silently have I gone

Really, it seems quite funny to think that most of you haven't met Mac yet, or seen any of the final illustrations going into the book. It has been a busy few weeks. Stephanie said we would find that time in our last month of IP would expand, and truly it has! I've gotten more done in the month of March than any of the months together it seems.

I had every intention of sharing photos of the illustrations I've been doing lately, but I really haven't had time to address this space at all. I've been on a tight schedule to illustrate, and as it is, I'm just now finishing up my last one (three days behind schedule). 

Well, here they are: 

I'm hoping that after April 1st rolls around I'll be able to spend some time posting here again, as I've really enjoyed seeing the progress. April 1st is my due date to send my book into Blurb to be printed, and then I'm going to earnestly pray that they get it printed in time for the show on the 19th and that there are no major flaws with either production or design. What that means is that I have one week to get the book in a printable format, and to finish and incorporate the text. Even typing the word text makes me start to hyperventilate a little. I'm just going to have to go with something not 100% polished I fear, so that I can have a printed book in time for the show. 

Peace At Last

Here's Mac after the Fearsome Fellows have flown. I think I shared this one because it makes me desperate for some peaceful moments of my own. I've been snatching them from early mornings and bus rides to retain my sanity.

"The next day the weather wasn't nice." 

Here's my IP to-do-list/schedule for this week: 

Monday: 

                -Scan all illustrations and edit.

                -Put into InDesign. 

                -Print quick copy and mock up for Tues. 

                -Print form of working text. 

Tuesday: 

               -Crit in class. Share mock-up

               -Work on refining text

               -Make cover and extra pages (what are those called anyways, you know, the ones that go at 

                the beginning of books?). 

  

Wednesday:

                -Put text into book. Design  

Thursday:

               -Refine. 

Friday:

               -Refine. 

Saturday:

              -Easter! No work. 

               -Just kidding.... Refine. 

Sunday:

               -Refine. 

Monday: 

               -Set up to print online. Print. Pray. 

Bother!

Happy last day of February!

So this was going to be the first in two posts about my research I've been doing all week. I was going to say, don't worry! the research I'm talking about is the kind any book and illustrator enthusiast would love. I was going to show you the hordes of treasure I found on the eighth floor of the grad library. I was going to describe the trek I made up eight floors in the grad library to check out the Special Collection's children's Lit. How I once again did not adhere to the U's library strict code of conduct in looking at books. And how I stubbled wonderfully into several old and delicious copies of work by Arthur Rackham and E. H. Shepard. 

Looking at the Arthur Rackham Fairy Book

And then my joy overshadowed by that cloud of confusion they call "Copyright Law!" 

So I did some research to see if I could even show you some of the examples of their work that I found, but after an hour (oh what a wasted hour indeed!) I settled on not sharing them, even though they are pertinent to my discussion here on the blog, because I just couldn't figure it out. For one thing, this particular book by Rackham was published in 1933, if it had been published in 1921 I could have shared apparently... I think. As for the work by E. H. Shepard, fruitless + futile attempts to discover if they are or are not under copyright prevents me from showing you the wonderful work by E. H. Shepard, especially as regards his work for A. A. Milne. 

>_<         however, upon reflection I think I'll show details from a few just to illustrate my points. 

So with that introduction, settle in with a cup of tea to read my tale of discovery and admiration (with out the 20 or so great illustrations that were going to make it interesting) and try to imagine the rest instead. 

To start with, the books are so old and fragile you have to lay them in these spongy platforms to look at them, but it made me glad to handle them. Old books are better than new because they retain the memories of many hands; they are the point upon which time and kindred spirits converge. I was able in the time I had to look at three books: Arthur Rackham's Fairy Book, and E. H. Shepard's illustrations for At The Back Of The North Wind, by George MacDonald, and The House At Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne. So here's a few notes I made on both Arthur Rackham and E. H. Shepard, two illustrator's of note. 

Arthur Rackham

One thing found interesting was that Rackham's book of fairytales contained three distinct styles of illustration that all worked together. He had full color illustrations with pen and ink, and watercolor washes. He also interspersed pen illustrations throughout the book, some more detailed and complete and other's just sketches. And finally, he also had a silhouette style that appeared several times throughout the book. I learned later that he developed the silhouette style post WW1. The reason this practice interested me is because I am not sure if all my illustrations in The Reluctant Sparrow will be full color illustrations. Because of time constraints, some might end up being ink sketches and not watercolor. The way that Rackham is able to successfully integrate pen sketches with complete watercolors showed me the possibility of doing this well. 

Detail from Arthur Rackham's Fairy Book.
This is okay, right?

Detail from Arthur Rackham's Fairy Book

Detail from Arthur Rackham's Fairy Book

Detail from Arthur Rackham's Fairy Book

I was also interested to see how Rackham used the frames of his illustrations on the page. The above detail from Rackham's illustration incorporates the page as part of the image and thus seems to exist without a frame. Below is an example of how he creates a set frame for his image, but still retains a hand-sketched and organic quality.

Detail from Arthur Rackham's Fairy Book

Detail from Arthur Rackham's Fairy Book

And again, another detail from one of Rackham's illustrations, this time showing how he breaks his frame with his illustration. In this detail it's hard to see, but the foot of the elephant extends beyond the bounds of the rectangle border he has set up.



E. H. Shepard

I believe my love for Shepard's work has already been evident on this blog. There is an expressiveness to his simple but expressive line quality that I admire and should like to imitate a little in my own work. But because gushing is not really an appropriate approach to discussing an artist's work, I'll try to refrain a bit. For discussing Shepard, I want to talk about two things; the first is the way in which his illustrations interact with the text on the page, and the second is his trees.

1. Text + image relationship.

E. H. Shepard's illustration from The House at Pooh Corner

Here, the text is moving around Piglet, so that he and the text almost appear in the same field. This happens again in this image below. Notice how the this style also emphasizes the lines that are broken out of the paragraph.

2. Trees. 

Shepard's trees are at the same time both heavy and light. They are homes and architecture for the character's to interact with, and simultaneously they are the light filigree that fluffs up the landscape. 

Illustration Detail from At The Back of the North Wind, by George MacDonald.

Illustration Detail from A. A. Milne's House at Pooh Corner

I think he achieves this by having extremely thick bases and trunks, and contrasting that with extremely tapered and delicate branches. He also gives great depth and shape to the trees by the way in which his lines follow the contours of the tree. 

Illustration Detail from A. A. Milne's House at Pooh Corner

Can't you feel the rough wind tearing through the treetop branches? 

Illustration Detail from A. A. Milne's House at Pooh Corner

And a small Pooh + Piglet down below. 

Illustration Detail from A. A. Milne's House at Pooh Corner

Illustration Detail from A. A. Milne's House at Pooh Corner

And a bit of light reading for over break :) Checked out from the Children's Literature room at the UGLY. I think I'll be visiting there again before I graduate. 

So there you have it. A recounting of my time spent with some of the children's lit at the U. I also went to the natural history museum this afternoon and talked with a lady about Seaside Sparrows and drew from some specimens she had. I shall perhaps do a post about it later, but for now, I'll leave you with a quote from A. A. Milne: 

“You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.”

Paginations + A Plan

Last week I took a blog detour and made a long post about my postcard making process. Today I want to get back to my development of The Reluctant Sparrow.

Over the past two weeks I have been meeting with Hannah Smotritch every monday afternoon to talk about The Reluctant Sparrow. She has been immensely helpful with figuring out how to move my book along from idea and concept into a more complete and finished iteration.

The first week we met I showed her the synopsis, my idea sketches, and the narrative writing. I also showed her a partial pagination I had made up of some illustrational ideas.

She immediately helped me by doing written spreads of the whole book. I had done this partially before but I had never really committed to them fully.

The blue inked spreads are the ones Hannah did based on her understanding of the plot. I went back and drew out my spreads as they existed then. There was a bit of a difference between the two. Something that Hannah pointed out was that I hadn't addressed what the climax was and ultimately why Mac decides to leave. She had assumed that it was because he realized that his love of home was in some part attributed to his friends, and ultimately his desire to go south is because he realizes that he misses them. 

I started re evaluating my plot arch. Why did he eventually decide to go? Perhaps it was because he missed his friends after all. So I wrote out a slightly different plot direction, one that focused more on Mac's relationship with his friends. I also wrote out under each spread, ideas for the illustrations and what I wanted to convey through them. 

After creating half-size paginations with the illustration sketches, I met with Hannah again. Once more we talked about the structure of the story, and looked at the illustrations as devices for the plot development. So I spiffed them up for the critique for Tuesday, made sure they were all nice and neat, and that the plot didn't have any blatant holes or problems. 

I got a pretty mediocre response in the critique. People were nice about it, and I was given a few ideas for some different places to do research for my illustrations, such as the natural history museum and the children's book collection at the University. I too was a little disinterested with my story; somewhere along the line I had dropped the subtle beauty it had and picked up a bunch of cliche. 

After the crit Camilla shared with me her thoughts about my story, voicing similar concerns I had, and encouraging me to go back and rework my story how I wanted it to develop. 

So I did. Below are the new spreads put up on my studio wall. 

Instead of focusing on the friends, I returned to focusing on Mac's reluctance. He stays because he isn't ready to go, because he loves his home and wants to spend more time there. He leaves because he does miss his friends, but also because he found that his home changed, and that he changed inside. He starts to wonder what migrating is like and starts to yearn for the south and the unknown, he isn't forced to go because of his loneliness. 

Yesterday I met with Camilla again and with both old and new storyboards in hand, created a final storyboard of the plot. I'm so happy with where I've ended up in the story. It feels like a coming home to the place my story grew from. 

I'm glad I met with Hannah because she helped me get into a good work flow and progress from where I was, and perhaps too she helped me realize the story I wanted to tell by showing me one I didn't. 

"The Fearsome Fellows" 

"Staying"

Detail from "A Snail Hunt"

"Untitled"

My goal for next week is to make sure I have all my research done. I want to visit the U's museum of natural history and see what I can find about the Seaside Sparrow. I also want to check out the special collection of illustrated children's books here and study how the masters do it. This coming week will be a prepping week so that when my March break comes the week after, I'll have all the tools and direction I need to jump into a wild frenzy of illustration.