Fuligin in illustration

Son of Witz · 23 Oct 2008, 23:49 · from 2008-October.txt.gz

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From: sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org (Son of Witz)
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:49:03 +0000
Subject: (urth) Fuligin in illustration
Message-ID: <W46541554192931224805743@webmail30>

Old topic, I know. hopefully it's not unwelcome to respond to some very old posts.

I'm an illustrator, and I've been sketching some scenes from this book over the last month or so.  Fuligin is a challenge that I didn't think it would be.

First of all, while the text says:
"the hue fuligin, which is darker than black, admirably erases all
folds, bunchings, and gatherings so far as the eye is concerned, showing only a featureless dark."

Does anyone read this as saying that highlights wouldn't show up?
It seems to me that it says "folds, bunchings, and gatherings" ? all things that create shadows, become a "featureless dark".  But what of highlights? Surely when a light (like the claw's) hits it strongly, the cloak would catch some of the highlights. I picture this as a lot dimmer of a highlight than an ordinary black, but still a highlight.

Anyway, I'm aiming that my illustrations would be considered "legitimate" if they were seen by someone familiar with the story.  Does anyone have thoughts on this, especially ones that would argue with what I've said above about highlights?

(sorry about the lack of formatting here)

From: Dan Parmenter <dan at lec.com>
Subject: (urth) cover art
Date: 16 Jan 2001 12:40:19 

Hurm, I still like the Pennington (original UK) covers best.  But why
is it so hard for artists to draw a fuligin cloak?  You'd think it
would be easy, but these artists always insist on making it look like
it's made of something shiny and reflective.  And they can't seem to
resist putting a shirt on him.  I'm not looking for a Frazetta Conan
here, but the first impression should be of the "classic torturer",
usually depicted topless (see "The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins" by
Dr. Seuss for a good example of the type, and come to think of it, an
early example of the "compassionate torturer" (urgh, that sounds a bit
like GWB, sorry)).

____________________________________

I agree, the Pennington covers rule.

First, Yes, Fuligin is a big challenge for the artist.  It just looks wrong when you don't put any shadows or highlights.  I imagine it would be VERY strange looking in real life, as the text demonstrates.  
IF it doesn't catch highlights, how do you put any subtlety into his mask? how do you differentiate the cloak from his pants from his boots?
The artist is either force to do it literally, which looks very awkward, or forced to stylize it, I've used a white edging that is not intended to be physically present as a detail

Second:
the shirtless factor. I'm sorry. I've drawn this several times now. It is incredibly difficult to not make Severian look like he's a gay leather-daddy BDSM fetishizer.  (absolutely nothing wrong with gay leather daddies, just that I'm sure we'd all agree that doesn't really fit Severian)
And, if you look at those classic shirtless Executioner illustrations, the guy is usually a grotesque ox of a man, not the strapping young lad Sev is.
as soon as you put an athletic figure into it, it looks like bondage gear.

______________________________________________________

From: "Steve Strickland" 
Subject: Re: (urth) fuligin
Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2002 20:32:21 -0600

I was looking up the word 'fuligin' in the dictionary the other day.  I was
interested to see that sitting right in front of the 'fuligin'-like words
(namely, 'fuliginated', meaning 'of a sooty color or appearance'; 'fuligo',
meaning 'soot'; and 'fuliginous', meaning 'blackened with soot'), there were
were several similar sounding words derived from a root with a quite
different meaning.  These were 'fulgurate' ('emit flashes like lightening');
'fulguration' ('the action of lightening'; 'in assaying, a brightening in
the appearance of a molten metal'); 'fulgurous' ('resembling, full of or
charged with lightening').

Like the little girl in the jacal Severian brought back to life, we all know
that the fuligin that is blacker than black, when worn by Severian, the
torturer who is not a torturer, is in reality whiter than white.  Severian
is the shadow of the torturer, which means, in Chesterton's terms, that he
is not the torturer, not death, but something in fact like the opposite of
death; and it is he who brings the white sun as the new sun.  As I recall,
toward the end of Citadel of the Autarch Severian even laughs at himself as
he describes how he exchanged the cloth that is blacker than black for the
white that is whiter than white.

So I wonder if Wolfe intentionally selected the term fuligin in part because
its root word meaning 'soot' is so similar to the root word meaning
'lightening'.   Sort of a play on words.  Something like that would
certainly be within his bags of tricks, uh, I mean, repertoire.

Steve

______________________________________________________

Brilliant point about this paradox.  This speaks to the transubstantial meaning.

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