worth watching, this biographical sketch of the great Romantic poet John Keats’ final years proves rather disappointing overall. The film follows the relationship of Keats and his fiancé Fanny Brawne, which ends in tragic and unconsummated separation due to Keats’ poverty, failing health and untimely death from tuberculosis in Rome at the age of twenty-five. Despite some excellent casting choices, admirable performances and beautiful camera work, the overall result still somehow manages to engender a tedium which seems to overflow the otherwise reasonable limitations of the hour-and-fifty-nine-minute time-frame. Quite unlike Keats’ poetry, there is simply little here to arouse the imagination or draw the audience in so that they may themselves experience and become participants of both the elation and the pathos of the work that is set before them. For this failure, I think the screenplay itself is mostly at fault.

More specifically, I think this is a case where a too conservative approach—one that resolves, on the whole, to stick safely to the known biographical facts—ultimately fails to satisfactorily meet the demands of the chosen medium. A narrative film needs to accept and embrace the fact that it is not a documentary. By contrast, an approach which is willing to introduce some creative and well-considered, but not cheap or gimmicky, dramatical devices in order to better serve the narrative is much more successful. In addition to the other necessary qualities, this is what makes Amadeus, for instance, not a great biography (it reduces Mozart to something of a caricature and substitutes wild conjecture for historical fact), but a truly great film, while Bright Star remains simply a mediocre one. Both biopics begin with the considerable challenge of presenting an artist who was the consummate practitioner of his craft, and whose premature demise is well known and anticipated by the audience beforehand. But through creative daring, Amadeus attains the cinematic status of a Mozart, while Bright Star remains just another Salieri.

NOTE: Be sure to read my follow-up to this review here.

Salvo

2010-03-25T13:46:00.000-07:00

No, it’s not Credenda Agenda, but, after perusing my first edition of Salvo, I find that it goes a fair distance, at least, toward filling that gaping hole in my life (or at least my hands) that the former publication’s transition to an online-only format has left. Satire, refutation, thoughtful cultural analysis, film and book reviews, and more—all from a robust Christian perspective. Subscribe to the print edition and get it all, or digest what’s available for consumption online. Either way, you should check it out.

Enrique Granados

2010-03-24T12:51:00.000-07:00

On this day niney-four years ago (March 24, 1916), the composer Enrique Granados met an untimely, tragic and ironic end when the passenger ferry Sussex, on which he and his wife were traveling, was torpedoed by a German U-boat in the English Channel.

Granados was a virtuoso pianist and composed primarily for that instrument, though a number of his works have been transcribed for the guitar, for which they seem exceptionally well-suited. His Twelve Spanish Dances are particularly delightful, and I especially recommend the 2003 recordings by father and son Celadonio and Angel Romero. The most famous of the twelve is No. 5, Andaluza, though I am rather fond of No. 12, Danza Triste (aka Melancholia) and No. 4, Villanesca.

At forty-eight years old, his career was just beginning to blossom and his mind brimming over with unrealized musical ideas. In January of 1916, he reluctantly agreed to make a first-ever trans-Atlantic voyage (he was terrified of water) in support of his opera Goyescas, which premiered in New York. It was on the final leg of the return journey back to his beloved Spain that tragedy overtook him. Following the torpedo strike, Granados made his way to a lifeboat, and from there he caught sight of his wife struggling in the water. Despite his acute aquaphobia, he jumped in to try and rescue her. Both drowned, and his body was never recovered. They left behind six children. (To further underscore the irony, the ship had broken in two, and the portion which remained afloat, which included Granados’ own cabin, was later towed safely to port with the greater number of its passengers still safely aboard.)

Granados was apparently also a painter of some repute, after the fashion of his countryman Francisco Goya, whom he much admired. I have not, however, been able to find any examples of his work as a visual artist.

52 Reasons…

2010-03-18T08:25:00.000-07:00

Here are some snippets from the current advertising and promotional campaign for LifeWayWorship.com which I’ve helped develop:

Promotional logo element

Print ad, 2-page spread

Online banner ad

A Day in the Life

2010-03-12T09:30:00.000-08:00

So what does a day in the life of a graphic designer look like? This gives you a pretty good idea. I just have to say though, that the only way this book cover design was pulled off in just 6 hours was that it was #3 in a series—the basic look was already established, so no need for showing multiple comps and all that goes along with that. All you clients out there, just keep that in mind! :)

(HT to my friend and much-more-prolific-fellow-blogger Kristi for this.)

I Love Typography

2010-03-11T06:34:00.000-08:00

I just stumbled across this delightful typographical blog (also now included in the links over at the left). Enjoy!

HOW Design Annual 2010

2010-03-03T09:43:00.000-08:00

I just picked up a copy of HOW Magazine’s Design Annual a couple of days ago and am still salivating over so many of the inspiring examples of creativity displayed between its covers. Here is just one of them—a definite must-have item.

Icosahedron, Youcosahedron, Weallcosahedron

2010-01-11T08:00:00.000-08:00

Check out my model of an icosahedron. I’ve been itching to construct one after reading about it in The Power of Limits. I finally found some time during the Christmas Holidays.

The icosahedron is one of the five regular solids discovered by Pythagoras and further explored by Plato, Kepler and many others. (Actually, there is ample evidence that they were well known to non-Greek cultures in times predating Pythagoras, but he is the first, as far as we know, to prove logically and mathematically that there are five and only five regular solids—no others are possible.) The icosahedron has twenty sides, each of which is an equilateral triangle. A glimpse from different angles reveals that it reverberates with both pentagonal and hexagonal harmonies. Most intriguingly, its internal core consists of three golden rectangles which intersect one another at right angles, and whose short sides touch upon opposing edges of the overall form.

For Plato and for the medieval alchemists and astrologists, each of the five regular solids was associated with one of the fundamental “elements” (earth, fire, air, water and ether or quintessence, the “fifth essence”) believed at that time to comprise the universe. The icosahedron was most often associated with water, though some of the lesser authorities assigned it as the representative of ether or quintessence (a role usually filled by the dodecahedron, or twelve-sided solid).

Christmas Card Illustration, 2009

2010-01-07T14:24:00.000-08:00

Long about Thanksgiving, I decided it was time to start thinking about some sort of Christmas self promotion. Actually, I had been thinking about it for a while in fits and starts, but it was time (or rather, past time) to begin doing something if it was going to happen at all. So I managed to throw this together in a few days of fairly intense work and wound up using it on both personal and business-related Christmas cards. Anyway, I thought this might serve as a good example to use in explaining my technique, which in this case involves a combination of pen and ink and scratchboard.

The first steps always involve very basic decisions, such as the size and dimensions of the piece as it is to be printed, which in turn helps determine the size and dimensions of the illustration as executed. I had already decided that the final cards would be printed 5" x 7". I typically do the final illustration somewhat larger than the final reproduction size—sometimes up to 200% size, but usually around 130%-150% is more practical. In this case, I decided to execute on a piece of 8" x 10" board, but to keep the relative proportions in conformity with the final 5" x 7" size. When I’m illustrating a scene that has a definite historical context, I really enjoy using Google Earth as a tool to help me accurately visualize the setting, which in this case was the area around Bethlehem. In this case, I chose a vantage point looking SSE, from an area close to Rachel’s Tomb, on the road that leads from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. (The traditional location of the Shepherd’s Field is a bit further SE from this location, but after exploring that as well as some other alternative possibilities, I found this vantage point most to my liking.)

I begin sketching on tracing paper on top of the grid already established above. My initial sketch isn’t much to look at, but it serves the important purpose of fixing the location of all the major elements in the composition. The details of those elements will be worked out in subsequent sketches. Since I’m not the sort of illustrator who can usually render things very convincingly based on memory and imagination alone, I start rounding up some good visual reference for the trees, figures and animals.

Often, the most efficient solution for visual reference involves a quick photo shoot with some help from the family. (My neighbors have gotten acclimated to seeing some very odd scenes played out in our back yard on occasion. My wife always relishes this part of the process.)

Other resources include images found online, in books and magazines, and sometimes in magazines or other works of art. (For instance, I worked out the poses for some of the angels in the heavenly host based on an angelic figure from an illustration by my hero Franklin Booth.) Speaking of the heavenly host, one of my goals in this illustration was to convey the understanding that “host”, in its biblical context, actually denotes a military deployment—a heavenly army arrayed for battle, as opposed to the overly sentimentalized image of angels we are often confronted with. I certainly think that helps to explain the shepherds’ fear. At any rate, I had a couple of recipients comment on this aspect of my rendition, so I take that as a sign that I succeeded in that regard, at least.

Again using tracing paper to further develop the initial sketch, I created a second, more detailed sketch.

Ultimately, I determined that the drama of the composition could be improved by enlarging the figures of the standing shepherd and frightened girl and by moving them further into the foreground. This is a quick pencil sketch (based on some of the other photographs I had taken) which I created in the process of working this out.

Having worked out all the compositional factors to my own satisfaction, I do a third sketch which functions as a value study for the final illustration. This is an important step in the process, since the technique I am using requires some careful planning in regard to where the darkest and lightest areas of the composition will be located, which in turn determines how they will be executed—either “positively”, with pen on a white background, or “negatively”, using a scraper tool on a previously inked-in portion of the illustration. Even at this point, it’s not out of the question that I might change my mind, which is part of the reason for doing the value-study sketch. I had originally planned on inking in only the trees and perhaps the left-hand side of the conjoined foreground figures, but after doing this sketch, I decided that I would ink in most of the sky as well.

Again using tracing paper with an outline sketch of the main compositional elements, I begin transferring the sketch to the board for the final illustration. I use graphite transfer paper for the positive areas and, after inking in the negative areas and allowing them to dry thoroughly, I do the same for them using white transfer paper.

When the transfer is completed and before the actual work of drawing and scratching begins, here is what it looks like.

For the drawing, I used mostly a technical pen for this, but I also often use a dipped pen, usually with a crow quill or very fine nib. For a combo technique such as this, I prefer executing the final on Claybord, which is a very rigid, masonite-like board with an extremely smooth surface. (It’s also relatively expensive.) Esdee scratchboard is also pretty good. If I’m just doing pen and not reversing anything out I will often use bristol board. (I actually find that I get much better line quality, especially with a dipped pen, on bristol board.)

Here is the final in pristine black and white. After scanning this in, the color was added in Photoshop.

The Flying Islands of the Night

2009-12-28T09:55:00.000-08:00

A few weeks before Christmas, I was reading up online regarding Franklin Booth, one of my hero illustrators. Almost as an afterthought, I decided to check ebay to see if anything associated with Booth might be available. Boy, was I ever not disappointed! It turned out that there were a couple of copies of this rare gem about to go for what seemed to be really bargain prices. I immediately jumped into the bidding for one of them (the better of the two) and actually won it—and for considerably less than I was willing to offer as a final bid! So of course, what did I do? When it came in the mail, I gave the package to my wife unopened and told her that she could save herself any further trouble: just wrap this and put it under the tree for me, thank you very much. Christmas Day having come and gone, I’ve certainly been enjoying my newly acquired jewel of a book for the past few days, which indeed arrived in remarkable condition for its near one-hundred-year-old age. (It even has an intact dust jacket!)

The Flying Islands of the Night is a fantastical three-act play in verse by James Whitcomb Riley, an American writer and poet whose mostly humorous and sentimental verse received notable attention and acclaim in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Two or three editions of the book had already been published when, in 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company put out an exquisite new edition with illustrations by Franklin Booth, a rising luminary in what would prove to be illustration’s Golden Age, and a fellow native, along with Riley, of Indiana. This edition solidified Booth’s reputation as a first-rate illustrator and also, in all probability, rescued this work of Riley’s from complete obscurity. For as far as literary merits go, the work itself is perhaps only slightly better than mediocre. The story indeed contains some imaginative embellishments, but manages to be rather undramatic and predictable on the whole. Riley’s verse, for all to which it aspires, meanders in realms of obscure tediousness for much of the time, with lurching outbursts of real brilliance here and there. (The better portions achieve an almost Chestertonian caliber.)

But again, it is Booth’s illustrations which really make this book. Booth is known primarily for his richly detailed and masterfully composed pen and ink drawings. These were featured in some books, but even more notably as spot illustrations for stories and as full-page advertisements in magazines such as Scribner’s, Good Housekeeping and National Geographic in the early twentieth century. His pen is in evidence here (albeit in comparatively subdued presentation) on the end sheets and title pages, but The Flying Islands of the Night is the most celebrated example of his work in color, executed with what appears to be a combined technique of pen and watercolor. Sixteen such color plates, tipped in on heavier, off-color stock and covered with a sheet of vellum (onto which one or two lines of the appertaining verse are printed in brown ink), embellish the story throughout. Booth’s rich imagination, his penchant for soaring compositions, his sumptuous use of “negative” space, and his love of pattern—all typical features of his work in both black-and-white and color, are on full display in each of these. Just a few more representative examples:

What’d I Say?

2009-12-21T08:36:00.000-08:00

Finally got around to watching Ray (2004) this weekend, thanks to Netflix. (I know, I am way behind.) Loved the music, of course. (My maternal grandmother had some Ray Charles LPs which I got turned onto sometime in my early teens. They’ve passed down to me and still get spun with regularity on my studio turntable.) And I really appreciated the nice graphic vignettes that are sprinkled throughout. (It’s so inspiring to see graphic design being employed in movies in the digital age in ways that just weren’t feasible or even possible in earlier days.) There are some great performances here, some interesting (sometimes painful) character development going on, and some really nice dramatic touches throughout. In particular, I thought the theme of blindness was handled with artfully balanced sensitivity—it was certainly prominent, but not played up to the point of becoming all-consuming, as it might have been. (Incidentally, I’ve always been struck by how often the lyrics in Ray’s songs employ the idea of seeing…see the girl with the red dress on?…I can see that far away look in your eyes…still in peaceful dreams I see…you are my sunshine, etc. Also, a somewhat random observation: isn’t it rather strange how many famous musicians—Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley—have been haunted by dead siblings?) On a more sobering note, without getting too raunchy or debased (PG-13), the film offers a straight-up portrayal of the uglier side of Mr. Charles’ sin-riddled double life—the kind of in-your-face negative example which is helpful for husbands and fathers to be confronted with from time to time.

Howard Pyle and the Battle of Nashville

2009-12-15T07:17:00.001-08:00

Today and tomorrow mark the 145th anniversary of the Battle of Nashville, a very significant event in the the history of my native city. The outcome of that battle was sealed a fortnight beforehand when Confederate commander John Bell Hood dashed his distinguished army like a porcelain pitcher against the well-entrenched Federal troops at Franklin. Following that disaster, the greatly diminished and demoralized remnants of the grey-clad army proceeded to “besiege” Nashville, which amounted merely to making a nuisance of themselves by camping out on the hills south of town and waiting to be driven back. This inevitable event was delayed by two weeks of miserably cold and icy weather (under which the Confederate troops again suffered much the worse), until a break in the wintry conditions allowed Union General George Thomas to begin the counter offensive on the 15th. The ensuing battle raged for two days—along the present-day route of Woodmont Blvd. and Thompson Lane on the first day, and along present-day Harding Place and Battery Lane on the second.

About forty years after the battle, Howard Pyle, the foremost illustrator of his day, was commissioned by Minnesota State Capitol architect Cass Gilbert to paint a large-scale depiction of the battle. (Minnesota lost a large number of her sons in the Battle of Nashville, particularly in the taking of Shy’s Hill on the second day.) The result became one of the most famous depictions of the Civil War, and it hangs in the Governor’s suite of the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul to this day. I do not know if Pyle actually visited the site beforehand, or if he worked from photographs, or relied solely upon his own vast imagination. But if, on a cold, overcast day like that almost a century and a half ago, one visits the locale he depicted, where opulent houses dominate the once muddy cornfield where thousands of men fought and hundreds died, a renewed appreciation of a truly great artist’s ability to capture the essence of an event through his work is gained.

The Power of Limits

2009-11-21T06:57:00.000-08:00

I checked this out from the library thinking that I would probably just skim it, but I got so engrossed in it that I read the whole thing. The topic is one of perpetual fascination to me, perhaps bordering on a minor obsession: the pervasiveness of certain geometric patterns and harmonious mathematical relationships all throughout the created order, and most specifically, the relationship known as the golden ratio, or .618…. This unique and remarkable ratio manifests itself virtually everywhere one turns, in created works of both Divine and human origin: spiral galaxies, hurricanes, sunflowers, the chambered nautilus, the human hand and ear, notable works of architecture and graphic design, ancient Greek pottery, paintings by the likes of DaVinci and Seurat, musical harmonies, and a Boeing 747, all just for starters.

No book could possibly be said to cover the topic exhaustively, but this is one of the more thorough treatments I’ve encountered on the subject. It explores numerous examples of this sort of thing which I had never even begun to consider. There are really fine illustrations and diagrams (many of them quite intricate, detailed and beautiful) on every page. So, in terms of a surface-level analysis of the phenomena, this book is superb.

What I find much less satisfying, however, are the author's attempts, interwoven with increasing emphasis as the chapters progress, to discover what this all means on a deeper, spiritual level. Though he never articulates such a position explicitly, it seems that he would probably be on good terms with what has since become the Intelligent Design movement. (This book was originally published in 1981.) As a Christian however, I am firmly convinced that the doctrine of a personal, Trinitarian Deity is the most obvious point of convergence for all the universally imbedded testimonies to intertwined unity and diversity which this book is dedicated to exploring. Though not really surprising, it is nonetheless disappointing to see this conclusion ignored by the author in favor of an unsatisfying and impersonal hodgepodge of eastern dualism, mysticism, and vaguely beneficent evolutionary principles. (That last point is especially a very interesting notion, one which I think would be most difficult to harmonize with Darwin’s theory of natural selection.) At any rate, had the author been able to rise above all this, I might have given the book at least four (out of five) stars.

Credenda Agenda on Christian Artists

2009-11-09T10:23:00.000-08:00

One of my long-time favorite magazines/websites has now become just one of my favorite websites. That particular disappointment, as well as the broader trend which it represents, is something that I’m struggling to come to terms with. Oh well, maybe I’ll try to work through all that in some future posts. In the meantime, Doug Wilson just published a worthwhile article there on the necessity for Christians to carefully navigate around—and perhaps even in, from time to time, as circumstances may require—what might be called The Cult of the Artiste, a peculiarly modern contrivance.

Cervantes and Poe

2009-10-13T14:20:00.000-07:00

I’ve recently finished Cervantes’ Don Quixote, which I enjoyed immensely, despite its epic length. (Over one thousand pages in print; 35 discs on audio CD.) At some point in my reading/listening, I was reminded of a vague association of this work with Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem Eldorado. An initial search through my own volumes and online hasn’t turned up anyone who has made the case for any deliberate allusion to Cervantes on Poe’s part, but I think that such a case could certainly be made. And with that said (drumroll, please), I will now venture to offer my own amateur contribution to the realm of literary criticism, based on my own notes jotted down during the course of my recent read/listen:

Exhibit A: In sunshine and in shadow,… This phrase, or at least one very like it (the original was written in Spanish, after all), appears in PtI, BkIII, Cap1, where Don Quixote says “…and this is so true as that there hath been a knight that hath dwelt on a rock, exposed to the sun and the shadow, and other annoyances of heaven, for the space of two years, without his lady’s knowledge.”

Exhibit B: The name Eldorado refers of course to the fabled city of gold for which the Spanish conquistadors searched in vain throughout the western hemisphere. (And of significant note, Poe first published his poem in 1849, the year of the famous California Gold Rush.) On several different occasions in Cervantes’ novel (twice in the chapter referenced following, in fact), Don Quixote says something similar to this: “ I would have thee know, friend Sancho, that I was born, by the disposition of Heaven, in this our age of iron, to renew in it that of gold, or the golden world.” (PtI, BkIII, Cap6)

Exhibit C: The very curious and unique phrase mountains of the moon also occurs in PtI, BkIII, Cap6: “…the dreadful noise of that water in whose search we come, which seems to throw itself headlong down from the steep mountains of the moon…”

Exhibit D: And speaking of spectral shadows: “…the knight errant without a lady is like…a shadow without a body to cast it.” (PtII, Cap32)

Exhibit E: Lastly, there is the more general appeal to the overall tenor of Poe’s poem, concerning a wearied knight who is prodded onward (by Death himself?) to ride on in the face of almost certain death, a theme which is virtually omnipresent in the account of Don Quixote, the following serving as just one example: “ Let the remembrance of Amadis live, and be imitated in everything as much as may be, by Don Quixote of the Mancha; of whom may be said what was said of the other, that though he achieved not great things, yet did he die in their pursuit.” (PtI, BkIII, Cap12)

Taken in conjunction with the above observation that Poe’s poem was published during the frenzy of 1849, this last point raises some interesting possibilities. Assuming that Poe did have the Gold Rush on his mind, what opinion is he conveying with regard to it? Was it a manly, heroic pursuit of wealth and fortune in the far West, in the face of manifold difficulties and dangers? Or was it a fool’s errand, destined to end in disillusionment, financial ruin, and even (for more than a few) death? Or was it inexorably—and Quixotically—something of both?

La Bella Principessa

2009-10-13T13:54:00.000-07:00

A painting that surfaced within the last dozen years—and which you too could have bought from Christie’s back in 1998 at an unbelievable steal of around 20 grand—has now been confirmed as an original by none other than Leonardo himself! Read all about it here. Quite an astounding discovery!

Power Corrupts; PowerPoint Corrupts…Pointedly?

2009-09-24T11:33:00.000-07:00

Along the lines of the previous post, I was reminded of a couple of spots I read a number of years ago in Wired Magazine, exploring the aesthetic and intellectual ramifications of PowerPoint. Interesting and rather amusing stuff on this subject first from musician/visual artist David Byrne (remember Talking Heads?) and also from Yale professor Edward R. Tufte.

Umberto Eco on the Lost Art of Handwriting

2009-09-24T10:41:00.000-07:00

Here is a brief but thoughtful piece from a thoughtful guy on both the causes and the consequences of the decline of the handwritten word. Following are a few condensed observations that this article inspires, and which may be food for some further exploration: The tools we use shape us, for better or for worse, in ways which often escape our awareness. In addition to the obvious forms of liberation which technological innovations bring about, every new technology also tends to impose limitations which are often overlooked in the rush to embrace its benefits. An appropriate balance between pragmatic utility on the one hand and aesthetic integrity on the other is often complicated and tricky—but needful and important nonetheless. Form and content have a much closer relationship than we often tend to acknowledge.

Economics in One Lesson

2009-09-13T18:19:00.000-07:00

Economics is one of those topics on which I've intended to get better educated for some time now. The events since the latter half of '08 have definitely bumped that intention up several notches in my list of priorities. The first problem I really had to tackle was figuring out where to start, which is to say, deciding exactly what and whom I should be reading. I knew just enough to determine that pretty much anything from a Keynesian perspective—which, with differences that are in the final analysis inconsequential, has represented the mainstream positions of both the political right and left for the last several generations—was out. Also out was any nonsense coming out of the far left, i.e. socialism or fascism, unfortunately including a number of Christian writers who have adopted these positions and labored to make them somehow compatible with their Faith.

Eventually I found out about the Austrian School Economists, generally liked what I was hearing from that perspective (with important qualifications noted below) and decided to dive in by first tackling Henry Hazlitt's (1894-1993) well lauded primer Economics in One Lesson. Turns out that it was a great choice. Who would have ever thought that a book on economics could be a page turner on par with an Agatha Christie novel? Far from seeming stale or out of date (the volume was first published in 1946 and last updated by the author in 1979), the material is immanently relevant given our current state of affairs, and delightfully readable to boot. I started off underlining what I thought were key sentences from the Prologue and Chapter One, and then gave up when I realized that the whole thing needed underlining! (Just read the first two-and-a-half pages from Chapter One on Amazon and you will see what I'm talking about.)

Hazlitt's thesis statement, for which the book as a whole is simply a cyclical reiteration is as follows:

…the whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence. The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.(p17)

In each chapter of the book, Hazlitt re-illustrates this fundamental principle by applying it to matters such as government subsidies, government attempts at manipulating supply and demand via price fixing, controls on imports and exports (including tariffs), rent controls, minimum wage laws, inflation, and a number of other all too familiar phenomena.

To sum up, I really enjoyed and profited from this book, and plan to read further on this topic from other writers of the Austrian School. That said, I don't want to hold forth a generally glowing review without acknowledging that these guys do have their own blind spots and that those are not insignificant. As a Christian, I am bound to affirm that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all knowledge and wisdom (Proverbs 1:7; 9:10; 15:33). That includes wisdom and knowledge in the area of economics. Through the mechanism of common grace, I believe that the Austrian Economists are generally right-on in their astute observations of how the economic aspect of the world works and are generally far less deluded than other competing schools of thought on the matter. However, their essentially secular viewpoint does leave them open to certain deceptions and shortcomings, the chief of these being the fundamental assumption that man is basically good and that his greatest problem is not sin but ignorance. In addition, I must also bear witness that true and enduring freedom and liberty—in all their various forms, including economic—are blessings that are only found in Jesus Christ. Any attempts to idolize individual freedom and liberty by abstracting them and attempting to construct a comprehensive worldview around them (e.g. Ayn Rand, a noted favorite of both the Austrian Economists and their Libertarian political chums) is just as much doomed to frustration, failure and wretchedness as any other false ideology.

Confession

2009-09-04T09:06:00.000-07:00

Okay, this is a confession inspired by the previous post: I actually take the time to manually insert smart quotes and apostrophes (those would be these “ ” ‘ ’ instead of these " " ' ' , which are given by default) into the HTML code for all the posts on this blog. Isn’t that sad? (Yep, I even got that last one.) That’s one reason why I don’t post more often than I do. Oh and trust me, there’s even more inane stuff that I would fix if my HTML skills were up to the task!

Max Kerning

2009-09-04T08:49:00.000-07:00

This walks a rather fine line between humorous and just a bit creepy, but it’s definitely worth checking out. An amusing and well executed caricature of the overly-fussy tendencies to which most graphic designers are prone, to varying degrees of course. :)

Thanks to my ole pal Jay Thatcher for steering me to this.

Typedia

2009-08-24T14:27:00.000-07:00

Just found out about this promising typographical resource from some other designer friends. (Gratias, Lord Pinnix, and Kristi too!) And be sure to check out the great article Behind the Typedia Logo Design, by astounding and renowned logo and ambigram creator John Langdon. (Sheesh! Is that enough hyperlinks for such a short post?)

A Gallery of Famous Logo Redesigns

2009-08-11T12:20:00.000-07:00

This is pretty interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the original Apple logo before. I agree with most of the writer’s and commentators’ assessments, though I can’t believe they didn’t include the recent AT&T (whoops! I mean, at&t) redesign in the mix.

Colligo, Ergo Designo

2009-08-04T11:38:00.000-07:00

I’ve been casually thumbing my way through Instant Graphics, an inspiring look at the creative processes of other designers, particularly those whose work relies heavily upon collage and the appropriation of clip art, found objects, ephemera, etc. One of the recurring themes brought out in this book is how people who are designers also tend to be avid collectors—collectors even (especially?) of things that many other people would deem “junk”.

Many designers and illustrators are explorers and archivists of their immediate environments, scouring the city streets, parks, river banks, gardens, markets, and even their own studios, for objects, textures, and source material…many designers inevitably find themselves becoming collectors and/or curators of certain types of imagery or objects—insects, sports cards, magazine clippings, old catalogs, engravings, or prints. Some develop a fascination with a specific type of image or object—perhaps from an accidental find—and set about actively researching and building collections of them, which, in turn, begin to influence their subsequent work. —p24

Sean Adams, of AdamsMorioka, has the following to say:
“I have never met a designer who is not a closet collector of something. Whether it’s thimbles, Japanese packaging, or rocks, everyone has one collection. Being a collector is just like being a designer; you don’t choose to be a designer, it chooses you.”—p98

As one who can certainly identify with this, I am driven to muse: do we become designers because we are obsessive collectors?…or is the impulse to collect driven by one’s work as a designer?…or is it all a vicious cycle with no beginning or end? I confess to being a collector of books, magazines (most notably National Geographic), newspapers, LP records, old photographs, letters, documents, postcards and correspondences, wine bottles, timepieces, posters, maps, prints, 8mm film and projectors, old shoes, spent rounds of ammunition, currency and coins, fragments of flooring, windows, hardware, masonry and woodwork culled from old buildings and other structures, samples of nature (flowers, leaves, bark, nuts, bones, feathers, dead cicadas, turtle shells, sea shells, and rocks), drawings that my kids have made, nautical and/or astronomical paraphernalia, and anything having to do with trains.

How about you? What collections do you keep? Or perhaps I should ask, what collections keep you?

Bad Type Sighting, 090723

2009-08-04T11:15:00.000-07:00

Once again, an elegant script is given “the treatment” in hands that weren’t quite up to the task. Spotted outside Hardee’s in Sequatchie, Tennessee.

Graphiconomics

2009-07-30T07:55:00.000-07:00

Strike a blow for tasteful design and sound economic principles all at the same time! The Ludwig von Mises Institute offers some snappy merchandise and apparel, including some items featuring this version of their logo—an attractive typographical arrangement of a font which looks vaguely familiar to me…

The Austrian Economists T-Shirt Collection is quite whimsically subversive as well.

New Logos

2009-07-22T19:12:00.001-07:00

A couple of new logo projects to show off:

a suite of logos for LifeWay’s choral music preview subscription clubs…

and another for a surgical practice in Chattanooga, TN.

Case Study: The Advent of Evangelicalism cover

2009-07-22T12:49:00.000-07:00

This is a project I completed a few months back, but it has occurred to me that it provides some useful examples of the range of sensibilities and breadth of knowledge that an effective design solution often demands. Starting with the most obvious, a successful designer must of course possess a competent grasp of the principles of visual communication: rhythm, proportion, balance, color, etc. But a truly successful designer is no mere visual arranger; compelling design must accomplish much the same things that a compelling poem must do. The best design trades in currency minted of metaphors, allusions and associations. In fact, though graphic design is usually thought of in strictly visual terms, it can in many respects be said to bridge the gap between the literary and the visual arts since it deals very heavily in both words and imagery. In addition, a reasonably well-rounded knowledge that extends into other spheres and disciplines (science, mathematics, literature, music, history, religion, etc.) often proves a very handy thing for a designer to have. That sounds pretty lofty, and the truth is that (thankfully, in fact) not every job is that demanding—sometimes the basic skills of a decent visual arranger are enough to get you by. But it’s certainly nice to be able to take advantage of the opportunities when the job calls for a bit more thoughtfulness.

Case in point: this project was a redesign of an academic title which originally released in Great Britain.

The book is a scholarly re-examination and assessment of the relationship between the Christian evangelical movement and the Enlightenment, both of which came into their own in the eighteenth century—rather heady stuff, to be sure. (Though I myself admit to having some degree of unprovoked interest in the topic, I suspect that places me on the outer fringes of the bell curve.) The publisher wanted something a bit more, shall we say, “inviting” than the original cover design, in the hopes that someone (other than myself) without a PhD in Theology might be persuaded to pick it up, at least.

I provided three initial designs to the client: one tending toward elegant, the second rather understated or even minimalist, and a third adopting a more edgy and contemporary grunge attitude. The first was the initial favorite until concerns began to be raised that the scope of the material was broader than was suggested by the use of the single period image (of John Wesley). Finding and securing rights to additional images of that kind (along the lines of what was done on the original, British edition) proved to be unfruitful, and so the second concept, the one with the open window, was moved to the number one slot and came out on top at the end.

Now, I can hear some folks muttering that I pulled a fast one over on the client here by throwing together some run-of-the-mill type and a rather blithely irrelevant image, probably blowing a good deal of smoke in the form of trumped-up rationalizations and explanations in the process in an attempt to sell the concept. Actually, not at all. While this concept is the most simply executed of the three on the one hand, it is also the most thoughtfully executed on the other. The open window and the breeze-blown curtain allude to the Evangelical movement as a genuine “breath of fresh air” within the broader context of Christianity and to the Great Awakenings of the period as much-needed revivals and stirrings of God’s Spirit. (The word “spirit” carries the literal meaning of “breath” or “wind” in all the important ancient languages—Hebrew, Greek and Latin—and appropriately, the work of the Holy Spirit in Scripture is often accompanied by wind, e.g. Acts 2.) The image is also carefully cropped such that the muntins of the window at the upper right suggest a cross. As a final stroke, the font used on this cover was given special consideration: it is Baskerville, originally cut by Englishman John Baskerville in the 1750s—a thoroughgoing Enlightenment typeface if ever there was one—and its choice is intended to subtly reinforce the ties to the historical period with which the work is concerned.

Of course, probably fewer than one peruser out of a hundred will correctly identify all of those allusions and associations (particularly the last), but that really isn’t the point. Their sum total lends the sort of synergistic confidence to the design itself which generally speaks affirmingly to the onlooker, whether or not he or she can articulate precisely why, and that is what makes such subtleties an important part of the design process. And at any rate, I at least know they’re there—and now that I’ve spelled out my intentions as the designer after the fact, you do as well.

Art’s Self-justification

2009-07-05T16:13:00.000-07:00

“Art needs no justification. The mistake of many art theorists (and not only of Christian ones) is to try to give art a meaning or a sense by showing that it ‘does something’. So art must open people’s eyes, or serve as decoration, or prophesy, or praise, or have a social function, or express a particular philosophy. Art needs no such excuse. It has its own meaning that does not need to be explained, just as marriage does, or man himself, or the existence of a particular bird or flower or mountain or sea or star. These all have meaning because God has made them. Their meaning is that they have been created by God and are sustained by Him. So art has a meaning as art because God thought it good to give art and beauty to humanity.”

—Hans Rookmaaker, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, pp229-230

Modern Art and the Death of a Culture

2009-07-05T15:56:00.000-07:00

Originally published almost forty years ago, this work has certainly lost none of its relevance for those seeking an understanding of the forces behind the downward trajectory of both western art and western culture over the course of the last three centuries or so. This assertion in itself might seem a rather odd one to most folks—didn’t the problems (for both art and culture) really start during the 20th century? Actually, no.

Rookmaaker argues quite persuasively that the seeds of nihilism and despair were actually sown during the “Enlightenment” period of the 18th century and the obvious problems which began to manifest themselves in the 20th century were the resultant harvest. The intervening 19th century may be viewed as a period during which these matters were working themselves out and during which much art that might be deemed “beautiful” was still being produced, but the problems were there nonetheless, and with increasing clarity, as a mere scratch to the surface reveals.

Beginning in medias res, with the medieval period (it isn’t really necessary to go back further in time to prove his point), Rookmaaker demonstrates that there was a time when physical and spiritual realities coexisted comfortably and formed a seamless whole, both in the thoughts and lives of people and on the painted canvas. This view persisted, remarkably in some respects, even through the Renaissance and Reformation periods.

It was the Enlightenment, with its dogged insistence upon rationality and empiricism as the only standards for gauging “reality”, which drove the seemingly irrevocable wedge between the natural and the supernatural. Artists (and everyone else, for that matter) since that time have come under increasing pressure to choose between the two. The predominant approach has been to reject the latter in favor of the former, resulting in a growing crescendo of meaninglessness and despondency. Certain movements (Romanticism and certain enclaves of Christian art) have sought the opposite approach of asserting the supernatural over the natural, but with limited success, largely because at heart they have continued to accept the fundamental dualism of the Enlightenment view.

My only reason for not rating the book more highly is that, although Rookmaaker’s insights are keen, I find his style a bit exacting, and the increasingly depressing nature of the material begins to weigh down on you after a while. (I actually started this book a good while back and had to take an extended break about two-thirds of the way through before finishing.) There’s great stuff toward the end though, so don’t fail to persevere if you encounter the same difficulties!