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Gods and Monsters
OURSACRED AND SECULAR need to visualize demons, beasts, aliens, angels, and the
faces of God have for centuries given artists a feast for the extremes of their
imagination. Images we are now surrounded by bear testimony to the power and
resourcefulness of their collective imagination. Depictions of God or of gods in the
contexts of daily life, paradise, and damnation are found in most world faiths. In the
Christian churches of Europe, thousands of paintings, sculptures, and stained-glass
windows deliver powerful visual sermons to the once-illiterate populace. The salvation
of heaven and terrors of hell are represented equally—enough to make any sinner
shudder. Today, our literate and more secular Western society still hungers for another
world and to ravenously indulge its fascination for the marvelous, impossible, or
strange. Feeding this demand, movie studios now brim with as many monsters as
the visual art of the Medieval and Renaissance Church.
Fantasy is most successful when founded on strong and familiar visual logic.
When creating monsters, we select details of animals farthest from ourselves and that
are widely thought disturbing—reptilian and insect features, serpentine tails, scales,
wings, feathers, and deep fur—and we alter their scale. Humans are equally troubled
by the imperceptibly small and the enormous. Monsters take advantage of both. We
MARTIN love our fear of the hybrid—ideally, a human-animal mix that implies this could
SCHONGAUER happen to us. We then add substances we dislike: unidentified fluids, for example.
German painter and We watch with captivated pleasure movies such as The Fly, Star Wars, Lord of the
engraver who settled Rings, and the Alien trilogy, all of which originated as hundreds of drawings.
to work in Colmar Alsace.
Schongauer is best known To learn to flex your imagination, look for images in the folds of clothing, in the
for his prints, which were cracks of walls, or in smoke. Be inspired by the irrational comedy of word association
widely distributed and or puns. For example. I was on a train passing through Nuneaton, England. Reading the
influential in his time. Here, place name I momentarily glimpsed an alternative meaning, which is to have eaten a
our eye circulates around a
flutter of leather and scaly
wings, a Catherine wheel of
drawn sparks spiraling around
the quietly resolute saint.
nun—it inspired the drawing on p.247. Throughout this book images are presented to
excite and surprise and drawing classes created to increase your confidence. Perhaps the
Saint Anthony Tormented most important conclusion in this final chapter is to advise you to develop your skills in
by Demons parallel with the joy of your unfolding imagination. Neither should be slave or master; a
1485 collaboration between the two will ensure that your drawings glow with originality.
121/4x 9 in (312 x 230 mm)
MARTIN SCHONGAUER
