Monday, October 8, 2012
The Power of Illustration
I think I can speak for everyone when I say that the illustrations on the side of books were really neat, and the fact that when you look at it from a different direction, the pages show a totally different picture. I do not know how the illustrator made the pictures on the side of the book so detailed. I wish publishers still did this today. It is interesting to see the correlation between the picture and the content of the book if there is even one at all.
I also found the books with illustration of plants versus the book with the actual specimens interesting. A horticulture book with only illustrations may last longer, but a horticulture book with real specimens are much more interesting. It would be very difficult to make a book with specimens of plants because some plants are only alive at certain times of the year, and it would take a great amount of time to find the plants.
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I was also surprised that some of the pictures did not seem to correlate to the topics of the books! I wonder what that was about. I know that sometimes the illustrators of children's books may have nothing other than the title to go off of when they make their drawings, so maybe that was the same case here.
ReplyDeleteI agree Emily, although i always thought it was strange when the artist had nothing to go off of except for the title. I think it may add another element, however i think it is better when the artist knows the stories inside and out and creates an image that the reader can directly correlate to something in the story. Whether it be a character or a setting.
DeleteWhile I personally think it's best if the illustrator has read the book before, I can imagine why the author wouldn't want the image on the side to be a direct correlation to his or her works. I know if I'm reading something and I see an illustration, I automatically associate the image with the text. I don't give myself time to build my own interpretation of what I'm reading, and instead adopt the illustrator's. In some ways, having a completely unrelated image hidden on the sides of the pages may be more thought-provoking, and may force the reader to come up with their own interpretations and analysis of the text.
DeleteAmy, that's a great point! You are so right that our own interpretations can be influenced by illustrations etc. I find this to be true, especially when movies are made based off of books. I enjoy the process of creating the scenes and imagining the looks of charcters on my own. Viewing someone else's vision beforehand would certrainly sway my mental images.
DeleteI wonder if the difference between book content and illustration would have anything to do with the ability of the artist to read. If I was a starving artist in the 18th century and I was some how in contact with books, I would use the free medium for my artistic expression. Or maybe it was some form of publicity. Maybe one publishing company had an artist paint one image on many books, of different genre and content simply to be the publishing company that did something so worth talking about.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with a book made out of plants is that it will lower the books lifespan greatly due to the plant decaying. Pages will get moldy and the specimen will become harder to identify. Illustrations will endure as long as the book (or page) endures, so Illustrations will give information longer. Also, an illustration is very hard to change when it's been printed, which may or may not be a good thing.
ReplyDeleteThe pages would only decay to a large extent if the specimens were not pressed correctly. I think it's fascinating that they would put live (or recently dead) plants to show greater detail and a lifelike representation of the plant instead of drawing the plant out of proportion and with possibly little to no detail.
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