I chose YCN's Pan MacMillan's 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' brief as one of my individual projects. The brief was to create a new cover and up to two interior page illustrations. The aim was to enchant a whole new readership by creating new interpretations of scenes that have been drawn before or entirely new ones.
I started off with the idea to draw the missing scene 'The Wasp in a Wig', a scene which Lewis Carroll decided to suppress. It involved what was described as 'a wasp in a wig' (possibly a play on the commonplace expression 'bee in the bonnet'). It has been suggested by Carroll's nephew, Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, that one of the reasons for this suppression was due to the suggestion of his illustrator, John Tenniel. In a letter to Carroll, dated 1 June 1870, Tenniel wrote:
I started off with the idea to draw the missing scene 'The Wasp in a Wig', a scene which Lewis Carroll decided to suppress. It involved what was described as 'a wasp in a wig' (possibly a play on the commonplace expression 'bee in the bonnet'). It has been suggested by Carroll's nephew, Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, that one of the reasons for this suppression was due to the suggestion of his illustrator, John Tenniel. In a letter to Carroll, dated 1 June 1870, Tenniel wrote:
'…I am bound to say that the 'wasp' chapter doesn't interest me in the least, and I can't see my way to a picture. If you want to shorten the book, I can't help thinking - with all submission- that there is your opportunity.'
John Fleming, a Manhattan book dealer won a bid on the missing chapter, for £1,700. The contents were subsequently published in Martin Gardener's The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition, and also as a hardback book The Wasp in a Wig: A Suppressed Episode. The rediscovered section describes Alice's encounter with a wasp wearing a yellow wig, and includes a full previously unpublished poem. It would have been at the end of chapter 8- the encounter with the White Knight.
However unfortunately this is in the second book 'Through the Looking Glass' so I didn't think it would be appropriate for this brief. However I previously named my illustration blog on Tumblr the name 'A Wasp in a Wig' for this reason; to emphasise the power of the illustrator, and also to link to the character Alice in Wonderland which I share the same name… and hair!
For this brief I decided to instead focus on the opening scene for my cover page and a part of Chapter 2 in which Alice is crying so much that she can swim in her tears. I chose these scenes as I thought they would be really fun to draw and the imagery is really effective even just through the words conjuring up a visual in your imagination. I really like the sense of peaceful nature in the first scene particularly as it is such a large juxtaposition between the coming scenes in the book where everything is out of order. I chose to capture this serenity in my illustration with the river and flowers but also hint at where the adventure begins; with Alice peering at the rabbit about to embark down a hole. In the second illustration I really wanted to portray a feeling of claustrophobia as this is when she has just eaten the cake and doubled in size. I did this by giving the illustration edges that she is pushing between, the scene is also filling up with tears enforcing the claustrophobic element.
The process of making the illustration started by reading the specific part of the book, and then I went straight onto drawing the image in pencil in my sketchbook. Once I was happy with the image I used watercolours to paint on initial colours and create a handmade feel with brush strokes etc. I then went over my original pencil lines in a black fine liner once the paint had dried. After this I scanned in my images and then used Photoshop to edit them. I wanted a clear white background which was quite hard as their was quite a lot of paint and pen marks overlapping onto the background. I then adjusted Levels to ensure the pen lines were a powerful black and then I added Layers of colour using the Paint Brush tool. I wanted to keep the handmade painted textures but add a more overall block colour. This took a while to get a look I was happy with but I finally managed it.
I would have created a more sinister or crazy illustration to juxtapose the usual Alice in Wonderland illustrations; but I wanted to stick to a simple but pretty aesthetic in order to appeal to the target audience. Primary audience; parents of girls aged 5-9. Secondary audience; parents of boys aged 5-9 and gift givers.
I also had to create two covers; one with the Macmillan Alice 150 Logo and one without. Luckily I had factored this in when designing the original illustrations by making the top curved like a tree.
Overall I am really happy with the work I managed to produce as I wanted to create a combination between analogue and digital to represent the relationship between the past and present in relation to the book and its continued relevance. I could definitely improve the work perhaps by changing colours to a simpler colour scheme to make it look more professional and maybe adjusting layout to be more symmetrical/straighter lines.
A selection of entries will be displayed at our offices in King's Cross, on Pan MacMillan's website and on the Alice Facebook page.
However unfortunately this is in the second book 'Through the Looking Glass' so I didn't think it would be appropriate for this brief. However I previously named my illustration blog on Tumblr the name 'A Wasp in a Wig' for this reason; to emphasise the power of the illustrator, and also to link to the character Alice in Wonderland which I share the same name… and hair!
For this brief I decided to instead focus on the opening scene for my cover page and a part of Chapter 2 in which Alice is crying so much that she can swim in her tears. I chose these scenes as I thought they would be really fun to draw and the imagery is really effective even just through the words conjuring up a visual in your imagination. I really like the sense of peaceful nature in the first scene particularly as it is such a large juxtaposition between the coming scenes in the book where everything is out of order. I chose to capture this serenity in my illustration with the river and flowers but also hint at where the adventure begins; with Alice peering at the rabbit about to embark down a hole. In the second illustration I really wanted to portray a feeling of claustrophobia as this is when she has just eaten the cake and doubled in size. I did this by giving the illustration edges that she is pushing between, the scene is also filling up with tears enforcing the claustrophobic element.
The process of making the illustration started by reading the specific part of the book, and then I went straight onto drawing the image in pencil in my sketchbook. Once I was happy with the image I used watercolours to paint on initial colours and create a handmade feel with brush strokes etc. I then went over my original pencil lines in a black fine liner once the paint had dried. After this I scanned in my images and then used Photoshop to edit them. I wanted a clear white background which was quite hard as their was quite a lot of paint and pen marks overlapping onto the background. I then adjusted Levels to ensure the pen lines were a powerful black and then I added Layers of colour using the Paint Brush tool. I wanted to keep the handmade painted textures but add a more overall block colour. This took a while to get a look I was happy with but I finally managed it.
I would have created a more sinister or crazy illustration to juxtapose the usual Alice in Wonderland illustrations; but I wanted to stick to a simple but pretty aesthetic in order to appeal to the target audience. Primary audience; parents of girls aged 5-9. Secondary audience; parents of boys aged 5-9 and gift givers.
I also had to create two covers; one with the Macmillan Alice 150 Logo and one without. Luckily I had factored this in when designing the original illustrations by making the top curved like a tree.
Overall I am really happy with the work I managed to produce as I wanted to create a combination between analogue and digital to represent the relationship between the past and present in relation to the book and its continued relevance. I could definitely improve the work perhaps by changing colours to a simpler colour scheme to make it look more professional and maybe adjusting layout to be more symmetrical/straighter lines.
A selection of entries will be displayed at our offices in King's Cross, on Pan MacMillan's website and on the Alice Facebook page.
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