Self-Directed Project
Task: Develop a project around a theme or topic of your choice. Write a brief to outline what this project is, any limitations you’re setting yourself and what you expect its outcomes to be. A self-directed project could be based around a research question, focus on authoring content for self-publication or develop an extended reportage or site-specific project. You choose.
Writing a Brief
Develop a series of illustrations based on five of your favorite of Grimm’s fairy tales. Showcase modern technique in combination with nostalgic stylistic choices reflective of the original illustrated edition of Grimm’s fairy tale collection: German Popular Stories. Target audience consists of fairy tale lovers of all ages, however the nostalgia elements would be geared mostly to adults and collectors.
Make the illustrations accessible for both print and digital publishing. Individual illustrations and/or characters should be social-media friendly and shareable as to lead the reader to first enjoy the story online first, later to be enticed to purchase a paperback version of the book.
Selecting Stories and Brainstorming
Project Gutenberg has several editions of Grimm’s fairy tales available. I pulled up the English version adapted by Edgar Taylor and Marian Edwardes, then circled titles from the table of contents. I was thinking back to my childhood and some of the stories that had stuck in my memory. Some of the stories were a bit obscure, so I also selected some more popular ones, in order to have a nice variety to work with. I was also thinking of the types of characters and imagery the stories have, because I would not be creating many illustrations the content needed to be varied and distinct.
Next, I just started putting thoughts to paper. Not all of it is pictured, but below are some doodles and thoughts regarding the keywords, themes, and most important imagery. I was thinking of repeating patterns and repeating central morals for the stories I selected in order to know what part of the story to highlight in each illustration. Since I would only make one illustration per story, I wanted to capture the essence of what the story was about to me specifically, if not necessarily what it is about to others.
First impressions.
Key words.
Main themes.
Research
Grimm’s fairy tales have been interpreted and re-interpreted hundreds of times ever since they were published, and even before they were published by the two brothers as a single volume. There is no “right” or “wrong” way to do it. In a way, a fairytale always belongs to the person who is telling it, as the focus of the story tells more about the storyteller than the tale itself. Approaches tend to vary between the traditional and slightly grotesque to vibrant and innocent. Of course, this is also much determined by the target audience, especially later in the 20th and 21st centuries when it became less and less appropriate for children’s books to have any dark elements at all. The stories became popular almost instantly after they were translated into English and published, and popularity has not since waned. It seems like every illustrator has done their version of these stories. I have attempted to do a little exploration beyond what I am already familiar with in order to see what approach I would like best for my own images.
George Cruikshank
George Cruickshank was the first person to illustrate the fairytales as told by the Grimm’s Brothers, at least in the English translation. The German book was illustrated by the Grimm’s younger brother, Ludwig Emil. Cruickshank is still the one most widely credited with the first illustrations of the book, though. He illustrated the book in 1823. The etchings are representative of the man’s caricaturist and political cartoon style, which would later serve him very well when illustrating Dickens’ stories. The images are very similar in format with what was popular in newspaper illustrations at the time. They are comical and easy to read, and the characters interact with each other wonderfully, like actors on a stage. He leans into the slightly bizarre elements of the stories, which were considered to be a bit dark even contemporaneously.
Arthur Rackham
Rackham’s work is probably the most cited when it comes to fairytales, especially this particular set of fairytales. Even people not aware of illustration work as a rule could probably spot his work or work like his and say that it evokes “traditional fairytale”. His images always tend to lean into the darker side of the spectrum, but his version of the book is especially earthy in color palette and amount of ink. The images are moody, but do not lack innocence and wonder, they are simply atmospheric.
Walter Crane
Walter Crane had illustrated some folktales before taking on the Grimm’s project in color, but his work for the actual book are in simple black and white. They look like woodcuts from the era the stories are set in, though perhaps more detailed. I am especially fond of the decorative elements like doodles on a medieval manuscript. Most artists of the time set the stories in the middle-ages through setting and clothing, but as far as I can tell only he did it stylistically.
Lorenzo Mattotti
Mattotti worked with Neil Gaiman on a version of Hansel and Gretel which is probably the epitome of the “modern” dark take. The stories have always considered somewhat dark, but as one would expect from Neil Gaiman he takes it further. And they also did it in a very literal way. The images themselves are dominated by ink and the characters can be made out only by the small bits of negative space available on the page. They are beautiful in a chilling sort of way, especially since it’s the story of two children who have wandered away from home.
Emma Chichester Clark
On the opposite side of the spectrum are artists like Emma Chichester Clark and Quentin Blake who choose to depict the stories as lighthearted and sweet, appropriate for young children. This approach generally uses more sanitized versions of the stories as well and uses color in abundance. While I do enjoy illustrations that lean into the bizarre, the innocent and soft versions are lovely as well.
Quentin Blake
Disney
It would be impossible not to mention Disney as an influence or inspiration. Their adaptations have reached such heights that in the minds of many people fairytales and Disney are practically synonymous. A shame, in some ways, because fairytales are supposed to be so much more malleable in the imaginations of the teller and listener of the stories. Stylistically, early Disney animators were much inspired by traditional children’s book illustrators much like the ones cited above, though they have since created their own brand and style which has evolved with technology and popular taste. Early films were more or less faithful to the source material, but Disney has since taken much more liberty with the stories and told them in different ways, most evident in films like Tangled inspired by “Rapunzel” and Frozen inspired by “The Snow Queen”.
Sketching
After research, I did a bit of thinking about my own approach, and I decided I wanted a more adult audience because I wanted to be able to use a more traditional inking style. Most artists who illustrate for children use very friendly shapes and colorful textures to create cute characters. This is not representative of the way I work at all, so if I want to create a series which exemplifies my own style, I need to have a more grown-up audience to do it for. I especially liked the Walter Crane approach to the stories and the woodcut-like appearance of the images.
The sketching stage mostly consisted of breaking down every story and seeing what the most important elements were to me, then making thumbnails for them, and then using the thumbnail sketch to make a bigger sketch which would then be used for the drawing and inking of the final drawing. All of my work was done in Photoshop.
Sketches for Briar Rose
For the Briar Rose story, I came to the same conclusion that most others who have had to approach this story came to: Briar Rose herself is not really the main character. Aside from the small fact that she sleeps for most of the story, she does not really make decisions in it beyond accidentally pricking her finger. I see this story as a warning against lethargy, with the prince being the representative of ambition and adventure. I don’t really see Briar Rose as a love story, despite its depictions in most media. I see it as a story about poor choices and outside circumstances leading someone to be “asleep” for a long time, and someone else coming along and waking them up, someone who is adventuring for the sake of adventure, and climbing a mountain “because it’s there” as George Mallory said about Everest. Therefore, I literally chose to represent the prince as someone climbing a mountain. It really is the easiest way to visually depict determination and ambition, even though the story says nothing about mountains along with the briars.
Sketches for The Fisherman and His Wife
The Fisherman and His Wife is a story about greed and passivity. Both characters are right and wrong in their approach of the situation, and it leads to much frustration for them both. The fisherman is content with his lot and does not ask for more when he has the opportunity, despite living in a pigsty. The wife is so greedy that even when she is freely given the greatest riches and the titles in the world, she still asks for more until everything is taken away from her. The fish is not so much a character as he is a device, and seems very willing to give palaces and titles away without asking for anything more. The situation might have been rectified if the fisherman had had the foresight to ask the fish for something more tempered each time his wife asked for something ludicrous and similarly she could have retained all she had asked for if she had practiced restraint. In my own illustration, I exaggerated the despondent look and the passive body language in the fisherman. The story does actually have a throne for the wife to sit in eventually, but I decided to push the idea further by raising it to such heights that it is obvious she will soon fall.
Sketches for Rumplestiltskin
I struggled with this a bit. Most people know this story, but I am not sure what most would say it teaches. Never promise your unborn children to obviously crafty magical imps? The princess literally did not have a choice, even if that were a real scenario. The thing I always liked about it is seeing this character who had everything stacked against her win an impossible bet with whatever she had available at the time. First, she is kidnapped by the king to make straw into gold under duress, despite never having boasted of being able to do such a thing herself. And then she is forced to promise what would be most dear to her in order to survive the experience. Then she is given dubious hope in the form of a ridiculous guessing game she is extremely unlikely to win, even without the ridiculous moniker of “Rumpelstiltskin” being involved. I choose to look at this story as a battle between the virtuous and the cunning, especially because the ultimate downfall of Rumpelstiltskin is not the girl’s cleverness, but his own boasting which led to someone communicating his name to her. I chose to employ some technique from religious imagery evoking the Madonna with her infant, which stands in contrast with Rumpelstiltskin’s sort of demonic-looking appearance. He’s also sunk into the ground because it says so in the story, and because I felt that him looking unbalanced whilst she looks serene and upright is a good contrast.
Sketches for The Elves and the Shoemaker
Stories about kindness are always good stories. There is really nothing else to highlight about this, except maybe industriousness. It’s simply a story about someone who was kind without expectation and then kindness given in return. I wanted the image to be atmospheric because the action happens at night specifically and candlelight makes everything a little more interesting to look at. Others have illustrated similar versions of the scene where the Shoemaker couple spy on their unexpected helpers, even all the way back when Cruickshank depicted it, but I still wanted to do this scene, since it evokes the central idea the best.
Sketches for Snow-White and Rose-Red
Snow-White and Rose-Red is yet another story about kindness, or perhaps even compassion. These characters also take bigger risks in their kindness than the shoemakers, especially when the girls decide to help the actual talking bear that showed up at their front door, or when they kept helping the grumpy dwarf even though he was rude to them every single time they did so. I thought about drawing the final scene when the bear finally frees himself from the dwarf’s curse, but that was hardly the point of the story. The first scene, when they welcome this stranger into their home on a cold night is central. Also, the story gives a lovely, cozy description of the scene and I just could not pass it up.
Second Sketch Layer
The second sketch layer is for figuring out perspective and certain details when it comes to setting and anatomy. The purple color helps me keep things loose, but at this point things become more focused. This stage is less about brainstorming and more about making the image make sense.
Briar Rose
The Fisherman and His Wife
Rumplestiltskin
The Elves and the Shoemaker
Snow-White and Rose-Red
Drawing
Having figured out the big parts of the compositions in the previous stage, the drawing becomes easy. In this stage I basically had fun with some texture and decided where I wanted more shadow.
I used an initial layer of dark ink and then added two more layers of grey in order to add dimension and atmosphere to the pieces without making them overly dark.
Established compositions, with shading
Keeping the strokes a little loose creates a bit of a linocut effect.
Black drawing on white background
White drawing on black background
Finalized work / Mock-ups
The goal of the project was to create a series of illustrations for five stories in my own style which I could publish both in digital and traditional format. Using Photoshop, I can manipulate the images in such a way that I can use them first in social media posts and then in print. These images can be posted in a digital story book format together with text, as seen in the slider below. Once the images have been seen and shared, some of the readers may want to order a paperback version of the storybook. This version would be more extensive and have more images per story, as well as some decorative elements and, obviously, a cover.
Images created for Instagram specifically. The square format is important because that is what Instagram hosts best.
Instagram post on mobile
I imagined the reading experience as follows: The reader sees the social media post with the social media friendly illustration, and if intrigued, they swipe to see the sample of the more complex image. In the description, they are lead to my blog, where they can experience the full book. For the purposes of this exercise, I only used the beginnings of each story for the mock-ups. For “Snow-White and Rose Red” and “The Elves and the Shoemaker” I did not make any mock up text pages at all because they are two-page spreads. Each story has a single illustration, but in the future I plan on drawing a full set of illustrations for each. I think this is a fairly good format for self publishing a small illustrated book and connecting it to social media. It is imperfect because Instagram does not allow external links on posts, but it is manageable for the moment.
Final images with a page of text
