Saturday, December 15, 2012

TOM SAWYER - TOMIE DEPAOLA ILLUSTRATOR AWARD ENTRY

My 2013 Tomie dePaola Illustrator Award entry - Tom Sawyer.
I have pretty well burned myself out with everything I've been doing lately and I'm looking forward to a break before I start back up again. I finished up November and NaNoWriMo with a Steampunk inspired novel and some well developed characters to illustrate. The genre picked me and I'm glad it did. I'll be creating some black and white interior illustrations and a couple color ones too.

On the current illustration front, I squeezed in my Tomie dePaola Illustrator Award project. Although I had been working on thumbnails and roughs for a while, I had a tight week to do the final. I began the project by picking which literary work I would be illustrating. I chose Tom Sawyer because the imagery was most appealing to me. I only really remembered a graveyard scene, the cat scene "spell" and a cave scene from reading it as a kid. (My favorite story elements were always creepy and scary.)

I listened to a Librivox reading of the book and at points had a tough time getting through it - mainly because of the social interactions of the day. I don't consider this story picture book material as is, but it was perfect for my middle grade illustrations. The over the top theatrical nature of the story gave some nice opportunities for visuals.

I like the way the illustration turned out, but would have worked longer polishing the final if I had more time. Check out more Tomie dePaola entries here.

Stay tuned for Steampunk in the New Year. In the meantime, Happy Holidays!

8 comments:

  1. Love it! Embarrassing confession - I am not sure I ever read Tom Sawyer in its entirety though. It's almost worse that I don't know if I did or not than if I just knew I hadn't!

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    1. Thanks! I have struggled with my own memory of reading Tom Sawyer. I am beginning to think that some of my memories came from reading a script for a play in elementary school!

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  2. Thanks for sharing your entry and the story behind it - really interesting! And thanks as well for participating in the 2013 Comment Challenge!
    best,
    Lee

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    1. Thanks so much for stopping by, Lee AND for bringing the Comment Challenge to life again in 2013!

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