(urth) Speaking of Art...

[Jeff Wilson]

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 >