17.1.10
15.1.10
13.1.10
12.1.10
Ah, but to make a yellow ball into a sun!
"Any man can make the sun into a yellow ball.
Ah, but to make a yellow ball into a sun!"
Picasso
"William Steig and His Path"
by
The Art of Leaving Out
Beatrix Potter
"Even before its publication in October 1902, Beatrix Potter believed she could ‘do better than Peter Rabbit’. She was eager to interest Frederick Warne & Co. in an idea for another project – a book of nursery rhymes, ‘in a style between Caldecott’s and the Baby’s Opera’.
From childhood Beatrix was an enthusiastic admirer of Randolph Caldecott’s picture books, published by George Routledge & Sons between 1878 and 1885.
In particular, she delighted in Caldecott’s exuberant sepia pen and ink drawings, which dramatically expanded the humour and scope of his story-telling.
Although Warne had insisted upon colour illustrations for The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix suggested juxtaposing colour and line drawings in a larger picture-book format: ‘Do you think everything has to be coloured now, or can one still have part in pen and ink?’
When Norman Warne, Beatrix’s publisher and fiancé, died in August 1905 she abandoned her nursery rhyme book.
When Norman Warne, Beatrix’s publisher and fiancé, died in August 1905 she abandoned her nursery rhyme book.
However, the larger format was adopted for several other books, including The Roly-Poly Pudding (1908).
Keen to ‘do pen and ink better’, Beatrix applied herself to mastering what Caldecott called ‘the art of leaving out’ – the ability to evoke movement, humour and expression with a minimum of pen strokes.
Her vigorous and expressive line drawings, printed in sepia in the first edition, were reproduced in black when the book was re-issued in 1926 in a small format and renamed The Tale of Samuel Whiskers."
from
10.1.10
courage
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength,
while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
Lao Tzu
8.1.10
7.1.10
6.1.10
5.1.10
miss new york
i know it is cold there, and it is sunny here
but i miss new york and would happily put
on warm boots & dash over to the met now
4.1.10
start something
it's a good time of year
for new ventures...
something fresh, somewhere new...
grab an umbrella. dash!
(if it drizzles, so what?)
be brave!
1.1.10
31.12.09
Roman Vishniac
A few years ago...could it have been ten? Yes. I think so... this book came into our house. The children in it are impossible to forget. It's a lovely book. Mara Vishniac Kohn points out, in the introduction, that the fate of the pictures -- and the photographer -- was, in mid-1930's, darkly uncertain. "What would happen to a Jewish photographer of Latvian nationality living in Berlin, who had surreptitiously taken thousands of pictures of struggling groups of East European Jews?" I suppose it's a small miracle that, at least, many of the negatives were saved. "In this book," Kohn wrote, "we want to remember the children Roman loved, the children of 'a vanished world.' Their images are surrounded with the songs and rhymes that made them smile... We think of them, we assure them of our love, and we cherish their memory."
Roman Vishniac, Children of a Vanished World. University of California Press.
28.12.09
27.12.09
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