Posts filed under ‘Short Reports’
Short Reports Round-up
Note: these are the last contributions to Picture Book Report’s Short Reports series. Hopefully I didn’t omit any in searching through my emails! While I’m condensing them into one post, they’re all great work and you ought to take a peek at the talented illustrators’ websites for more. Thank you again contributors!
Hansel and Gretel
Illustration by Erin Tripp
The Road
Illustration by Kai Schuettler
Candide
Illustration by Colleen Frakes
Many Moons
Illustration by Wilson Swain
Dr. Bloodmoney
Illustration by Ellen van Engelen
1984
Illustrations by Frank M Hansen
Short Reports: Anthony Cudahy vs. The Phantom Tollbooth.
Who are you and what do you do?
Howdy, my name is Anthony Cudahy and I’m an illustration student in Brooklyn currently. I just returned North after a cross-country roadtrip that included lots of cave-wandering, UFO hotspot tourist-ing, and Mexican food eating. Other than making drawings, things I enjoy are running and listening to Bob Dylan.
Why did you pick the book you chose?
When I was a little kid, I struggled a lot with reading. I took to learning it at a much slower rate than all of my classmates. This turned around when I found The Phantom Tollbooth. I started reading it and didn’t stop to until I finished the book, whether it was on the bus or staying up late secretly. After that, I did the same with any book I could get my hands on. The Phantom Tollbooth made me an avid and sort of obsessive reader.
The book follows a bored boy named Milo on a journey to a world that is in disorder as the two opposing kingdoms, Dictionopolis and Digitopolis, have imprisoned the twins, Rhyme and Reason. Milo seeks to restore order by freeing them and encounters countless strange sights and characters along the way, becoming a very interested boy.
One of those characters is Alec Bings, who floats in the air as the members of his family grow downwards, starting at their fully grown height. He tells Milo that he too can float if he thinks of things as adults do, but as Milo begins to rise he decides that thinking like a kid isn’t so bad as it’s “not so far to fall.”
Also in the drawing are Milo’s two traveling companions. Tock is a watchdog who is constantly hounding others to stay on time and Humbug is a bee obsessed with spelling correctly.
Short Reports: Owen Freeman vs. Mary Poppins
Meg here! We’ll be starting up next month’s round of posts October 11th, but in the meantime I’ll be trying to post throughout the next couple of weeks with some Short Reports. Please enjoy!
Short Reports: Lesley Barnes vs. The Firebird
Hi everyone, just Meg here– I’m currently out of town at a wedding, so I unfortunately ran low on time to share the next scene in Alice with you. Expect a double dose of Alice October 11, but in the meantime please enjoy a lovely pair of scenes from Lesley Barnes! (More scenes from the Firebird are on her portfolio, so please check them out!)
Ivan was left holding a shimmering feather, but the Firebird had escaped and was winging away into the distance. Dropping the feather from one hand to another like a hot potato, Ivan went to fetch his horse, for he meant to go on with the hunt. Though he had caught only a painful blister instead of the Firebird, the feather lit a path through the darkness, making a splendid torch.
Short Reports: Rich Tu vs. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats
“This is a revisionist portrait of the character Old Deuteronomy from T.S. Eliot’s book Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (popularized by the Broadway play Cats). I always wanted to rethink the imagery of this book (well, really the play) because when I was a kid I used to see the commercials for Broadway’s Cats on New York television and see the actor all dolled up as O.D., being presented as this triumphant Messianic figure akin to Moses and quite honestly, I hated it. When reading the text you understand that O.D. is very very old, almost ancient. He’s seen a lot of war and grief seen and outlived a lot of other cats including his loves. Now if I were an ancient cat I don’t think I would be standing around looking like Moses all the time. I would probably be beat up and sick, have liver spots (I anthropomorphousized him somewhat), weird hairs, and sad at having to carry the weight of seeing everyone around me die and outliving them. It would be a curse. Why couldn’t I have died with my friends in war or something? If O.D.’s a Messianic figure, I view him as a tortured Christ having to make difficult decisions and feeling that painful weight, literally on his head. Also, technically he’s a Pekinese, but hairless cats are much more human to me. Often times I look at a cat and can’t get an emotional hold on it, but not so with a hairless.
Rich Tu is an illustrator and designer based in NYC. He received a Masters Degree in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts in 2009. His clients and collaborators include The New Yorker, The New York Times, BusinessWeek, The Institutional Investor, Tokion Magazine, Slam Magazine, Death + Taxes, SWINDLE Quarterly, The Believer, National Public Radio, Alfa Romeo, and Bombay Sapphire Gin.
He was nominated for the Swatch Young Illustrators Award in 2009 and has been included in the Society of Illustrators and American Illustration annuals. View more of his work at http://richtu.com and his blog http://richtu.blogspot.com.
Short Reports: Sashiko Yuen vs. The Story Sisters
Meg and Claire looked at each other. They could hear the clock over the stove, ticking. They could hear doves in the courtyard. They wanted this moment to last forever. The sunlight was orange. They had to remember that. Meg would make certain they did. She fetched a piece of paper and wrote down the word orange, then folded the paper in half. They could cut up pears and and write down all the colors of the light and listen to people laugh and smell the blooms on the chestnut tree and forget about the rest of the world. They wanted to stay in their grandmother’s apartment always, but instead they would have this memory of sitting in the kitchen, being happy.”
I chose to illustrate The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman. I love Alice Hoffman’s stories. They’re based in real life but the worlds she weaves are magical. She combines a lot of fantasy and drama elements. The imagery is so rich, dark, romantic, and poetic. While I’m reading her novels a lot of images take over my mind. It’s actually hard to read her books without constantly putting them down to sketch.
The scene I chose to illustrate is of the one of the Story sisters. There are three sisters: Elv is a rebel and the oldest, Meg is the middle child, and Claire is the most optimistic (and the youngest). I wanted to depict Meg in the scene where the sisters are in Paris. There’s a lot of tragedy in this book, but this moment was memorable. The one moment Meg was happy and hopeful. I took a bit of liberty in symbolizing this moment as a locket. A deep and personal treasure to remember and reflect upon this memory.
Sashiko Yuen just graduated with a BFA in Art + Design. In university she studied painting, illustration, bookmaking, and couldn’t stop reading graphic novels. She currently spends her days writing short stories and painting strange pictures. And you won’t stop her till she’s dead. She drinks lots of tea and smells old books while nobody is looking. You can find her work at http://wishcandy.net but she honestly updates her flickr more often: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wishcandy/. And her shop is here: http://wishcandy.etsy.com (which she is always working to improve).
Short Reports: Michelle Kondrich vs. A Confederacy of Dunces
“When he had finished the first hot dog, Ignatius prepared and consumed another, contemplating other kindnesses that might postpone his having to go to work again. Fifteen minutes later, noticing that the supply of hot dogs in the little well was visibly diminishing, he decided in favor of abstinence for the moment. He began to push slowly down the street, calling again, “Hot dogs!” (more…)
Short Reports: Kris Mukai vs. The Letters.
“I often crouched down and watched with bated breath as a scrap of paper or a leaf writhed and changed its shape within the flames. The bonfire reminded me of when I had seen my father’s bones at the crematorium, and as the sight had not alarmed me, I began to think about his bones every time we burned the leaves, rerunning the memory over and over again in my mine until my father’s bones gradually became divorced from other memories and simply remained a close and familiar thought.”
My name is Kris Mukai and I’m an illustrator and comic artist living in Brooklyn, NY. You can view more of my work on my blog (http://hellokbear.blogspot.com) or my flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/krismukai/)
Short Reports: Vicki Nerino vs. The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs
New week, which means we’ll try and share some Short Reports with you. This one comes from the inimitable Vicki Nerino, and it’s an excellent way to start this week off don’t you think?
(click to enlarge!)
…So I went to the next neighbor’s house.
This neighbor was the First Little Pig’s brother.
He was a little smarter, but not much.
He had built his house of sticks.
I rang the bell on the stick house.
Nobody answered.
I called “Mr. Pig, Mr. Pig, are you in?”
He yelled back, “Go away wolf. You can’t come in. I’m shaving the hairs on my chinny chin chin.”
I had just grabbed the doorknob when I felt abother sneeze coming on.
I huffed. And I snuffed. And I tried to cover my mouth, but I sneezed a great sneeze…
I chose this scene because, well, who doesn’t want to draw a pig skin getting blown clean off its body? But really.. I have a bad habit of drawings things just sort of standing there, characters and objects and whatnot. I wanted to challenge myself by catching a dramatic scene in the middle of it’s climax, and I did just that, and boy oh boy, I’m pretty happy about it.
I was sort of dumb and didn’t take web format into consideration with this one and made it an extremely long landscape, but I feel like it really needed to be in order to capture the strong movement of the scene. With that, please feel free to click and enlarge, there’s a lot of fur and bone and pig bits to see!
This was my absolute favourite book as a kid. It was just the right amount of classic, a little bit of twisted, and super packed with sarcasm, so as anyone who knows me or my work just a little bit, you could imagine that I would have latched onto this book immediately. Actually, I had forgotten all about this book for years until I was moseying around at a book store and I saw it sitting on one of the display tables. I nearly pooped myself when I saw it again.
It was sort of tough choosing a book, because all of the ones I loved as a kid are all beautifully illustrated, and I sort of wanted to choose something that had a clean slate, something with next to nothing to pull from but the dialogue. Finally, after much consideration, I just said “EFF IT” and went with my absolute favourite book ever, which was illustrated by the stupendous Lane Smith. I think i did an okay job taking Lane’s influence, putting my own spin on it, and making it my own.
And I just like drawing pigs.
So there.
I grew up in Thunder Bay where I spent the first half of my life amongst trees and moose and bears and things, so I’ve seen my fair share of wildlife and poop. My dad used to wrestle me to the ground and fart on me and I would giggle. My uncle used to record Ren and Stimpy episodes onto a VHS tape, and whenever I would visit, he would sit me down in front of the TV and play that tape for hours on end. I didn’t understand a lot of it, but I loved it.
All of these things might give you an idea as to why I am the way I am, and why I love drawing terrible, stinky, inappropriate, ugly, wrinkled things so much.
Short Reports: Sam Bradley vs. The Graveyard Book.
Unfortunately today Kali is unable to post her monthly piece, apologies! Still, there’s plenty of art to be had so let’s do another Short Report. This one comes from Sam Bradley, visiting a scene from Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book.
(click to enlarge)
My illustration depicts a scene from Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. I chose a scene from the second chapter, entitled “The New Friend”. Here we see Nobody Owens, our young protagonist, leading his new friend Scarlett Amber Perkins through the old graveyard he calls home, and into a mausoleum. The illustration itself is 8×11″, painted with watercolor on 140lb cold press paper, with photoshop touch-ups.
