Episode 34: Arts in the Arts (Part II- Literature)

The relationship between the written word and pictures has been around for ages. There are artists inspired by literature and books that use images to help support their work. Many children's books are written and illustrated by the same person. Believe it or not, there was even a time adult novels commonly had illustrations. The Pre-Raphealite Brotherhood were an early group of fan artists (something that Harry Potter brought back with a fervor) and modern films are using the images made for Lord of the Rings to recreate The Shire and Middle Earth.

Frederic Dorr Steele was an early illustrator of the Sherlock Holmes novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. His deerstalker cap and pipe have become iconic with the world's favorite detective, regardless of the fact that the description is nowhere to be found in the novels.

Many series of books have been perpetuated because of the images associated with them. Alan Lee is the man responsible not only for creating illustrations for the Lord of the Rings series, but in Peter Jackson's visual vision when the films were made in the past decade. The movies were specifically attempting to mimic the majesty in his beautiful illustrations.

And then, of course, there's this book:

Listening to fans of hist other books, Scott Westerfeld did something innovative by using the illustrator (Keith Thompson) while he was writing, instead of creating images afterwards. Here are some of his great images, included in the series:

Marie has even started her own photographic-illustration project:

This is one example of a few where she is writing and creating the photographs. You can check out the story on her blog.

I can't imagine there is anyone who doesn't like good pictures in their books! Who are your favorite illustrators?