NP - One Drawing for Every Page of Moby Dick

[Dave Monroe]

On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 4:51 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://www.spudd64.com/

One Drawing for Every Page of Moby-Dick
Link #148904 submitted by LinusMines on Dec 23, 2009 08:41pm.   (+250XP)
http://www.spudd64.com


In August of 2009, I was really restless. I remembered seeing a book
where the artist Zak Smith had made one illustration for every page of
Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow. I was really blown away by
how amazing his art was, and by the whole idea in general, so a while
later I decided to try the same thing myself. Only instead of
Gravity's Rainbow I decided to work on my favorite novel, Herman
Melville's Moby-Dick.

Before this, most of the art I made had been excessively detailed,
really overwrought, and incredibly time consuming to complete. I got
really sick of working like that. I wanted something different, so I
decided that for the Moby-Dick project I would do one piece a day,
every day, until I was done... I decided to just do whatever I wanted
with the art, even if it looked crude or raw...

I've avoided looking at other artist's interpretations of Moby-Dick...
I want the art to come from me and not from what I'm looking at. Some
of the art I'm making depends on the viewer having at least some
general knowledge of Moby-Dick, and I think it would probably be
really hard for someone who hasn't read the book to get the whole
story simply by looking at my art. When deciding what to illustrate
from a particular page, I try to focus on what seem to be the most
important elements from that part of the story. Still, these aren't
storyboards or comic book pages so I'm not trying to tell the full
story of Moby-Dick in pictures.

I'm working my way through the whole book in order, beginning with
page 1 and ending with page 552. I'm not working ahead or jumping
around to the pages I might like the most. If all goes well, I should
complete this some time in March 2011.

The blog is updated almost every day with a new piece of art, while
this site is updated every time ten pieces are complete...

Project by Matt Kish.

http://linkfilter.net/?id=148904