F&SF Magazine - "Lázaro y Antonio" by Marta Randall
- Composition Rules Tips
Here's my latest cover appeared on the June issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction for an original novelette by Marta Randall entitled Lázaro y Antonio. As you can see confronting the illustration with the magazine, this is a perfect example of partnership between image and type, whereas even the feared bar code doesn't cover relevant parts of the composition. As it always happens the original is much better, but the first impact is what counts...
The best illustrations are the ones which work with or without type. The artwork has to be complete and satisfy aesthetical as well as functional values. Don't think just for an instant that you can draw only the needed spaces. On the contrary, it's important to paint more than the visible surface. I'll try to explain this concept.
Take note that most of my artworks are digital. The forbidden areas in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science graphic layout are recurrent spaces: the upper and colored band, a lateral list of authors/titles and an impressive bar code on the bottom, so all my initial sketches develop along specular diagonals. In this case the character looks north-eastward. Being the artwork something composed on different digital planes - magic Photoshop stuff! - the background was painted separately on a different canvas while the character was glued on it during a subsequent phase. It means that behind the portrayed man there is a painted portion of drawing! All this comes back very useful when you need to move objects in the scene an inch ahead and it's an incredible bonus when your artistic flexibility has to meet the publisher's demands.
The illustration has received a lot of appreciations from my fans, but I think you should find and read the story that inspired my mind and let me dream for a few days another astounding and touching Universe! All the above processes can be compared to a sort of automatic writing. Once you've mastered the basic principles, you can dedicate yourself to the words and open the main door to the Art dwelling in your heart.
Labels: artworks
posted by MManzieri at 5:48 PM
3 Comments:
This painting is astonishing!! And it's very interesting to read your thoughts about the composition... it's such a complex subject and yours are very useful tips!
Do you always paint the complete background on a diffent layer or it's something you made just for this particular painting, knowing the composition to be troublesome due to the reviews' type?
Francesca, I'm used to paint complete backgrounds in case of external assignments or when I think I can get in troubles. When the painting is for myself or for a private collection everything is so carefully projected in advance that the problem (I mean the type) doesn't even exist...!
It's a trick useful for a professional. Let your client wonder about your quickness when a request of change comes down! Sweep away the anguish to bring up unforeseen zones of the background! :-) Jokes apart, it's a matter of composition, inspiration and time.
Sometimes you know in the bottom of your heart that that composition is perfect and nobody will dare to ask something different...and often you are right.
Another painting with a complete background is my 'Pictures from an Expedition'. It was great when I changed composition for a publisher in another country. All the Martian territory was already painted behind the character...ehehe...
MMM
Was researching European science fiction conventions. Interesting work. I am a digital science fiction photographer and graphist. Your work and covers seem to hint in this direction. Have you ever interacted with this media?
I like your spiral cover. There are good spiral and whirlpool effects on some photostudio programs.You should explore transparency, shadowing and other tools. They fit your style well.
I used to read
Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Have to take a look at more current issues.
I think
sci-fi mags should diversify their staid 'artsy' approaches. Many book covers have become dull and trendy. The 21st century has donned
and we need to 'grasp the future'
and its tools.
You are moving in the right direction but like 'the snake in a garden' your speckled canvas
might be reduced to just another serpent (servent of godly types) unless you learn to circumvent rush illusions and really tame your craft beyond 'suggestions of games of time' into travelling dimensions of magical illusion.
Use technology and printing to its extreme. This is a fiction book cover not an art gallery. You have made extreme contrasts that provoke the right intensity and even dynamism towards ''explosive science fiction futurism''. Make it an illusion that opens emotion but not pandoras box. The key is the key in painting yourself into illusion instead of into a corner!
Give them some awe not your paw,
and you'll have some spare time to freshen up in a spa not the spca.
The printing press is the object of interest or the lap top slab if that is how it evolves. Know your media and defy the rhetorical charlattans who compete for airtime. They are but children who have never been yet bombed in guernica or faced the warps and folds of a science fiction paperback novel, not even a magazine abridgement or short story.
The battle line was not drawn at Babylon you know or when the pens were lifted in sight of the Sphinx.
It will not call from the Stage of Sir Lawrence when he masquerades as Horatio and CSIs detective will
not just be renamed for the creation of new identities.
''We the Living'' need not hide for fear of ''the Night of the Living Dead'',their gang or crowd, nor from the refugee ''vestitudes'' of some Ayn Rand or the
mollocks of H.G. Wells.
A brush, a camera, a computer, and complete freedom to ''weave and wave''our
''wandering wizardness!''
Magic is the dessert of the desert and somewhere under a banana split tree an American split the atom.
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