I came across Alfred Kubin's work on a website called monsterbrains.com.
He is an Austrian printmaker and illustrator that worked during the early 20th century.
His etchings tell tales of an imaginary land of monsters and bleak open landscapes. I was initially drawn to his dreamlike scenes. There was something fantastical about giant hippos and imagined birds and reptiles, despite their macabre environment. However as I looked at more of his work, I found the majority was deeply sinister and grotesque.
After doing some research I found out that he was a writer and had written a novel called The Other Side, which he also illustrated. Kubin writes of a strange invented world called "The Dream Kingdom"and plays with the nature of the subconscious.
This was exactly the subjects I wanted to illustrate for my personal project. Although I learned that Kubin had a very traumatic background and tried to commit suicide on his mother's grave. I appreciate that these dark experiences lead him to create these amazing yet disturbing works of art, however I have had a fairly happy upbringing so I doubt my images will be as dark!
Kubin worked with aquatint to create dark cloudy texture of his etchings, I think as this will be my first try at etching, I will probably keep my images simple and use only hard ground line drawings. I really love the atmosphere that aquatint can create and would definitely consider using it in a future project.
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