WARNING: THIS WALLPAPER CONTAINS A GRAPHIC DEPICTION OF VIOLENCE THAT MAY DISTURB SOME PEOPLE. PLEASE DOWNLOAD AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION.
Anyways, with that out of the way, here is number 6 in my Kino no Tabi Novel Chapter Illustration series, using artwork from Novel 9, Chapter 8: The Killing Country -- CLEARANCE.
What drives Sigsawa to constantly write about war? Is it his realization that war is the inevitable end to human conflict? Whatever his motivation, Kuroboshi always comes through with some striking illustrations to complement the story, and this chapter was no exception. It is a brutally honest depiction of war, and it reminds me a lot of "Love and Bullets" - but where "Love" was more the death of hope, this image is akin to the birth of despair and anger - a fitting counterpart. This isn't a pleasant image, but there is something incredibly powerful about it. The emotions of the soliders, the starkness of the image - it draws one in to the image, to examine every horrible detail. I tried to keep all the details of the original image, minus some reconstruction in the center where the spine obscured the image. I also kept it truely black and white. Usually I make my noir images near-black and near-white, in order to impart a bit of tone to it, but this image cannot be diluted by color. It must be seen as it is.
What motivates a person to select an image to wall? For me, often times it has to have meaning. An impact. Walling is an expression of art, even if it's a re-expression of somebody else's art, and it's got to have passion in it. Forget long-haired girls in skimpy bikini's surrounded by clouds, planets, wings, feathers, magical lights, trees, grass and butterflies. This is an image that won't leave you easily.
You might argue I walled it because of recent events - certainly the papers have plenty to tell; the continuing conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, the rise of Hamas to political power, the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran, to name a few... the sad thing is, war is always topical, always current. This wallpaper would have been fitting 10 years ago, 50 years ago. Will it be fitting 50 years from now?
...I'd like to hope it won't be.
Additional resolutions (not for the faint of heart) at DA! Desktop Anime