Alice and Martin Provensen

A few months ago I attended a collagraph course run by my friend Sue. She always brings along plenty of inspirational books to stimulate ideas and she produced a copy of a book of Greek Myths illustrated in the 1960's by Alice and Martin Provensen. Purchased in a charity shop, this book had me enthralled and I came home to find out more about Alice and Martin, finding out that they had a great following on the web and that their books were collected worldwide.

I later picked up a cheap copy of the Greek Myths but the one that was most scarce was their illustrated copy of The Iliad and the Odyssey. I found it occasionally via different websites but usually at a ridiculous price so imagine my delight when I went into an Oxfam bookshop last week and saw this on the top shelf.... my heart skipped a beat. The price was really reasonable even though they knew it was a scarce book so I grabbed it with both hands and nearly ran from the shop!

I think the illustrations in the book of Greek Myths are better overall but I love these kind of stylised monochromatic images .

This final picture is probably one of my favourites. The way that horse is drawn and detailed is fabulous. It gives me ideas for some prints of my own and a desire to keep finding out about Alice and Martin Provensen.