Back in 2003 Mark Svendsen asked me to illustrate a couple of poems he'd written. Many noted authors and illustrators from around the world had been asked to donate poems and short-stories, which were then compiled into an anthology titled '
Lines In The Sand
'. The theme of the book was 'war and peace', and all the royalties and profits went to UNICEF. The book coincided with and was a response to the Iraq war.
Mark had only found out about this at the last minute, so he needed artwork from me within a day. He sent me two poems...
... within a few hours this is what I came up with:
I no longer have the originals for these, as artists were asked to donate their work for auction. Disappointingly, the reproduction of my pictures in the finished book were dreadful. Firstly they were reduced considerably, so the pointing hand with all it's detail became solid black, and the spider was a blotchy mess...
I suspect that with both of these they didn't scan the originals which I had posted to them, rather they used the very low res jpeg preview I emailed them. It's always embarrassing to put your name on something that you're not happy with, but displaying them here on my blog is a good opportunity to show how they were intended to look.
At the time Mark was rightly quick to point out that the book was for a good cause nevertheless. There are children in the world who endure unspeakable suffering that I've never known, so there's an irony and selfishness on my part to be moaning about such a triviality.
Yes, shame on you. No more moaning, Mr Artist.
ReplyDeleteJust kidding. I can absolutely appreciate where you're coming from with the trials and tribulations of having your art reproduced. Many's the time my comics work was severely destroyed on the final printed page. Sigh.