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Art Of Discworld by Paul Kidby and Terry Pratchett check out website: www.orionbooks.co.uk
OK, so you're asking yourself, 'Hang on a minute, this is a book on 'The Art Of Discworld' by Paul Kidby.' Well yes, I do like Paul's work and he does seem to be Terry Pratchett's favourite artist when it comes to Discworld.
To start off this is a beautifully printed book. The inside cover has wonderful muted tonal pencil line drawings of familiar characters. To me, my favourite (also to my mind one of Paul's best interpretations) is that of the dragon Errol. There is also a full-blown painting of Errol later in the book, filling a page that I just adore. But I digress. On with the show, as they say.
There is an introduction by both Terry and Paul giving an insight into both Discworld and the book itself. The one thing that struck me about this book was the amount of text. Terry Pratchett gives us an a glimpse of his characters and the creation of parts of the Discworld.
This also acts as a good reminder for the characters you may have come across in the thirty-plus Discworld books that Terry has written. The formation of Ankh-Morpork and it's mapp, the City Watch, the guilds, the wizards and the Unseen University, Death and company, Nanny Ogg are just a few places and characters that are covered both descriptively and artistically in this book. There are a few passages by Paul that explains sources and inspiration for his work. For example, Greebo was based on his own cat. The thing is, though, you are not going to buy this book for the text. The full-page paintings and sketches will draw you in. It is an understanding into the working process that Paul Kidby goes through that really to my mind presents the most interest. To me, the sketches are more impressive than the full-blown finished paintings. The sketches just seem to have more detail and more life even though they are singularly coloured. Paul does mention that some of the work is still very much work-in-progress. You can see that in the experimental colour roughs for the cover of 'A Hat Full Of Sky'. Also, there are the full versions of many paintings that we've never seen before such as 'Quiet Please' which only the central portion was used for the cover of 'The New Discworld Companion'. There are a few cover pictures in the book along with some wonderful parodies of famous paintings such as Mona Ogg (Mona Lisa) and familiar imagery such as Paul's take on the 'Trainspotting' poster - 'Feeglespotting'. Overall, this is real eye candy for any Discworld/Terry Pratchett/Paul Kidby fans out there. It also provides an a glimpse into Terry and Paul's imagination. Phil
Jones
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OTHER REVIEWS - November 2004
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I
have a confession to make: for me the definitive visualisation of Discworld was
Josh Kidby's paintings. To quote Terry Pratchett, 'I only invented the Discworld.
Josh created it.' Josh sadly died, aged 72, in 2001. This is to me is closely
followed by 
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