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Art Imitates Art
You've probably noticed our absolutely gorgeous Æon Three cover, now showing on a webpage very near you. This colorful and whimsical piece does not originate in the realms of science fiction or fantasy, but from that of medical illustration, one of the lesser-known accomplishments of world-class illustrator Alan M. Clark. The painting from which this cover is a detail is realistically but unromantically titled Cell Wall with Hormones. We adore it.
Here's another piece of Æon art trivia: every Aeon story appears accompanied by a full-color illustration (one of the benefits of electronic publishing in that color doesn't cost us extra to produce). We've had any number of people ask us why we don't credit the majority of these, and now it's time to come clean: we only credit those illustrations the Æon editors don't produce with their own tiny hands. It's like this: our budget won't allow for commissioning 30 pieces of art a year, so sometime during the production phase of each issue we put on our art hats and create our own illustrations using photographs. Heck, sometimes we even take the photographs, but often as not we get them from online sites that offer royalty-free photos, often combining two or even three photographs into one illustration, and making liberal use of various graphic tricks to transform them into drawings and paintings that serve to lead readers into the stories they illustrate.
In most cases these illustrations don't attempt to depict a scene from the story, but rather to suggest the idea of the story, evoke a mood, and make the potential reader curious. We learned this philosophy from the aforementioned Mr. Clark, whose recently-published book The Paint in My Blood, from IFD Publishing, contains all sorts of wisdom about the craft of illustration, in addition to lots and lots of gorgeous reproductions of Alan's work.
If you have a comment on any of our artwork, or any of our stories, or for that matter anything we're doing or trying to do with our magazine, we hope you'll drop us a line to waves/_at_/aeonmagazine.com (do the usual substitutions to make this into an email address, and help save us from relentless carpetbombing spamsters). As soon as we have a few comments letters to print we'll be able to add a letters feature to Æon, something we'd very much like to do.
posted by æon editors 20:56 0 COMMENTS
