A Humument

The book "A Humument" by Tom Phillips is an illustrated version of the novel "A Human Document" by W. H. Mallock.  However the illustrations in the book do more than just add pictures to a story.  Phillips’ drawings in “A Humument” completely change “A Human Document” all together.  To transform the book, Phillips drew and painted over the words on the pages to create a completely new story.  While most of the original text is covered by the illustration, Phillips leaves some words un-obscured to create a new story.  Since Phillips was limited to only specific words on each page, he used illustrations to augment the words he chose to reveal on the page.  The constraint on the words available to him allowed Phillips the opportunity to further enhance his chosen words to create not only a poem but also a work of art.

There are many art elements and design principles that make up all works of art.  Phillips uses many of these principles in his illustrations to help describe the poem on the page.  One important design principle is the center of emphasis.  The center of emphasis of an image is an area or object within the artwork that draws attention and becomes a focal point.  The center of emphasis can be a highly detailed area within a simple composition or an area of simplicity within a complex work of art.  Other examples of centers of emphasis include an area or object of bright color or a large image that dominates the work of art.  In a large number of cases, the center of emphasis abides by the rule of two thirds.  This dictates that one of the most effective places to put a center of emphasis is a corner position roughly two thirds of the way to the top or bottom of the page and two thirds of the way to the left or right.  Phillips uses all of these aspects that define a center of emphasis to help convey his message.

Another design principle used heavily by Phillips in “A Humument” is movement.  Movement in a piece of artwork is the path the viewer’s eye takes through the artwork that can be directed along lines, edges, shapes and colors.  Movement is created through contrasting areas of color or arrangements of shapes and figures in a work of art.  The ways the art elements are manipulated and combined form a path for the viewer.  Some examples of movement in works of art include lines moving around a work, paths of shapes that flow through a composition, and colorful brushstrokes swirling across a light background.  All of these examples show how the design principle movement directs a viewer’s eye from some start point through some path in a work of art.  In addition to emphasis and movement, value is another very important design principle used by Phillips in “A Humument.”  In a work of art, value is defined as the relative lightness or darkness of a color.

All of Phillips’ illustrations in “A Humument” contain some of these design principles to help convey the message of the poem on each page.  Phillips drew important illustrations that reflected the meaning of the words on the page and placed them in key spots on the page to create a center of emphasis and give further meaning to the page.  The center of emphasis is the first aspect of the image that the viewer’s eye jumps to, so using the emphasis point to show the most important part of the meaning of the text convays to the reader some of the important aspects of the text.  Movement is another design principle Phillips used to create a story on each page.  On the majority of the pages of “A Humument” the words that are not covered by illustrations are connected in a thread of words.  The contrast between the bubble of color around the words and the drawings in the background create a streamlined way to read the words highlighted by Phillips.  The movement created by the lines pulls the reader’s eye down the connected words in the order they were intended to be read.  Another important design principle used by Phillips to bring attention to certain words is value.  This design principle is useful to highlight important sections of the page.  Phillips uses value to hide certain words under dark colors and highlight some words by using light colors.  Together these design principles used by Phillips create a poem that is also a work of art on every page.