For years he had been quietly filling his stocking 1913

In this image, Arthur Rackham uses ink and color to make us look twice at a raven and stocking. The stark black bird is perched right in front of us, and the stocking hangs down limply. I can imagine Rackham’s hand drawing and redrawing those lines to make up the branch, the lines making up the branch feel as brittle as a twig. The stocking, though, is the star of the show, with patches that look almost moldy. The image feels so much like other ink drawings that are floating around in my brain. I see the relationship between his process and other illustrators; the way the ink sets into the paper, the cross-hatching, the layering. It makes me want to pick up a pen and add to the ongoing conversation between artists, all adding to an image bank of the collective conscious.