Monday, November 5, 2012

Y is for You!

My penultimate entry for AlphaBooks is a bit of a departure from the usual format. It comes from Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler, one of my all-time favorite books. In essence it is a book about books, about reading, about the way fiction intertwines with life. Every other chapter in the book is written in the second person, making you, the reader, one of the main characters in the novel.

Once I hit on this concept, I was stumped about how to illustrate it, until it occurred to me to make the book itself the focus, essentially a reader's-eye view. It may take a little imagination to see a "Y" shape in the hand position, but it's the best I could do!

Acrylic on scanned image of a 1979 Harcourt paperback edition, ~ 11" x 8"

6 comments:

  1. Wow, I always marvel at your thought process. And you are so erudite! Then as if that was not enough, your illustrations are incredible. Always a pleasure to visit.

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  2. do you mean it is for me? Thank you :)

    ......

    as ERS said......

    you nailed it...



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  3. Wow. Another book I've never heard of! It's hard to keep up with you sometimes. :p

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  4. Brilliant! And I think the Y is easy to see.

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  5. Really cool! That hand is just amazing. Beautiful golds and purples! And you've reminded me that I haven't read any Calvino in AGES. Darn cool stuff.

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