Tuesday, January 27, 2009

my B&W art - anthropomorphism?

Perhaps some of you have noticed (or not) that I don't do anthropomorphic stories or illustrations. No talking animals. No animals wearing clothes. None of that. When animals are in my books they seem like they could talk -- Show Dog for example -- but they don't. I give them voices via the narrator, but that's as far as I'll ever go. I wasn't actually aware of this myself until Alvina pointed it out to me. Go figure.

Anyway, because of this, my B&W art also doesn't contain any animals wearing clothes or seeming like they could. I illustrated a donkey, but he is an animal in all his glory--naked to the world, void of clothing, housing and excessories.

Anyway, I thought I'd give anthropomorphism a try. I will never do a book like that myself but I'm willing to illustrate other works in B&W (no picture books).

So here is my pig:

4 comments:

Anna Alter said...

Hilarious! Reminds me a lot of James Marshall.

Christine Tripp said...

Love the Piggy but honestly, I felt your animals were anthropomorphic, with or without clothing, as they portrayed human emotions, shown in the wide cartoon eyes and the large, toothy, human smiles. Clothes do not make the animal (or human), is all I can say:)

Meghan McCarthy said...

Ha. That's good of you to say. I'm glad they seem like they could talk... even though they don't. Alvina pointed out to me that my portfolio doesn't show the clothed kind, so I thought I'd give it a go.

Christine Tripp said...

Nothing wrong with that Meghan, I try to reinvent myself all the time:)