And The Winner Is ...

Dear illustration contestants,

We, the publishers of spa_tien would like to thank you for your contributions and excellent work for the book ("what are literary weblogs?"). You are all highly talented artists.
We had a long discussion about your work and about who should be the winner. It wasn´t easy as there were quite a few submissions which were suitable to our project.
So finally we´ve decided to integrate the images of Kathleen York into our project. (Congratulations, Kathleen!) Her subway motives are versatile and still close to the subject.
As soon as the book will be published a link will be posted here in the blog for everybody to have a chance to have a look at it.
Thanks again for all your effort!

Hartmut Abendschein
Markus A. Hediger
Benjamin Stein
(Publishers of spa_tien)

No More Submissions ...

... for the illustration contests. Thanks for sending in so many wonderful images. I hope the publishers will find the time to discuss and announce the winner this Sunday. I´ll post here as soon as I know more.

Asta Ostrovskaja

I guess our last submission before the contest ends is from Asta Ostrovskaja. She is from Vlnius, Lithuania.
Her concept is that 3 basic things are needed to create literal weblogs: work, creativity and observation.

Vladislava Hristova

Vladislava Hristova graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia,Bulgaria as a Master of Book Design. She has entered competitions for drawing, caricature and illustration.
At the moment she is working as an illustrator for Bulgarian, Turkish and Canadian companies.

Only One More Day To Go...

... so hurry up and send in the last submissions! :)

The Deadline...

... is coming. Last submissions will be accepted on Tuesday July 31, 2008. The winner will be informed soon after.

David Hartwell

David Hartwell is an artist and illustrator from Los Angeles. His illustrations relate to the inherent nature of signs and symbols.
As a writer reaches a wider audience, individual meaning shifts, even more. Here are David Hartwell´s 2 submissions for the illustration contest:

Martine Vanremoortele

Martine Vanremoortele sent in some illustrations for the illustration contest. She is a member of EDM group.

For the book she would like to find some interesting quotes (from the contributors) or more in general and illustrate it as seen in the two images below. You can see more of her images on her flickr account and her blog. For this contest she made the colored illustrations black & white, just to see if it would work.

Casey Toussaint

A few days ago, Casey Toussaint sent in some illustrations based on Arthur Rimbaud's prose poem "The Bridges". She had been thinking of entering the illustration contest, but hadn't read the rules, so she first did them in color instead of black and white.

I´m glad she took the time to do a few more, using the same ideas, as stated in her blog:

“What is Literary blog?”- the arts being bridges to one another, literary blogs leading, like everything else on the internet, to each other as well as to other blogs and sites, the fragmentary way we read, appreciate things and get information from blogs, and so on….

Here's an English translation of Rimbaud's prose poem:

The Bridges

Skies the gray of crystal. A strange design of bridges, some straight, some arched, others descending at oblique angles to the first; and these figures recurring in other lighted circuits of the canal, but all so long and light that the banks, laden with domes, sink and shrink. A few of these bridges are still covered with hovels, others support polls, signals, frail parapets. Minor chords cross each other and disappear; ropes rise from the shore. One can make out a red coat, possibly other costumes and musical instruments. Are these popular tunes, snatches of seigniorial concerts, remnants of public hymns? The water is gray and blue, wide as an arm of the sea. A white ray falling from high in the sky destroys this comedy.

Colorful Images By Caseytoussaint

Caseytoussaint of rue Manuel bis had planned to join the contest too. Unfortunately she didn´t read the rule about the black and white (or grey shades) - rule.
Her images are wonderful but can´t be printed this way. Check out her work here. Maybe she will convert them to black and white, just to try out whether it will look good too.
As she had all the work and as these images are beautiful, I´m going to show them here.

What is a Literary weblog?” - the arts being bridges to one another, literary blogs leading, like everything else on the internet, to each other as well as to other blogs and sites, the fragmentary way we read, appreciate things and get information from blogs, and so on… . Casey Toussaint

Deadline ...

... is in 2 weeks. Just a short reminder to get started with the illustrations! ;)

Tiago Senos

Tiago Senos is our next participant. He´s Graphic Designer from Portugal.



" Viajei por mais terras do que aquelas em que toquei..." (I travelled for more lands than those where I touched)


"In order to do these illustrations I inspired myself by this sentence. The book's name is "What are literary weblogs?", so I thought it was essential to include the work of one of the greatest Portuguese poets of the 20th century - Fernando Pessoa. I made some research and I found a poem "Passagem das horas" (The Passage of Time) written by Álvaro de Campos, one of Pessoa's pen-names. Álvaro de Campos is known for his futuristic ideas. In this poem I found an excellent sentence, that can describe, what happens to us while we are surfing the net - " Viajei por mais terras do que aquelas em que toquei...". I used the sentence as a central element and the letters are characters written by the computer's mouse."

Rules update!

One of the participants brought up the question about the resolution for the print version. I´m glad she did that.
For the web magazine/book the required size is 350x170px, but for the printed version of the book the image must have a resolution of 300 dpi.
But the images must have the required aspect ratio of 350 x 170 px. (The illustrator however should keep in mind that the image will be downscaled to the dimensions of 350 x 170 px pixels for web presentation (if applicable).)

These images will be fit in at the beginning, at the end and maybe in between the text.

Arindam Goon...

.. one of the participants of this contest has started his first blog. Check out his art here.

Contest Bashing

There has been quite some bashing going on about this contest on different boards. Illustration mundo or Illustration Friday are only two sites to name a few.
Mainly the same people write negative comments on different blogs and boards and quite a few contests have been cancelled after all these negative reactions.

I´m not going to cancel the contest! Though I do understand some of their arguments I still do believe that this is a nice project and that the publishers aren´t taking advantage of anyone. In case you want to join the contest: WONDERFUL! In case you don´t agree with it: JUST IGNORE IT!

So far we have to wonderful participants and a few people who said that they would send in some images soon. I do hope to have a few more entries, so that the publisher can see some more ideas. Thanks!

Arindam Goon

Arindam Goon is working in a Fashion Bag export company in India as a Graphic and Creative Designer.
He is a self taught artist and has never tried to sell his art . Some of his works were exibited in two local exibitions. His portraits are just phantastic. For the exhibition he plans to draw portraits of the contributing authors.




- Self Portrait (Fast Portrait-Lead Pencil)
- A. Goon´s Grandma (Fast Portrait-Lead Pencil)
- Friend (Fast Portrait-Ball point Pen)
- Tagore (Dry Pastel)

Kathleen York (First Entry!)

Kathleen York is the first participant to send in 2 images for the contest. I´m so glad that finally someone dared to join in. ;)



The designer said, she was thinking of submitting these two black and white subway drawings to show her style, and would do something more specifically geared toward the topic should she be chosen.
However these two images do fit the topic too. A subway train drives you from station to station and you discover or arrive at new places. That´s somehow like reading literature weblogs, you discover new places by jumping from one link to the next.
Kathleen agreed to the idea of visiting blogs being similar to stops on a train line, connected together. There is a line that runs through how you visit/access and find new blogs, a line of communication, a line of transport if you will, transport of ideas . . .
Check out her blog and her Flickr profile. Then you could also have a look at her Greeting cards and other drawings. Thanks Kathleen!

I´m looking forward to seeing the next contributions.

A Note From The Publishers (about Pro Bono)

"Our last month’s „Competition Call for Illustrators“ caused a series of unpleasant comments as well as controversial discussions on some artists forums and polemic posts in weblogs. I’m confident this happened only because we couldn’t articulate clear enough the very nature of this book project. Sure enough the artists are irritated. That’s why I want to sum up all the important details once more in this post in order to set things right.

„spatien“ is a non-commercial magazine for prose and poetry for German readers, in existence since 2005. It is published online every six months.
Additionally the publishers design a printable version that can be downloaded for free at the same address. If readers prefer a printed paperback (real magazine style) they can order it via a book-on-demand service for the actual manufacturing cost. The low budget in money and higher budget in time comes from the publishers who are enthusiasts in literature but working in different regular full-time jobs. There is no money coming in. All authors contribute their texts knowing that „spatien“ cannot and does not pay royalties to them. They do so because they like the idea of this project or like being published in a suiting non-commercial publication that is available for free to any reader interested in it.

For the first time we are now planning to publish a book in a very similar way and on the very same restricted budget. This book will have an ISBN and shall be available via amazon and book stores. The selling price will be the manufacturing cost of the book plus the margin that amazon and booksellers claim for themselves. From our point of view this is still in the category of a non-commercial publication since we don’t earn anything and the book gets to the reader for the lowest possible price. This book will not be available online. We are planning to publish promotional abstracts of the essays but not the complete texts.

I really hope that this post could sort out the misinterpretations that caused the uncertainty and polemic responses."

Benjamin Stein
__________________________________________________________________
This note was written in response to all the negative messages I received and to various discussions which were posted around the web.
I´m happy that not all people seem to see the contest in a negative context and I´m specially grateful to the participants of the contest. Thanks!

Competition Call for Illustrators

My husband is a copublisher of a German literature magazine called „spa_tien". The print & online magazine appears twice yearly. The publishers are currently preparing a paperback book under the working title "was sind literarische weblogs?" ("what are literary weblogs?"). The book is scheduled for the 1st quarter of 2008.

„What are literary weblogs“ – this is the working title. Why do we want to publish this book? We want to present the phenomenon of literary weblogs – still a niche within the blogosphere – to a wider non-blogging and not blog-reading audience that is up to now mostly interested in traditional ways of literature publication. Additionally we want to (re-)initiate a discussion about online literature, a phenomenon that is not as widely known in Europe as e. g. in the US and offers – especially in the form of the weblog – new and interesting ways of creative writing in a great variety of fashions.

Different authors of literary weblogs will contribute their essays and sample posts for this book for free. In a way this is a community project comparable to open source software developments. The participants participate because it pleases them and because they think what they do might be of value and importance for somebody.

We are men (and women) of the word and cannot illustrate a book like this ourselves. That’s why we are looking for an artist who would be pleased to be part of this community project and has the ideas and skills for interesting illustrations. The general topic could be freely interpreted. It may be a play with associations about web-like structures. It may be variants of untraditional text representations. It could be abstract or ornamental as well.
A series of about 7 to 9 images could also illustrate motives about literature, text, weblogs, writing processes, etc.

Requirements:

• The participants should send in 2 images to show the character of the series. These two images will be rated and the winner will do the whole series of 7 – 9 pics. The illustrations, graphics, sketches, etc. have to be black & white or in grey scales with a size of approx. 350 x 175 px (Width/Lenght). For the print version the image must have a resolution of 300 dpi and the required aspect ratio of 350 x 175 px.
• Deadline: July 31, 2007
• Please send the images to this address !
  

Reward for the winner:

• His/her work will be published in a book (with a short biography and link to his/her webpage)
• A copy of the published book
• Gratefulness from the publishers and the contributing authors as well
• The artist retains the copyright on all the images and they will be only used for this project
  

Everybody can join the contest – pros and amateurs. It may be specially interesting for amateurs or illustrators who are just beginning their career.
I´ll post the entries here with a link to the artists blogs. Further all entries with a link to participant´s website/blog will be shown here on flickr!

Have fun and be creative!


Publishers of spa_tien:
Hartmut Abendschein
Markus A. Hediger
Benjamin Stein
_____________________________________________________________

While I really do understand the artists who don´t want to do this kind of Pro Bono work, I still like the idea
of this project and personally I do like participating in these kind of c0ntests.
If you feel the need to discuss Pro Bono work, then please do so in the next post (Note from the publishers).
But I´m not going to explain my point of view again and again. _____________________________________________________________

Thanks to all of you, for your suggestions where I could post about the contest and for linking to this page:
Tommy Kane
Teesha Moore
Justin Monson
Suzanne Buchanan
Karen Winters
Christine Castro Hughes
Rama Hughes
Penelope Dullaghan