The Bund,
written by Sharon Rudahl, edited by Paul Buhle
2023
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I worked from Sharon Rudahl's script which was divided down into
scenes, some of which became pages. The idea was to do about 100
pages of illustrations, with chapters starting on a
right-hand-page and the need to stage the narrative so that
particular scenes were double-page spreads. It was a pleasure
working in colour, "colouring-in" over a brush-Chinese ink base
with some fine detail in pen, and I used a sort of "poverty
palette" of ochres, umbers and dull greys (Payne's Grey and Davy's
Grey) in watercolour on Strathmore Bristol "vellum" – a paper that
you're not supposed to use wet media on! The pages with
aristocrats such as the Tsar of Russia got a different palette:
bright blues and reds. I wanted it to look rough – the antithesis
of the smooth digital Pixar-type art that I loathe – and it
worked. And lots of hand-drawn maps, as the geography was so
important, at least to me. |
Artwork and text ©Michael Kluckner, for Between the Lines
publishing, Toronto, 2023