Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

How very uncannily convenient to have a web 2.0 article just posted below. I was just going to post a little thing about what gets left off the web, a thought provoked in part by Serendipity, a conference for children’s book industry insiders that I attended the last two days.

Stephen Biesty was one of the illustrator presenters, along with Ian Wallace, Janet Stevens, Bill Slavin, and Cornelia Funke, although she is more of a writer these days (Dragon Rider, Inkheart).

Now what I will draw your attention to is that Stephen Biesty does not have a personal website, although I imagine the majority of people reading this will recognize his work above. Nor does Bill Slavin. These guys are in the lucky position of being so well-known they can get by without one – for now. But consider that neither of them would have made it into Drawn! here except for my deciding to write this – because, well, we art people on the web don’t generally post what we can’t link to. Non-personal sites have to be pretty spectacular for some other reason for me to use it to yak about an artist, because there usually just isn’t enough depth on second-sources to really profile someone. So some people with amazing careers and work are going to be overlooked online if there is no way it can be featured.

Ah, but you point out that one can always go get one of their books! Well, yes. I should hope so. BUT, and this is the problem Stephen himself mentioned in his talk, in his case his market is disappearing, because of the web. Stephen makes what the book people refer to as “informational books.” And they’ve been dwindling down to the skinniest of shelves in bookstores over the last 15 years in direct correlation to the popularity of the web, because – as Stephen told us – there is a perception that the internet is the best place to find out all about stuff. So, if I wanted to find something on, say, amazing illustrators – well… ok you see the problem. Not everything is or ever will be online.

So, couldn’t Stephen just get a darned site and solve at least his own lack of presence online? Well, sure. But here is another little thing. That picture of his up there? — we can’t make out the detail. Stephen is a miracle worker of detail, but he works for the press, not the monitor. In fact, he apparently doesn’t even use a ruler, he is so low-tech. He does it all freehand, ink on paper with watercolour. Old – no, Ancient – School. And without putting up huge pdf’s of each piece (something most artists are reluctant to do for fear of copyright abuse), his work does not translate for the computer and web – as they are currently configured.

Tech can undoubtedly come round to accomodate the artists and art who are missing in action. But what I am seeing instead is a move to art that reads well online. It is my hope that the Stephen Biestys of the world don’t find their talents neglected as everyone gets caught up in digital media and forgets there’s that other, ancient way of looking at pictures: intimately, with the original or a good facsimile in our lap, getting lost in the world of a complex image that takes more than 15 seconds to absorb.