{"id":33,"date":"2013-02-08T20:44:55","date_gmt":"2013-02-08T20:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chimneyrabbit.com\/?p=33"},"modified":"2015-06-29T15:45:59","modified_gmt":"2015-06-29T15:45:59","slug":"illustration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/?p=33","title":{"rendered":"Illustration"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can’t draw.<\/p>\n

Or paint, or sculpt, or anything else that involves the visual arts. I can just about lay out a page of text so it doesn’t look completely terrible, but that’s probably the extent of my artistic ability. So when, many many years ago, I had a short story published in Exuberance<\/em>, a semi-professional science fiction, fantasy, and horror magazine, one of the greatest pleasures was in seeing the artwork the editor had commissioned.<\/p>\n

\"Russell<\/a>

Art for The View from the Window<\/em> by Russell Morgan<\/p><\/div>\n

The two pictures that accompanied the story, one of which I’ve reproduced above, were by an artist called Russell Morgan, and if I have to be honest, the quality of the artwork far outshines the quality of the story written by my 19-year-old self. He brings in all the crucial elements of the story – a patient in a hospital, a camera, and small alien creatures – and crushes them together into a dense and nightmarish scene. It’s a pessimistic, downbeat short story (a 19-year-old writing downbeat fiction – who’d have thought?) and the artwork emphasises this tremendously well.<\/p>\n

It didn’t look exactly how I’d imagined it in my head, but you know what? I think I like his version better.<\/p>\n

I haven’t thought about this story for a long time, but I’ve just spent half an hour digging through boxes so I could find the name of the artist so I could give him credit. I’m pretty sure this Russell Morgan<\/a> is the same artist – to my unartistic eye there are a lot of similarities between his current work and the Exuberance<\/em> art of more than twenty years ago.<\/p>\n

It’s perhaps a shame that most “adult” fiction doesn’t get the luxury of artwork. For the most part, illustrated novels are the province of children’s fiction. I’m not sure why this is; no-one considered it strange that Sidney Paget produced those wonderful illustrations in The Strand<\/em> for Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. Virtually all of Dickens’ work was illustrated.<\/p>\n

But at least we do<\/em> have illustrated children’s fiction. I recently read Joan Aiken’s The Wolves of Willoughby Chase<\/em>, and can’t imagine reading it without Pat Marriott’s dense, inky drawings. Tove Jansson’s Moomin books would be only half as good without her illustrations. Winnie the Pooh<\/em> without E.H. Shepard’s illustrations would be unthinkable! More recently, Alan Snow’s Here Be Monsters<\/em> and Worse Things Happen at Sea<\/em> married a fantastic story with the perfect illustrations. Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre have a new series of illustrated novels coming out that looks absolutely wonderful<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Perhaps some day my book, The Chimney Rabbit<\/em>, will be published, and someone in the editorial offices will say “You know what? I think this book could do with some pictures.”<\/p>\n

Nothing would make me happier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can’t draw. Or paint, or sculpt, or anything else that involves the visual arts. I can just about lay out a page of text so it doesn’t look completely terrible, but that’s probably the extent of my artistic ability. So when, many many years ago, I had a short story published in Exuberance, a… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/VftW-Russell-Morgan.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p37h7H-x","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":544,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions\/544"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}