Category Archives: picture book

On Growth & Form

July 5, 2015 Seana

To me, experiment doesn’t translate to haphazard, but instead to a thoughtful investigation. Growing in your craft is always a good thing, right?

Originally, I chose ink as a media because it wouldn’t smudge once dry and I couldn’t change my mind once the line was on the paper. Still, it’s amazing how often I change my mind. And the longer I work, the more it changes. Sometimes the changes are subtle — increasing the contrast to fix the light balance, and sometimes they’re drastic – getting bored with a drawing and deciding it would look better sideways. Sometimes I change the orientation so often that the drawing ends up in its starting position.

The flexibility gives the final image an ambiguous form. My grouper drawing illustrates this well. The grouper evolved to become an undersea fowl – or, more likely, beautifully rendered shadows for a larger, yet to be made work.

Original Grouper Sketch

Grouper, pen & ink McNamara 2014

Final Grouper Sketch (same orientation)

Grouper, Pen & Ink, Seana McNamara 2015

I lost faith in the grouper, and my drawing devolved into an exploration of texture. Just how dark you can get your blacks and have them still look like something.

I flipped it once again. The grouper is no longer visible and has become background. You can still see a fish (one white one is dead center and another, very black, is lurking top right.) The drawing has a fuzzy, velvety quality.

Shaded Water

This image is so dark that it would look best as the shadows of a larger work. I can see the edges of something, new, shiny, half formed outside the page. It’s a sense, rather than an image. I have the deep shadows – now I just need to find the clear lines and simple forms that will balance it as I collage it into something new.

Hope you’ve all had a happy 4th!

Inspiration, picture book, Western Cannon

Writing & Visual Art

August 17, 2014 Seana

I’ve been playing with the concept of how writing adds to visual artwork, either in the form of titles, surrounding text (in the case of illustrations), or artist statements. Often the title feels like a placeholder, e.g. “Abstract No. 1,” I and I’m left with the feeling that the title was forced on the work to keep the archivist happy, rather than to help me as a viewer. A notable exception is Paul Klee’s Two Men Meet, Each Believing the Other to Be of Higher Rank, 1903, below.

This reproduction of the etching is drawn from the Art Institute of Chicago’s collection of Klee.

Good titles of artwork, such as Klee’s, are rare. When the subject is well known, good titles become unnecessary. If the image depicts familiar religious stories (e.g. Madonna and Child), or shows historical events, the symbolism is enough to recognize and name the subject, provided you belong to the same tradition.

Life isn’t so easy for the modern artist. Rather than a prescribed cannon of subjects to reproduce, we have infinite freedom. And with that freedom comes, not just the responsibility to create something worth seeing, but something worth reading.

For a visual artist who illustrates other peoples’ manuscripts, the work is done once the artwork is complete. The story line of a book gives a drawing or painting its context. For a visual artist who illustrates his own work, the work has just begun. I’m in awe of Maurice Sendak, and how much he conveys between his illustrations and the 500 or so words of Where the Wild Things Are. As I’ve yet to write text to accompany artwork; my difficulties start and end with coming up with a relevant title for a piece.

A title is part of a viewer’s first impression of a work, but it fits into the “80” part of the 80/20 rule. It is an extra hurdle and does not come naturally to me. Each new work I create has a working title, if it’s lucky, or if I’m forced to describe it. “The one with the elephant turned upside down” tends not to cut it as a title for an artwork–particularly if I don’t want someone noticing the beginnings of an elephant and asking why the elephant is now upside down, and if I plan to keep it that way. Even so, most titles for my work start like this. Once the piece sits, a new name settles. My titles tend to be short. A particular favorite was “The Odd Couple,” a painting of a man and a woman sitting in a sunlit room with far too much space between them.

Titles need to be just enough to provide relevant context and pick out one aspect of the work. And that’s the hard part. Which is most important aspect of the drawing below?

The olive tree, the bird, the fish … or the way the fish mirrors the bird like a goofy Escher? And what is the most memorable name? A placeholder – Flying Fish – comes to rescue me. I’ll sidestep the issue and leave you with Flying Fish, which I drew in June 2014.

comics, picture book

Reading Up on Comics

January 27, 2014 Seana

Comics is a media I know nothing about. zilch, nada…At any rate it’s been something I’ve been looking into because many seem to be targeted at adults, while traditional storybooks seem to be for the eight and under crowd. I know I want to work in picture format, which means that I need to look at traditional comics, if only to know what I’m choosing not to do, as it seems to be the current iteration of story + pictures + not moving.

So, I’ve been scouring the internet, for images and stories that I like, to see what precedent there is. So far, indie European comics are closest in style. I’ll link to them if I happen on another I like.

Pensive Behind Roots
Pen, 2013 Seana McNamara

picture book

First Step to a Picturebook

January 16, 2014 admin

I’m drawing a picture book–and this is the first step. I’ll update this once a week with a picture, an idea, or a review of someone’s work who inspires me.

A Child Dreams of Guernica – pen, 2013
Seana McNamara

Blog Posting Will Keep Me Honest

The regular posting will keep me honest, or at least get me to phrase my ideas for public consumption. Or at the very least teach me how to write a story. Place, setting, mood–that’s all great but as soon as you hit the dreaded plot, that’s where it all falls down. And I like narrative painting. Not fair. But the painters I most admire are quite dead, so I need to do something to fix that situation by exposing myself to other ideas and people rather than curling up in a hole.

Current Inspiration

I’m looking at the Art of Manliness and Hyperbole and a Half for inspiration, although those are very different types of blogs with very different audiences. I’m also looking at straight art blogs, or art journals on the web, as those also interest me. At any rate, this will “become itself over time.”