January Comes

Before I move on to the new year I want to wrap up the old.

December left in a rush and huff, class exams, papers, reviews, all came thundering through in one accord. My december IP review was amongst them. Going into the review I felt really good moderately good about where I was. I had polished up my project into a tidy presentation entitled A Year of Insignificant Happenings, and made sure all of my seams were not showing. I liken the actual review to setting a broken bone: painful but necessary, and hopefully corrective in the end. My reviewers, Seth Ellis and Hannah Smotritch, easily saw my project's flaws and shared some ways that I can address them. It was painful to have them poke at all its weak spots, because I was painfully aware of them going into the review. While it hurt to have to realize that I was lacking a few important things in my project (such as a plot, a character, interesting illustrations that went beyond a Currier & Ives), it helped me see that if I wanted a worth-while project I would have to address my issues instead of covering them up.  Overall, I came out of the review realizing that I needed to be excited and engaged in my work.

...

So I took some time to think about what I was doing and where I was taking my project. I realized that either I scrap the illustration/story and doing something more design related, or I commit entirely to a full children's story. At this point I can't hover in the spheres of indecision. At the end of the break I hit upon a story line that helped me commit to doing a full children's story. This is a brief sinopsis of the story I wrote for my thesis:

"The narrative of the story is about a seaside sparrow that is reluctant to migrate south with his fellow birds in early autumn. Mack is a stodgy homebody-sparrow who finds rambles in the nearby shoreline enough of an adventure for his taste. The peculiar sparrow is too occupied with baking snail soufflés, exploring the hollows of the salt marsh, and watching the colors change in the approaching fall, to desire the annual migration to The Island. Yet, while Mack enjoys new sites and adventures, he is unprepared for the harshness of the approaching winter, and begins to grow weary of the incessant rain, the dull conversation of the silverside, and the hostility of the marsh wrens. While the narrative deals with the changing landscape, more importantly it shows the changing heart of Mack, as he grows lonely for his fellow sparrows, and begins to wonder about the distant island. The arch of the narrative is one that follows the internal transformation of a late bloomer."

So now I have Mack (or so he's been currently christened). Some things I'm keeping in mind from my review are:

1. To begin with the illustrations, rather than dense prose pieces.
2. To retain the qualities that the "Cold Toast and Jam at Eight" illustration had, such as a sense of mystery, discovery, and movement that the other illustrations were lacking.  
3. To write prose in a way that aids the visuals. Currently my style is not compatible with illustrations, I tend to describe, rather than let the paintings do so. So I'm writing in one sentences per image (for now at least!). 
4. To storyboard: I need a clear plot (I can't pull off a broken narrative at this point). 
5. To develop a character. 
6. Not mentioned in the review, but present in my mind, is to not fear writing a children's story. One reason I was struggling to create something that wasn't strictly a child's book was because I feared the cliche books out there. Just because I'm creating something more conventional doesn't mean it has to be cliche, and just because it's a children's book doesn't mean adults can't enjoy it too. 

Preliminary sketches and script 

The last few weeks have been full of storyboarding, sketching, and writing scraps of sentences. I'm creating a more permanent storyboard on my studio wall, but also making a folded one that looks more like spreads and is transportable. This has been so helpful in creating sequences, scenes, and pacing. There is more freedom to experiment here, rather than doing the full-fledged paintings I was working on earlier. Also I've been doing a lot of research about the seaside sparrows, their environment and habits, because while this is not a naturalist sketch of the bird, it would be terribly embarrassing to have wrong information about key elements of the story. 

Learning to draw the Seaside Sparrow

Experimenting with how to illustrate Mack

Transportable storyboard/spreads

As for next week, I'm planning on finishing the storyboard/initial spreads for the whole plot, ironing out the written narrative. I would also like to have the beginnings for a complete illustration, perhaps something I can use for my show postcard. 

...

Why the seaside sparrow of all things? I bought my dad a book on birding for Christmas. I have an amiable interest in small creatures, like most, and since childhood have been creating my own little histories for the ones that live in a tree outside my window. After giving him the book I was doing some perusing and came across this little bird. Why him? Well, he was blue for one (but strangely isn't blue usually... I found this out after), and he lived in the brackish salt marshes-- how could I resist a bird associated with such a fantastic word as "brackish?" 

Perhaps more on his reluctance in a later post.