The April 2015 Challenge
Pick a painting, drawing, photo, poem, story, novel, song, film/video, or anything else that is in the public domain. If it is a poem, story, novel, or song, create one or more illustrations (or photo, or video) for it. If it is an image or film/video, write a poem, short story or song for which that image will be the illustration.
The Results
Mike Hamrick
Original: “Ideal English Rabbit” from The American Pet Stock Standard of Perfection and Official Guide to the American Fur Fanciers’ Association (1915)
An Ideal English Rabbit
Brian Raiter
Original: Mending Wall by Robert Frost (1914)
Good Fences Make Good Neighbors
Ryan Finholm
Original: The Flea by John Donne (c. 1600)
I could write a dissertation on The Flea by John Donne. The poem is four hundred years old, and the writing is florid and eloquent, but the subject matter is timeless and base: It’s about the narrator trying to talk a woman into sleeping with him. It is crude yet romantic, and quite funny. The narrator is a total sleazebag and the woman is having none of it. It is amazingly sophisticated humor, considering the era.
For most of this month I was preoccupied with work and with SongFight.org, and by the evening of 4/30 I still wasn’t completely sure what I was going to do. I’d had to work all day, and I was also committed to continuing work on a SongFight submission that afternoon/evening, so I ended up looking at the clock at 9:30pm and scrambling to decide what to do, then complete, scan and submit it by midnight.
I have been a big fan of Donne’s The Flea for the past 20 years, so it was a relatively easy choice – the only reluctance I felt about it was because the required effort would result in an ugly parasite instead of something I’d ever want to look at. It’s all freehand, based on some images I found on the internet. If I’d had more time (i.e. if I’d been less lazy and used any additional hour out of the hundreds of spare hours available to me in April) I would have added some background instead of leaving it blank.
Here’s the thing about crosshatching: It is easy and it makes everything look good. It’s also the one hole that you can actually dig your way out of because the more of those little lines you draw, the better the illustration looks. Made a mistake? Do more crosshatching, draw more lines, and it won’t matter anymore. Worried that you added too many lines? Impossible. Does something look weird and/or wrong but you can’t tell what it is? Add more lines and that will fix everything.
by RyanF — 1 May 2015 @ 18:29