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• • • Being a journal by artist and designer John Coulthart, cataloguing interests, obsessions and passing enthusiasms.

Archive for the {fantasy} category

 

Dream Boats and Other Stories by Dugald Stewart Walker

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As is often the case, I keep intending to post various lengthy pieces but pressure of work is preventing that for the moment. So here’s another illustrated book courtesy of the Internet Archive. I linked to this in an earlier post about Walker’s work but hadn’t looked at all the illustrations until now. Dream Boats [...]

Posted in {art}, {books}, {fantasy}, {illustrators} | 1 comment »

 


Ray Harryhausen, 1920–2013

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Concept art for Jason and the Argonauts (1963). He could also draw, something the obituaries won’t necessarily mention. I wasn’t aware of Ray Harryhausen’s many detailed preliminary drawings until I had the good fortune to see him give a talk at the Preston SF Group in the early 1990s. I recall mention being made of [...]

Posted in {animation}, {fantasy}, {film}, {music} | 4 comments »

 


Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam

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Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam is a forthcoming anthology in the Gay City Anthology series from Seattle’s Gay City Health Project and Minor Arcana Press. The publishers describe it as “a multidisciplinary anthology of amazing queer monster and ghost fiction, poetry and art.” I’ve created a cover design for the book, and also have [...]

Posted in {books}, {fantasy}, {gay}, {horror}, {science fiction}, {work} | 2 comments »

 


The Web by Joan Ashworth

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Another animated gem, The Web (1987) is an eighteen-minute film based on Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast novels which dramatises the lethal duel between Flay and Swelter. Director Joan Ashworth reduces the cast to manservant, cook, and bedridden earl, no doubt for reasons of economy since the film was originally a student work. Economy or not, for [...]

Posted in {animation}, {books}, {fantasy}, {film} | Comments Off

 


Rackham silhouettes

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Another recent work-related discovery, this edition of the tale of Sleeping Beauty was published in 1920. The text is by CS Evans, and the book is illustrated throughout by Arthur Rackham who forgoes his usual ink-and-wash style in favour of silhouettes. Many of Rackham’s other books employ silhouettes, usually as vignettes at the ends of [...]

Posted in {art}, {black and white}, {books}, {fantasy} | 6 comments »

 


The art of Joanna Chrobak

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Pageant III (2005–2006). A Polish artist whose paintings have that combination of technical virtuosity and strange imagination I always like to see. She also explores traditional themes such as those below. Her website is in Polish but can be translated easily enough via Google. Saint Sebastian (2007–2008). Salomé (2007–2008). Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • [...]

Posted in {art}, {fantasy}, {painting} | 2 comments »

 


Weekend links 148

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Quantum Entanglement by Duda Lanna. • An hour-long electronica mix (with the Düül rocking out at the end) by Chris Carter for Ninja Tune’s Solid Steel Radio Show. • “…a clothes-optional Rosicrucian jamboree.”: Strange Flowers on the paintings of Elisàr von Kupffer. • A Paste review of volume 2 of The Graphic Canon has some [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {art}, {books}, {comics}, {design}, {drugs}, {electronica}, {fantasy}, {gay}, {music}, {painting}, {science fiction}, {work} | 1 comment »

 


Weekend links 145

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Weird Tales, October 1933. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. • Michael Moorcock’s novels are being republished this year by Gollancz in a range of print and digital editions. Publishing Perspectives asks Is Now a Perfect Time for a Michael Moorcock Revival? • Related: Dangerous Minds posted The Chronicle of the Black Sword: A Sword & Sorcery [...]

Posted in {art}, {fantasy}, {illustrators}, {magazines}, {music}, {pulp}, {television} | Comments Off

 


The Eighth Court

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Mid-January and here’s the first book cover design of the year, and another title for Angry Robot. This is the fourth book in Mike Shevdon‘s Courts of the Feyre series; since I’d already provided the three earlier books with a uniform design it didn’t take long to create this one. I’ve been very pleased with [...]

Posted in {books}, {design}, {fantasy}, {work} | Comments Off

 


Walter Crane’s Household Stories

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The ideal follow-up to yesterday’s post would have been David Wheatley’s 1979 film for the BBC’s Omnibus series dramatising the life and works of the Brothers Grimm. This week was the two hundredth anniversary of the publication of the Grimm’s Children’s and Household Tales; I’ve never seen Wheatley’s Grimm film which—for the moment—remains unavailable. There [...]

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The Magic Toyshop

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Yet more revenant TV drama. Seems like everything turns up if eventually so long as you’re prepared to wait. I’d looked for this film a couple of times after writing about TV director David Wheatley. The Magic Toyshop (1987) was a feature-length Granada Television adaptation of Angela Carter’s 1967 novel, with Wheatley directing and Carter [...]

Posted in {books}, {fantasy}, {film}, {surrealism}, {television} | 3 comments »

 


The Magic Shop by HG Wells

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The Magic Shop (1964). I discovered this TV adaptation by accident while looking for something else (more about the something else tomorrow). The Magic Shop is a 45-minute drama directed by Robert Stevens in 1964 for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Writer John Collier adapted a script by James Parish that’s loosely based on the short [...]

Posted in {books}, {fantasy}, {science fiction}, {television} | 2 comments »

 


Caresses by Fernand Khnopff

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Details from Caresses aka The Caress (1896), the most famous painting by Belgian Symbolist Fernand Khnopff which can now be explored in detail at the Google Art Project. Caresses was one of Khnopff’s more enigmatic works although the term is a relative one when it comes to an oeuvre in which enigma is the default [...]

Posted in {art}, {fantasy}, {film}, {painting}, {symbolists} | 12 comments »

 


The art of Thomas Cole, 1801–1848

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The Titan’s Goblet (1833). Thomas Cole’s Titan’s Goblet isn’t featured at the Google Art Project, unfortunately, but the following paintings are, and all benefit from being able to explore their details. Cole’s colossal vessel predates Surrealism by a century, and is one of many paintings which always has me mentally labelling him as the American [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {art}, {fantasy}, {painting}, {religion}, {surrealism} | 11 comments »

 


Children of the Stones

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“Pretty phantasmagorical!” says precocious teenager Matthew when he and his father drive into the fictional village of Milbury in the opening scene of Children of the Stones. Matthew’s father is a scientist whose work requires a three-month stay in a village built in the centre of a series of ancient ramparts and stone circles. Once [...]

Posted in {fantasy}, {occult}, {science fiction}, {television} | 7 comments »

 


World Fantasy Awards

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Presenting some of the cover art and interior illustration from 2011 which won me the World Fantasy Award for best artist in Toronto on Sunday. (The complete awards list is here.) It was a surprise to be nominated, and even more of a surprise to win since working in different areas—book, music, comics—is never a [...]

Posted in {art}, {books}, {design}, {fantasy}, {illustrators}, {work} | 19 comments »

 


Steampunk Revolution

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The “S” word again. One of the jobs from earlier this year is now available for purchase from publishers Tachyon and other outlets. Steampunk Revolution is the third in a series of steampunk story collections edited by Ann VanderMeer (Jeff VanderMeer was co-editor on the first two volumes). I designed the previous title, Steampunk Reloaded, [...]

Posted in {books}, {design}, {fantasy}, {science fiction}, {typography}, {work} | 5 comments »

 


Tentacles #3: Dwellers in the Mirage

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Illustration by Robert A. Graef (1932). If the predatory octopuses of the Sargasso Sea are too mundane for you, how about an extra-dimensional Kraken named Khalk’ru which has to be placated with human sacrifice? This creature is the prime menace in A. Merritt’s Dwellers in the Mirage (1932), a novel I’m afraid I haven’t read [...]

Posted in {books}, {fantasy}, {illustrators}, {magazines} | 2 comments »

 


The Garden of Adompha

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…the growths of that garden were such as no terrestrial sun could have fostered, and Dwerulas said that their seed was of like origin with the globe. There were pale, bifurcated trunks that strained upwards as if to disroot themselves from the ground, unfolding immense leaves like the dark and ribbed wings of dragons. There [...]

Posted in {art}, {books}, {fantasy}, {horror}, {illustrators}, {magazines} | 7 comments »

 


The Story of Rustem and Other Persian Hero Tales

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This edition of Elizabeth D. Renninger’s retelling of Persian folk tales dates from 1909, the tales in question being adapted for children from the epic poetry of Hakim Abu’l-Qasim Ferdowsi Tusi, aka Ferdowsi or Firdusi as he’s credited here. Names translated from Persian or Arabic often vary from one book to the next, and that’s [...]

Posted in {art}, {books}, {fantasy}, {illustrators} | 1 comment »

 


 




 

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