THREE-COLOUR BLACK-&-WHITE ART! DFO 1306 10/82
1. THE "DREAM QUEEN" IS A MARVELLOUS OPPORTUNITY TO COMPARE ART WORK SIDE-BY-SIDE! And do you know what is the thing that has struck me the most about all of this art by comparison? The most outstanding pictures are not only just some of the best artists' work, & not even always Eman's, but those who use strong contrast to really accentuate their pictures. Those that have the most black-&-white contrast stand out the most--like black backgrounds & white figures & shading, or grey.
2. LIKE I USED TO TELL THOSE LONDON CHINBROOKERS: "Listen boys, we can't do your $2,000 colour edition any more, but that doesn't mean we have to forsake colour altogether! We're working with three colours: Black, white & grey! Amen?
3. SO I WANT YOU ARTISTS TO TRY TO PUT A LITTLE MORE COLOUR INTO YOUR SKETCHES, MORE BLACK BACKGROUND! On our present cover of the Queen, of course, Eman was making that sketch to colour himself, so naturally he just more or less made outlines & didn't bother with black contrast or shading. So in order to use his cover in our black-&-white, we'll have to invade his sacrosanct art & colour it up for us black-&-white!
4. THE SAME IS TRUE IN PHOTOGRAPHY: Most of the FN material that the Family has sent in is very good, but some is really pitiful, it's so washed-out! They're just all grey & no strong blacks, no strong whites, no contrast. They need grey too for shading in-between, but they're just washed-out, & by the time you get'm printed they're just ridiculous!
5. I'VE BEEN TOLD THAT EVER SINCE I FIRST STARTED GETTING PRAYER LETTERS PRINTED, the printer would tell me, "Now listen, buddy, you've gotta furnish me with photos that have stronger contrast, stronger blacks, whiter whites & shades of grey in-between, or they're just not going to come out good in the printed edition! You've got to make the original stronger, blacker & whiter & greyer than what you expect to see in the final printout, otherwise it's not going to show up!"
6. YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO THIS UNTIL THE SKETCH IS FINALISED, THEN YOU CAN REALLY PUT IN THE BLACK & THE SHADING ETC. Otherwise, all of our sketches are going to look like a child's colour book for sure, just nothing but outlines that expect them to furnish all the colour! We've got to put more colour into these black-&-white covers!
7. EMAN IS USED TO DOING COLOUR, HE'S A PROFESSIONAL COLOUR ARTIST & KNOWS ALL THAT HIGH-CLASS STUFF--which is fine when we can afford it, but right now we can't, except for the calendar. He's working on the colouring now & they are gorgeous! But you can't really appreciate them in black-&-white because they don't have enough colour in them; he's planning to add the colour.
8. BUT WE'RE NOT DOING RED, YELLOW & BLUE, WE'RE DOING BLACK, WHITE & GREY!--And we have got to have the blacks & the whites & the greys in there to bring out the colour of these black-&-white posters! The ones that have more black & startling white in contrast & then shades of grey in-between are the ones that look the most colourful & stand out the most! Simple little line sketches hardly show up at all! Alongside the others they almost look like a washed-out photo or a pale child's colour book with nothing but outlines.
9. AND YOU KNOW WHO DOES THAT THE MOST & WHO'S A REAL EXPERT AT IT?--MICHAEL CHRISTIAN REALLY MAKES USE OF THOSE BLACK BACKGROUNDS! And it's like our lesson on good & evil, the good stands out so much better against the background of evil! Light is so much more appreciated in darkness!--Abe Snowman's another one!
10. AND BE SURE YOU GET SOME TAN & SHADED CHARACTERS IN THERE, BY THE WAY! Don't make'm all look like they're a bunch of Westerners! You've got to throw some Easterners in there all the time now!--At least half of the people in your sketches, if not more than that!
11. YOU WANT TO SEE HOW TO DRAW EASTERNERS, I'll tell you who can do it & who's right over there & has been doing it since the beginning--Michael Christian! Look at his Easterners & you'll know how to draw'm! I don't know how he does it or how to explain it, all I know is they look like Easterners. And a lot of the Easterners look a great deal the same, it's hard to tell whether they're Japanese, Chinese or what!
12. THE ONLY REAL DIFFERENCE YOU CAN STRIKE IS WHEN YOU GET TO THE INDIANS! They are distinct, really different & quite black. The Indians have Western Aryan profiles & features, but Black skins. You could just shade in the skins almost black on the pictures you've already got & you've got an East Indian!
13. WE NEED MORE PEOPLE OF DIFFERENT RACES! AFTER ALL, YOU'D BE AMAZED HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE NOW IN THE EAST! And according to the latest finance report, the Easterners are the heaviest givers! They've out-stripped all the rest of'm!--And yet some are in the poorest of fields. I'm sure they're going to feel neglected if we keep picturing nothing but Westerners! I'd almost rather have them all look Eastern than nothing but a bunch of Westerners who are fading out of the picture anyhow!
14. IF ANYTHING, AT LEAST TWO-THIRDS OF THE WORLD'S POPULATION OR MORE IS COLOURED OR EASTERN, & VERY FEW ARE WHITE WESTERNERS! So come on, let's make our art a little more World Universal, shall we? Try to squeeze in some more Easterners & darker skins. Any art that we haven't actually printed yet, we could still maybe darken in some of them. That's very important.
15. AND EVEN THOUGH MICHAEL CHRISTIAN'S EASTERNERS ARE MOSTLY JAPANESE & CHINESE & QUITE LIGHT, NEVERTHELESS THEY LOOK VERY ORIENTAL. I know it's difficult after all these years of being a Westerner & drawing nothing but Westerners & not even realising that two-thirds of the World's population are not Westerners & are not White! It's a drastic revolution in our art!
16. WE HAVE GOT TO BE MORE COMPREHENSIVE IN OUR ART! We've got to be more inter-racial, less discriminating & less Western & less White & much more Eastern! That's the future! So let's hop to it & let's start slanting those eyes, whatever little minor change you've got to make to their faces to make them look Eastern! About all you've got to do to most of them is slant their eyes a little bit & darken their hair!
17. WE'VE GOT FAR TOO MANY BLONDES! In fact, this may shock you, but both times that I saw the Holy Spirit, She wasn't blonde! She had very dark hair! It's too late now to change all these renditions we have in there of Her being a blonde--we haven't got time--but She's no blonde! And to us Westerners who think, "Oh, surely She must be blonde!"--that's a shock!
18. IN ALL THE HOFFMAN MASTERPIECES & THE GREAT GERMANIC, TEUTONIC & NORTHERN & WESTERN CIVILISED MASTERPIECES OF JESUS, HIS SKIN IS WHITE, but the only time I ever saw Him, He was olive-skinned with black hair! Some of the artists did pretty good in 1 or 2 of their pix after that, but then they forgot all about it!
19. I WOULDN'T MIND IF YOU'D MAKE JESUS LOOK A LITTLE MORE EASTERN! He was Oriental! He was Jewish! He was a black-haired, olive-skinned, Oriental Easterner! Now let's get that damn Western White concept out of our heads & let's get our people looking more Eastern!
20. I THINK IT'S URGENT, AN EMERGENCY, BECAUSE THESE KOMIX ARE POURING IN & we're already halfway through the material, so we sure don't want the other half of them & all the rest of them & all our kids for the next few years thinking everybody in the World is White! They have managed to salt in a few Negroes & thought that was enough colour, but where are the Orientals?
21. NEARLY ALL THE ARTISTS EXCEPT MICHAEL CHRISTIAN ARE DOING IT! He was the first innovationist. Because he was living in that area & painting those people, he immediately saw their beauty. He had real live models to work with & work on, so he has an advantage! And boy, look through these FNs & see who are some of the most gorgeous gals around!--Not just all of our White Westerners or Australians, it's the Easterners themselves! They are geeeeorgeous! I just don't think I ever saw any prettier, sweeter, cuter little girls in my whole life!
22. IT REMINDS ME OF THE TIME AFTER BEING IN THE COURTHOUSE A LONG TIME ONE DAY WITH COLOURED FOLKS, I came out & began to see all those White people & I said to Dr. Koger, "The Whites kind of look washed-out, don't they?" Well, the fact of the matter is, Beloved, they are washed out!--Ha! And their whole civilisation & cultures & economies & countries are just about to get washed up, as well as washed-out!
23. SO LET'S GO EAST IN OUR ART & start including the Easterners more & more for a change! If there's any imbalance, there ought to be more Easterners in that art than there are Westerners! And come on with more black contrast to the white! The black offsets the white & makes the white stand out even more, & I think Michael Christian does that the most.
24. ABRAHAM SNOWMAN IS ANOTHER ONE WHO USES THAT STRONG CONTRAST, heavy blacks & whites. His people are a little bit ugly, but it's a kind of a fascinating ugliness, sort of hippy-art ugliness!
25. BUT EVEN THOUGH MICHAEL CHRISTIAN'S STAND OUT MORE & ARE MORE COLOURFUL & MORE ORIENTAL, THEY LACK A SPIRITUAL DEPTH. They're a little bit bland sometimes. Everybody's grinning, everybody's always happy. They need some real inspiration like Jacob & Eman's art.
26. SOME OF YOU ARTISTS HIT IT SOMETIMES WITH REAL INSPIRATION, YOU REALLY GET THE MESSAGE! You really feel an inspiration, it makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck & gives you a little tingle & you get that witness of the Spirit that this is like the real thing! Terrific! There's just something about it that just goes check! And there's other art that just goes flat, blah! It's insipid, it's silly, it's too childish, it's amateurish, it's shallow & sometimes almost ridiculous! It's almost an insult to the subject!
27. I WAS SO DISAPPOINTED THAT HART GAVE ONE OF THOSE GORGEOUS PROPHECIES TO SOME ARTIST THAT JUST BUTCHERED IT! It was pitiful! Forget the old books & long Letters, most of our people of the future in this area & the children are going to be getting it all out of the Komix, & the art of those Komix can sway their opinion & their emotions & their concept so that it can either kill the text or bring it alive! Either kill it or make it live! Which are you going to do? Well, I'll tell you, I make sure that Jacob makes'm live! I ride his tail to make sure it comes out the way I know it ought to be & he's doing terrific!
28. JACOB CARTOON USED TO BE GOOD AT EVEN SHOWING MOTION! I expect our artists to do the impossible! I expect them to make their black-&-whites look like colour, & their still shots look like motion pictures! That is quite an assignment!
29. BUT YOU CAN SURE TELL THE DIFFERENCE WHEN YOU LOOK AT DREAM QUEEN! If nothing else, that's going to be a benefit just from having seen their art side-by-side & in groups. You can see eight pictures at a time, & you can sure see which ones stand out the most! It's not only just their good characterisation or just their good faces or outlines or beauty of the sketches, that's not what really hits you the most, it's that contrast, the use of colour in your black-&-white!
30. I DEFINITELY WANT JACOB TO MAKE THE DREAM QUEEN A BRUNETTE! I think it's urgent, an emergency!--Because they're making these pictures by the hundreds every month & we've got to tell'm! It doesn't mean that from now on everybody's brunettes, we're a mixture, we've got many brunettes & some blondes! But I'll tell you right now, Jesus was sure no blonde, the way He's pictured in most Western art!
31. THEY'VE GOTTEN A LITTLE SMARTER IN MORE MODERN ART OF HIM, His hair is dark in nearly all the latest pictures of Him. Sallman's head of Christ was another blonde, a very weak-faced-looking sister at that! I like that one we used to have on our wall, Jesus the Revolutionary! That's my idea of Christ, only He needed a darker skin.
32. IT'S A FUNNY THING, BUT WHEN I SAW MARY IN THAT VISION, SHE WAS A BIG BUXOM BLONDE LYING BESIDE HIM! But the other one was a brunette, dark-haired, on the other side. So whether she was a freak or the daughter of some Roman soldier or what, I don't know. I notice the Germans have sure left a lot of their progeny behind in a lot of the countries they occupied, blondes & whatnot, even down as far as Tenerife! You're apt to find freaks like that anywhere, but in the East the blondes are a little more freaky!--Ha! Really rare!
33. JACOB'S PICTURES OF JESUS ARE GETTING PRETTY GOOD! His hair is nice & dark, he just needs to shade His face a little more so He's not so white. The Queen at least ought to have a tan so they'd feel more in common with Her & not look like She's from the U.S.A. all the time! And Her hair is definitely quite dark--not jet black, but dark brown.
34. THE SEA SHOULD BE SHADED MUCH MORE--WHOEVER SAW A WHITE SEA? And whoever saw white grass? If you've got a black-&-white television set or any black-&-white photo prints, you can see how these various things of God's Creation & Nature look in black-&-white, even though they're actually coloured. Grass is shaded, it's grey. The sea is dark grey. Even the sky is not white, it's a light grey in black-&-white. So artists, you've got to get those colours in your black-&-whites! Let's get some strong contrast!! Where you can use black, use it generously, because it helps to bring out the other.
35. WHY DO YOU THINK GOD STARTED THIS WHOLE THING IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN? They couldn't even appreciate good, everything was good! So in terms of art He had to give the good a black background so it would really stand out & you'd get the contrast to see how good it was, how white & light & beautiful it was compared to the dark background! So those dark, even evil-looking backgrounds are going to make the beautiful light subjects & centers of attention stand out even more!
36. FLOWERS THAT LOOK LIKE LILIES WOULD BE WHITE, but how many white flowers do you see? Most flowers are various colours, so they should be shaded. So we can even darken that sweep of flowers or plants over Her head & the clouds around them, the background & Her hair. The pages of the scroll, of course, have to be white, because they're white paper, but he did darken little parts of that anyhow. You ought to see me, I've got a good tan! I ought to have a tanned face! Maria's still got her beautiful white body so she's still gorgeously white! The grass through her see-through skirt should be darker, & that'll make her body stand out even more.
37. IF NOTHING ELSE, DREAM QUEEN HAS TURNED OUT TO BE AN ART LESSON OF COMPARATIVE ART! It's going to show the bad ones how bad they are, & the good ones how good they are by comparison! We're doing the same thing with these pictures as we're talking about black-&-white contrast: You're getting the contrast of the poor art with the good art & you can sure see the difference
38. NOW ON THE FN PHOTOS THERE ARE SEVERAL REASONS WHY THEY MAY NOT HAVE HAD ENOUGH CONTRAST. They may not have had enough sunlight, they may not have had the proper contrast in the subjects & backgrounds that they should have had in photowork.
39. TWO THINGS IN THE TROPIX YOU'LL FIND A LOT OF TROUBLE WITH, that I used to have trouble with in Florida when I did my own photowork, one was they sell you old faded film. Film gets old fast in this part of the World, so don't get any film that's just about to go out of date. Refuse to buy any film that's not pretty fresh, three-to-six months old. Anything older than that, forget it! If it's almost a year old & the date's almost expiring, forget it! It'll fade.
40. ANOTHER THING, IT'S GOT TO BE DEVELOPED QUICKLY or the heat & the moisture causes it to fade, & it'll even spot & mold! You have got to keep those labs highly air-conditioned, because nearly all photographic chemicals must be kept at a temperature of not over 68 degrees. I used to have to stick'm in the fridge or put an ice cube in'm to keep the chemicals cold. Because most of these chemicals are designed to be used in the North where 65 to 68 degrees is the average room temperature! When it gets warm it affects your negs, but especially your prints! It washes'm out & makes'm look faded & grey instead of black-&-white contrast!
41. EVEN SOME OF THE STUFF FROM THE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPERS IS POOR QUALITY. It could have been the original film, it could have been the way they took it, it could have been the way they kept it & it could have been the way it was developed in warm chemicals. So it's hard to pinpoint who was to blame.
42. BUT WE HAVE GOT TO WARN OUR PHOTOGRAPHERS AROUND THE WORLD THAT THEY HAVE GOT TO BUY FRESH FILM & TAKE IT QUICKLY, IMMEDIATELY IF POSSIBLE! Don't let it hang around in the camera too long, & keep the camera in a nice cool dry place. I wouldn't recommend sticking it in the fridge, but at least in an air-conditioned room.
43. I WAS HEARTSICK SEVERAL TIMES AT THE STUFF I DID! I knew I'd gotten the photowork & everything else right, but it just came out all washed out in the pan! It's just tragic, heartbreaking, when all your good work literally goes down the drain with the chemicals!
44. YOU CAN BUY SMALL AIR-CONDITIONING UNITS THAT CAN JUST SIT IN THE WINDOW, or even sit in the door to blow it out in the house. They have got to keep those chemicals cold & those rooms have got to be cooled! And the poor boys who work there deserve it too! If we're going to get good photowork, it's gotta be air-conditioned!
45. WELL, YOU ARTISTS DON'T NEED A LESSON IN PHOTOWORK, YOU DO YOUR OWN! We don't have to worry about your chemicals or the temperature, except we want to keep you hot for the Lord & doing real cool work! Hallelujah!--To set the folks on fire!
* * *
(Note to Jacob after he shaded in Eman's "Dream Queen" cover, according to Dad's suggestions:)
46. PTL, SON! THIS WAS A LOTTA WORK!--SORRY!--BUT IT'S BEAUTIFUL!--A great improvement on Eman's art!--Ha! I do love the darker ink background!--Don't you think it's more striking & stands out more?!--It's terrific!--"Where sin (dark black) doth abound, grace (bright white) doth much more abound!"--Ha! (Rom.5:20)--Amen? This illustrates the whole idea about the contrast of "Good & Evil"!--Amen? If this were not a poster, I wouldn't be so particular.--But it'll be seen by many for a long time, studied, absorbed & memorised!--So let's do it the very best we can in black-&-white--give it colour! OK?--Tx!--GBY! ILY!--D.
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family