Book Project Part VII: Title page...?

Book Project Part VII:

Title page...?

The past few days have been rather busy. I spent them scanning and printing my spreads and pasting them into a working full-color dummy in order to get a better look at the book in its entirety. I also wanted to see how the pages flip, whether the book flows, and figure out what the book is missing. In the "still missing" category are a couple of interior spreads (I have the sketches but haven't yet painted them), but more importantly, I'm still missing much of the overall design of the book - the cover, the title page, text treatments, etc.

So I went back to the drawing board and spent a whole bunch of time alternately scribbling on bits of paper, crumpling them up and tossing them into the trash, starting new bits of sketches, retrieving the old ones from the trash in a semi-endless cycle.

Finally, I came up with something I thought might vaguely work for the interior title page...

Perhaps page 1...

Book Project Part VI: And There's More!

Book Project Part VI:

And There's More!

As I mentioned in my last post, there's more artwork to be seen! Woah! Much to the chagrin of the second year students, I took some time scanning a couple of new pieces for your enjoyment. I also wanted to see how the color would print before I did any tweaking or goofing with the saturation/color balance settings, so I actually printed out almost the entire book. I must say, there's nothing like holding "finished" (relatively speaking, of course) work in your hands. It felt really nice to actually flip the pages, and seeing the flow of images at 100% in color was an entirely different experience than looking at my little sketch dummy.

So all of that is to say that the book project is wrapping up well. Scanning and printing ate up the morning and much of the afternoon, and I spent the remainder of the day sketching the two spreads missing from the dummy and starting thumbnails for the title page, cover, and endpapers. Quite exciting!

But I shall prattle on no longer. Without further ado...

These spreads are nearly sequential. The first two images follow one another, but there's a missing spread between them and the third and fourth paintings.

That's all for now. I'm in the process of working on title page and cover designs. Process work, more sketches, and perhaps a few new paintings to come. Until then, have a lovely week!

Book Project Part V: Long Awaited Art

Book Project Part V:

Long Awaited Art

Halloo everyone. The semester is winding down, and I had a moment this week to set up shop at one of the scanners at the studio. It's amazing how much time scanning takes. As I mentioned, my images are all too big for our scanners - they're 30" across - so require at least two scans per image. Oy. Amazing how much time it takes. Likewise, amazing how it's possible to do a ton of work only to realize that you're going to have to do it all over again. Yep. The images you have here are fine for the web, but when it comes to the print quality for an actual hard copy... weeeell, leaves a bit to be desired. My fault, really. I didn't think to clean the glass on the scanners. All of the images thus feature delightful smudges, dynamic streaks, and an exciting smattering of dust and hair and dirt. Huzzah!

Doh.

In any case, the images are fine for sharing with all of you lovely people and fine for submitting as a rough draft for the end of the term. Over the summer, I'll rescan, format, print, and finally bind everything. Luckily and quite happily I do have the summer. The book show doesn't go up until September. (I'll post details as we get nearer to the show.)

In any case, I've spent tons and tons of time painting and have a bunch of new spreads to share.

Taking off into the city - towards the beginning of the book

Flying through the city - directly follows previous image

Field of GIANT cabbages - middle-ish spread

Back at home - at this point (I say "this point" because this could easily change in the next week... oy), but as I was saying, at the moment, this is the last image in the book

So there you have not some of my recent work. I have three more spreads that need some tweaking and a fourth that I finished today that I'll share as soon as I can get another long stint at the scanner... and this time, I'll remember to clean the glass.

Book Project Part III: Advice and Paint

Book Project Part III: Advice and Paint

In which I follow some excellent advice, and though the book's story remains unfinished, full color arrives...

Happy gorgeous and marvelous Saturday everyone! If you are not currently outside, I heartily suggest you postpone reading this silly post and get yourself out of doors. The weather is amazing and deserves appropriate celebration and sun-soaked revelry. As soon as I finish this, I intend to spend the rest of my day definitively out. But let's get to it, shall we?

In the week following the disastrous upside-down-world-flipping meeting, I had a critique class with Marshall and Carl. After I'd hung all of my new dummy spreads on the wall, Marshall told the rest of the class about my meeting with our creative writing teacher, and he said (and of course I am paraphrasing...), "This is something that will happen to all of you. Someone will say something about your work that will turn you on your head. It's inevitable; it happens to everyone. What remains to be seen is how long it keeps you turned around. Is it a week? A month? A year? Your entire career...?" It is an excellent point... how long do you let self-doubt and questioning keep you from doing what you love?

And Carl's comment perfectly complemented Marshall's words. He told us not to let being unsure keep us from making art. Even though I may still be a little up in the air about the direction of the story itself, there are certain pages that I'm already sure I want in the book. Carl's advice was to render them... go paint! Do what makes you happy!

And so I did...

And in doing so made two images that I'm pretty excited about.

Thus dear readers, I shall leave you. Go do what makes you happy and squeeze every bit of awesome out of your Saturday.

Book Project Part II: Delays

Book Project Part II: Delays

In which the project is nearly scrapped and an identity crisis ensues...

Again, apologies for the delay with these. This week was technically Spring "break"... I use the term "break" extremely loosely because break for me meant a week of 8 hr (sometimes 8+, except for Tuesday, when I took the afternoon off) workdays in the studio. As such, I finished three (soon to be four) new paintings for this very project, which I'm not going to post tonight because we have a bit of catching up to do first. Soon, dear readers, soon... all in good time.

So let's get to it, shall we? When I last left you, I had just finished the first dummy for the book. It was fairly complete - a full 32 pages - textless, but complete. And then, then there was the meeting - the meeting that turned everything upside down.

Each of us met with our creative writing teacher, who, when it was my turn, suggested that I scrap my entire project. I'm not going to go into the gory details, but it led to a series of successive identity crises that had me questioning everything from the kind of work I do, how I do it, why I want to do kids' books, if that's really what I want to spend my time on... oof... exhausting. Ultimately I did not scrap the story, but I spent the next three weeks doing heaps of sketches, reworking the story itself, changing it from the inside out, and playing with adding text. In my last post, I mentioned that I felt that the story lacked a central conflict, and while the reworking isn't entirely complete, the story arc is much more solid. So the crisis-inducing meeting, despite turning my world upside-down and inside-out for much of February, ultimately strengthened the story, forcing me to push it further. There is a lot I still have to work out about the story line and actual text of the manuscript, but the ideas are there.

And as I mentioned earlier, only one of the sketches you've seen made it into the book. Post crisis, the new dummy had 30 new illustrations (a number of which, I'm still doing revisions on). Here are a handful of the new images:

After spending so many weeks working out the story and sketching, the next step in my process was to start figuring out how I wanted to render the artwork. Watercolor? Ink? Gouache? Acrylic? So many options! I knew that I wanted a really saturated series of images, so I started looking back at the work I had rendered last term and finally came to Carl's final project - a folding screen rendered on black rag board. Perfect! Because the story takes place at night, the dark board would be perfect for rendering night skies and likewise would help the colors pop and shine in vibrant contrast to the black background. And so I gave it a go, rendering a couple of test illustrations in gouache on bits of board leftover from the Four Seasons screen.

Success!

And thus, I'm on my way.

And so I shall leave you until next time (until the first of the colored spreads and spring break paintings) with this marvelous quote by Madeleine L'Engle (who was, it is worth noting, a Smithie).

"You have to write whichever book it is that wants to be written. And then, if it's going to be too difficult for grown-ups, you write it for children."

Book Project Part I: The Saga Begins Anew

Book Project Part I:

The Saga Begins Anew

In which lions become rabbits and things get off the ground... and by things, I mean rabbits...

Long awaited, I know, but here we are... finally, FINALLY a post about the second semester book project. As I've mentioned in earlier posts, Viktor is no longer with us this term. We do, however, have a new book project. This semester, Marshall and Carl have joined forces to create one incredible team... I feel as though they should have superhero names or a daring duo sort of title. (Note, I am taking suggestions, so feel free to write in with your best picks.) ... alas, digressing... Marshall and Carl have teamed up to run our book project workshop.

The project is essentially a mini-thesis. In past years, the dynamic duo (not official title) have given a general theme or over-arching subject for the project. This year, however, the project was left wiiiiiiide open. At the end of first semester, Marshall and Carl left us essentially with: We trust you. Imagine what you will. Now, go forth and make art.

When we arrived back at school in January, we had to have a proposal ready to go... which I did. For this project, I had two ideas, both revolving around New York City. The first was a book of short stories with illustrations in all different styles and mediums and all different characters and styles of narration; the main character in the book, however, would have been the city itself. The second idea, just the kernel of an idea really, was for a wordless picture book about a wild night-time romp around the city but which ultimately lacked a central conflict. Over break, I wrestled with my ideas, wrote A TON, but ultimately decided to do the picture book despite the missing conflict.

And so I drew and I drew and I drew and then guess what? Yes! I drew some more. I spentmuch of the beginning of the project sketching thumbnails and putting together a book dummy (essentially a mock-up of the entire book). A traditional picture book is 32 pages, so I used that as my framework and kept drawing.

This round of sketches went through major revisions... and of the sketches I'm sharing with you today - believe it or not - only one of them made the final cut in its original form.

In the next bunch, you can see the progression of sketches... sometimes I do some very general outlines and flesh it out later.

So there you have it... the first of many posts about the second semester book project... stay tuned for further adventures in which I tell you more about my actual idea and how the story has changed entirely and even - GASP - how I was told to scrap the whole project and start over. Stay tuned dear readers! There are more sketches, black rag board, tons of paint, and color ahead!