Description: An award-winning collection of porch stories and letters that will have you pondering, laughing out loud, and cheering in agreement. Although set in the modern world, the masterful storytelling provides an "old school" escape to a time when the world was simpler, and when family, faith, and wisdom played a more prominent role in daily lives.
Brief description: Anthony Arvin began his life as an illustrator in the years before technology took over. Today, if somebody wants to use a 100-year-old photo in a book or publication, they can use photo editing software to fix contrasts, sharpen focus and get rid of scratches, torn paper or cluttered backgrounds. But in the days before this technology existed, printers and publishers would seek out illustrators who could recreate the desired images, in a format that the offset printing presses could easily replicate. Illustrators like Anthony were trained, using only ink, to recreate photographs so that they were suitable for print. The cross-hatching techniques that dominated the print during the 1800s and early 1900s were difficult to execute but often provided the perfect solution to making an image look great in black and white. Anthony was just beginning to master his craft when the computer age began to change the printing and photography industries. His skills became obsolete. With the renewed interest in nostalgia, Anthony Arvin is bringing back the old-style black and white illustration in a new hybrid cross-hatching and mixed media approach that has the look and feel of really old art, but with the control brought by mixing media (charcoal and ink)