Alice in Wonderland!

I recently had the great honor of illustrating the cover for a re-issue of Alice in Wonderland for Scholastic Book Clubs. This really was a dream job for me, since it combined both illustration and hand lettering, plus it was such an awesome subject. Not only am I a big Alice fan, this year marks the 150th anniversary of its first publication, making it all the more special to have the opportunity to work on.

I don't normally show my process but I thought I'd show my initial thumbnails I submitted. The parameters were pretty open other than that the book would come packaged with a mini pocket watch, so that needed to be featured alongside the white rabbit and Alice, of course. 

The bottom left option was the one that was selected, which was a favorite of mine along with the top left. I was pretty surprised that it was chosen, mainly since I had taken the typographic liberty of line breaking up "wonderland." The revisions were only to flop Alice and make her look older and more tween/teen looking. Basically, I just lengthened her torso, cinched in her waist and slimmed down her face and there you go! 

Because these titles for the book clubs are reproduced at a tiny thumbnail size, it need to be readable at a reduced size, so I went with a dark background to make the title pop. It worked pretty well, since Alice's descent is kind of mysterious anyway. The best part was adding some angry flowers!

Lilla Rogers MATS bootcamp June assignment

The June assignment for Lilla's bootcamp was to produce a nautically themed wall art piece. Now wall art is not an area I have typically ever felt my stuff was appropriate for. I well remember when I took MATS part A last spring, the wall art week was the week that really freaked me out, mainly because it was supposed to be an abstract collage piece, preferably done non-digitally. We were given two colors based on our horoscope and went from there. I had pink and yellow and ended up submitting this below, which while not abstract, it was at least, a "collage." Frankly, I was just happy to have gotten through the week with something to submit!

This time, the parameters were a bit looser in terms of media, but the mini assignment was to draw ships in bottles and other nautically themed icons. So, I did a bunch of crappy sketches and ultimately ended up using one anyway… the first one I did of the ship. As per usual, I did everything in illustrator, messing around with transparency, brushes and generally grunging it up at the end. I knew I wanted to incorporate some lettering and in trying to come up with a nautical phrase, "sea the world'" popped into my head. I'm sure the phrase itself has probably been used before, but I thought it would lend itself to a kids piece…the direction I knew I would go in. I thought it would be cool to show the curvature of the earth, given the title. The dolphin idea was kinda like having a reindeer pull the sleigh, ha. I almost (really wanted to) add a mermaid sitting on the back of the boat, but thought it would be a bit too much. If it had been a longer poster format, I definitely would have added one waving to him in the ocean, haha. I added the houses on a curve at the bottom to counter the curve at the top and this is where I ended up. In the beginning, I was hoping to give this a vintage travel poster feel, but ultimately, particularly given the square format direction, per the brief, it looks more like a kid's book cover. I'm ok with that, even though it is probably not considered your typical "wall art" piece.

Check out the rest of the boot camp gallery here. This month featured a lot of really strong pieces, enjoy!

jack & jill

Every month, the girls at happy happy art collective have a different group project. It's always fun to see how each artist has a different take and and how the final pieces turn out. You can see Emily's and Lauren's takes here, and check back there later in the month for Tammie, Denise and Muffin's versions. 

March's assignment was to illustrate a book cover for the nursery rhyme, Jack and Jill. Being a namesake from the title, I've had those verses drummed into my head since childhood, not to mention, always being asked, "where's Jack?" Everyone thinks they are being soooo original ;). Like all nursery rhymes, this one has kind of a dark, odd, pointless underlying message. Why did he fall? Why didn't Jill try to help him? Why didn't she learn from his mistakes but instead, fell right back down, too? And I'm not even going to mention the first aid technique of vinegar and plaster... Anyway, having pondered this little ditty for many years, I decided to turn it into a toddler "self help" book, kind of like Dr. Phil meets Dr. Spock. Hmmmm, maybe I'm the one who needs to be in analysis, ha.

As always, I knew that I wanted to play up the title, because, well that's what I'm comfortable doing. So, I started by filling the space with the hill itself, and filling the hill with the title. I noticed how the hook of the "J" stuck out a bit, so this seemed like a natural thing for clumsy Jack to trip on. As far as color, I started out wanting to make it a limited palette, but I'm not usually very good at sticking to that. My inspiration for color came from this vintage piece by dutch artist Willy Schermele. I love her work! So sweet and she does so much with just a few colors...something I long to improve on, but I have little self control when it comes to my swatch panel in illustrator. If you are interested in any WIP screen shots, I included them in my post over at happy happy. 

Have a great day and be careful fetching those pails of water!!

40 days of lettering... day 10

I may have gotten a little carried away today. I found this quote from "Alice in Wonderland" that I really liked and I instantly knew that I wanted to incorporate the cheshire cat and his wide grin in a tree alongside the type treatment. For some reason, this kind of graphic look just seemed to lend itself to a book cover, so I decided to turn it into a possible sequel to Alice's original adventure. Who wouldn't want to go back to wonderland, anyway? I then took the opportunity to add the white rabbit, since, well, I really like bunnies in general, so throwing him in the mix was a no brainer. I wasn't going to include the cat's eyes, or at least both of them...at one point, I had a cat eye in the hole of the "A" in "mad" but there really isn't a cyclops kitty in the story, so I moved some things around and fit in the requisite two eyeballs. Besides, I really liked how the green eyes looked and popped against all the purple. 

Well, I'm officially one quarter finished with this little project! I think I may need to simplify my efforts here, but this was a fun one :D

MATS week 3... children's books!!

Ok, honestly, this was the week I was most looking forward to in Lilla's course and the dream area I would most love to eventually become part of and one of the main reasons why I signed up for the course. At the beginning of the week, we were asked to draw snails, snails and more snails. It was an interesting subject and I could see why she chose it in that you don't have to deal with hands or arms or legs... a real bonus. This made it easier in a short time frame, to concentrate on developing a character. We were then asked to develop some hand lettering with the title, "The Snail and the Rose Tree." Turns out, this is actually a lesser known Hans Christian Andersen tale and like many fairy tales, is actually quite dark. Naturally, I had been working on cheery little snails that somehow now seemed kinda inappropriate.

meet Leroy!! I still would like to do a story about him someday ;)

Sooo, I had to switch streams and make him grumpy looking. It is not my natural tendency to do anything other than "cute," so this presented a real challenge for me. After may hours of redrawing, I came up with the best grumpy I could do. My daughter Katie took one look at him and said, "CUTE!" Oh well, I am who I am! She did suggest I add the mustache which I thought was a nice touch and it was super fun to finally work on some hand lettering.

I must say, the work coming out of this class is absolutely amazing and humbling. If you have a moment check out the flickr group and be prepared to be wowed by the submissions! Take a look at my flickr favorites... it's worth a peek to see the incredible variety of wonderful work! http://www.flickr.com/photos/71597294@N00/favorites/