Speaking of Art...

aaron · 05 Jan 2011, 13:54 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: aaronsingleton at gmail.com (aaron)
Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2011 08:54:09 -0500
Subject: (urth) Speaking of Art...
In-Reply-To: <4D23D3BD.1080707 at io.com>
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Have any of you guys or girls ever seen a picture of Gene Wolfe as a young
man?  I have (saw a wedding photo on Google books a couple years back), and
it seems to me that his description of Severian could've just as easily
described himself as a young man.  It would also be another case of Wolfe
placing himself in one of his stories.

On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 9:13 PM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote:

> On 1/4/2011 2:42 PM, Son of Witz wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Luchadore! Ahhhh!
>> Well, not bad really.
>> Cyriaca mentions his chin is covered, because she guesses he has a cleft
>> chin, and Sev says she's wrong, and she says he is wrong. So whether he
>> has a cleft chin or not is ambiguous, but it is covered, and she says
>> she can see enough of his lips, implying that they are partially
>> covered. One imagines slits.
>>
>> Anyway, it may not be obvious untill you actually try to draw Severian
>> in garb, but with a fuligin cloak and fuligin pants and boots and mask,
>> which should properly be rendered as pure black with no highlights
>> (except possibly where the material is dirty or guilded, as in the
>> master's ceremonial masks) leaves an artist with mostly a silhouette
>> with bare chest, some bits of lip and flesh eyelids showing, but not
>> much else. Plus it often looks like some fetish bondage superhero thing.
>> All this goes away when I show chin and mouth. Suddenly there is a
>> character whose emotions can be drawn to some degree. Luckily, Severian
>> actually whears the mask very seldom in the story.
>>
>> Of course, that begs the question as to why picture him, on the
>> hardcover, like some angsty bondage hero? That is the Severian he grew
>> OUT of and did his best to leave behind. Thematically, it's almost rude
>> to frame his book with him in garb.
>>
>
> He is pretty angsty over Thecla and then over little Sev, but I see what
> you mean.  You might contrive to use close ups just of his shaded features,
> implying a look behind the mask; the IRON MAN films and most films with
> "buried alive" scenes take this approach despite the lack of realistic
> clearance to show such a view.
>
> --
> Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
> Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
> < http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >
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>



-- 
Aaron Singleton
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