inspiration #1

so i''m now gearing up slowly to the drawing of "cosmo mandinsky" and i'm finding myself trying to "set the tone" for the project. usually, when i start with some sort of half arsed novel or other, i spend ages looking for visual references or music to sort of get the tonal sense of the project right. and i think this is pretty much the best way to spend the early planning stages of what, at the moment at any rate, seems to be quite a daunting project: a proper bit of sequential bit of story telling for the first time. i've been sort of splitting the narrative up a bit and thinking of the best visual references for those: photographers like henri cartier-bresson, artists like edward bawden and... well, others that i thought i'd occasionally ramble about hereabouts

i came across the current major tonal influence when listening to music actually. i've always considered brian eno's greatest record to be "before and after science", a view which i understand is something of a minority, mainly because of the way the raucous side of the album suddenly tapers off into the gorgeous, dreamier, hazy pastoral size of "spider and i" and "by this river". as far as i'm concerned, the whole of the second side of the album is one of the most glorious sequences of music i have ever heard and that dreamlike, woozy quality is something i'm trying to articulate in "cosmo mandinsky". not that i can believe for a single second that my third bit of completed work, my first attempt at a narrative bit of sequential art is going to be anywhere near as good as eno at his best, but... you've got to have a sort of target to aim at haven't you?

anyway - and i should point out at this moment that i'm rambling primarily because i've had a smidgeon too much to drink at the moment - listening to this album at work this afternoon reminded me of how gorgeous the inner sleeve art of "before and after science" is. so a bit of pottering about online later, i've utterly and totally fallen in love with the beauties of peter schmidt's watercolours. i'll not be able to approach anything this good for, god, years... but this sort of thing really drives you, you know? drives you to try and improve and strive for a way to articulate something even slightly as beautiful as these haunting, powerful images

anyway, enough of me - here's a couple of bits of brime schmidt stuff. i urge you to scurry to the webpage and read more about this fascinating man...



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