I have been a subscriber to The Daily Dose for about a month.

There is always something included to hold my interest and to help keep me current.

You may recall my Heartstorming articles about  graphic novels or Zak Smith’s fully illustrated version of Gravity’s Rainbow.

The following is an excerpt from this morning’s Daily Dose.

The Daily Dose

Presented by Flavorpill

Flavorpill’s Daily Dose is a jolt of cultural inspiration, delivered fresh to your inbox every weekday morning to help jump-start your day.

Our mission is simple: to provide a quick look at what’s new in music, print, art, film, and online,

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Britten & Brülightly

Painting each page of a graphic-novel noir

Hannah Berry’s debut graphic novel, Britten & Brülightly is enough

to turn any residual comic-phobes into aficionados of the medium.

It’s existentialist noir. The story of world-weary private investigator Fernández Britten

and his unconventional partner Brülightly

has the philosophical wit of Bill Watterson and the whodunit chops of Raymond Chandler.

Berry strikes a pitch-perfect tone. When Britten is hired by Charlotte Moughton, the beautiful fiancée of an apparent suicide victim

, the detective is thrust into a comically sinister world of murder and revenge.

Set in a perpetually rain-soaked quasi-London, the dark and often grotesque characters are stylized to fit the story’s coy-yet-macabre tone.

The artwork was painstakingly painted. Berry, a graduate of Brighton University’s illustration program,

spent more than two years hand-painting each panel of the story.

Read a recent interview with Berry, check out The Oregonian’s review with sample illustrations, and buy the book.

– Chelsea Bauch

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Note: This entry was originally published in 2004. It received many comments in its email only version. What say you?

Why They Do Not

The following excuses are quoted from interviews with photographers.

1.  I don’t have time. (Instead of waiting until your spouse calls you to bed and expresses concern that you are married to your computer or  television, bring a book to bed and read yourself to sleep. Pleasant dreams.)

2.  What am I going to get out of it? (Hmmmmm!)

3.  I am dyslexic. (Some of the most visually creative people I know are dyslexic. There are many websites which deal with adult dyslexia. Books on tape — there are many today — are an alternative.)

4.  It’s a waste of time. I’d rather watch television. (Hear an interview on hot and cool media with the philosopher Marshall McLuhan given in 1965. He was the author of The Medium is the Message. In hot media like television everything is provided for you. In cool (hip) media like reading fiction, all of our sensory tools are exercised. Jump forward some 45 years to the present. How does the personal computer exercise our senses?)

5.  My first priority is to stay on top of the new technology. (My first priority as an artist is to grow creatively. I have taught myself technology on a need to know basis.  Technology represents tools to make creating easier, more economical, and introduces some new ways to render, among other things. It doesn’t replace ideas. Fiction stimulates the imagination and involves all the senses. Many of us hide out in technology. And yes indeed, we need to keep current. It is demanded of us.)

6.  I am a visually oriented person. I prefer to look at photography books. I get most my best ideas by looking at other people’s pictures. (Reading fiction helps us to see things in our mind’s eye which is where most concepts live and develop. I believe that ideas are developed upon ideas. I believe that photographers ideas will develop when they step outside of their medium for sources.)

7.  I am practical. I don’t have time for fantasy. (The ability to create depends upon the imagination. The imagination is exercised by the abilities to fantasize.)

8.  I am more interested in the truth. (All photographs are lies.)

9.  I am looking for role models. If I had the time, I’d read biographies of other photographers. (Read biographies and biographical fiction about all kinds of artists. To understand Louis Daguerre, read The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre. This is fiction based upon history.)

10. Reading fiction is irrelevant and distractive. I should be placing all my free time into marketing, or… (Which is more important, compiling a mailing list and sending an email that is unlikely to be opened, or creating a promotional concept that will exercise the imaginations of the recipient?)

11. I only read self-help books. I actually read nine of them this year. (An occasional self-help book may help motivate you. Make sure that you leave time to put what you have learned into action.)

Why They Should

Unless you are photographing a process or how to do something, you are probably interested in evoking emotions and challenging the eye and mind. Fiction’s aim is to give the reader an emotional and intellectual experience.

Fiction invites the photographer to see the world differently and to grow creatively.

(more…)

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In order to allow ourselves to be creative, we have to relinquish control and overcome fear. Why? Because real creativity is life-altering. It threatens the status quo; it make us see things differently. It brings about change, and we are terrified of change.

Human beings are born with a great deal of creativity, and by the age of 12, we’ve lost most of it. The world just slams it out of us. Our teachers and parents tell us that what comes from our imagination isn’t true; it’s just “imaginary.” I think that what’s imaginary is truer than what’s “real.” Adults prefer facts, because facts are limited. Like truth, imagination is unlimited, so many people are afraid of it.

Go outside at night in the country, where the sky is very clear. Then look up. Each one of those tiny points in the sky is a flaming sun. We’re a tiny part of an enormous universe, which may be one of many universes. No one really knows for sure what’s out there. So we use our imagination. Imagination allows us to ask big questions — questions that scare us, and for which we don’t have easy answers.

We live in a wild universe — a universe in which the truth is frightening. My son died last December. He was only 47 years old. That’s scary, and it’s lousy, but it’s true. Creativity comes from accepting that you’re not safe, from being absolutely aware, and from letting go of control. It’s a matter of seeing everything — even when you want to shut your eyes.

Madeline L’Engel

1919 – 2007

What did the well-meaning caretakers in your life tell you was not true? How did it effect how you create? If you could speak freely to those caretakers, what would you want to tell them?

Write ten questions that are so huge that you are not likely to find easy answers?

Thoughts about the art of portraiture. Some will not recognize the truthfulness of my mirror. Let them remember that I am not here to reflect the surface (this can be done by the photographic plate), but must penetrate inside. My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth. My human faces are truer than the real ones.
Paul Klee

If photography liberated the portrait artist to look inside — for essences — than how has the portrait photographer been liberated by digital art? How may Paul Klee’s art be truer than the real person’s face? What does he know? In what ways may words and pictures be blended to create the truthfulness Klee discusses?

We have art so that we may not perish by the truth.
Friedrich Nietzsche

How does art keep us from the truth? How does art reveal truth? If art was forbidden would we perish? What would that look like? Write a description of a world without art.

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