Researching The Characters' Origins

Following my tutorial with Louise, I've looked into Gerda's background to influence what her appearance will be like. It turned out to be quite difficult to find out what her nationality is which I suppose isn't very surprising seeing as it is a fairy tale.

In the story there is no actual mention of where Kai and Gerda live in the beginning; however throughout Gerda's journey it is mentioned that she encounters a Finn woman and a Lapland woman. Kai, himself, is kidnapped by the Snow Queen and brought to Spitsbergen in Norway, where her Ice palace resides. I also looked up where Hans Christian Andersen was born, which was in Denmark.
   If you take into consideration that at the end of the tale Kai and Gerda "noticed that they themselves had grown; they were not young children", then it would only makes sense that - despite the length of the story - Gerda's journey to find her beloved Kai, had probably taken a few years or so. Most of the clues then, point to her and Kai being Danish which would make sense as the author is also Danish. Gerda's journey very likely took her northwards through Finland and then to Norway.

This was quite in an interesting exercise to do as it made me feel like I knew the character better which will probably effect the way I illustrate her. I will be doing this research with the other characters in the book as well.

Below are some sketches I drew with this new research in mind.

 

Guest Speaker: Deirdre Mcdermot, Publisher from Walker

Today I attended an exciting guest speaker talk from Deirdre Mcdermot who publishes children's picture books at Walker. She was very enthusiastic about her job and it came across whilst talking. She introduced us to a lot of great illustrators that I hadn't heard before, whom she works with, including Chris Haughton, Jon Klassen, Hervre Tullet and Inga Moore to name a few.

Inga Moore

Jon Klassen

Chris Haughton

   Other than that she also gave us a lot of inspiration; some of the main quotes that stuck out to me were as follows:

"Having a good idea is one of the most crucial parts of being an illustrator"

"Every single piece you make is telling a story"

"Think about what you are illustrating, the whole story and world, in order to create the most engaging image"

Initial Sketches, Further Research & Personal Tutorial with Louise

This week, I started on some inital sketches just to get my brain flowing for illustrating the Snow Queen. I began drawing things that popped into my head; main symbols such as the snowflake and began on some character design of Gerda, the heroine, and Bae the reindeer from part five of the story. They are as shown below.

As far as media is concerned, I have started experimenting with a range of material to see what will work best including brush pen, colour fine liners, water colour, water colour pencils and gouache, as these are the ones that have suited my work best in the past.

I've additionally been reading some texts which analyse the Snow Queen, in particular Wolf Lederer's The Kiss of the Snow Queen which gives some quite insightful and in depth analysis of the themes in the story that one wouldn't normally pick up just from reading the book.

The Raven

Gerda character designs I

II

III

IV

Reindeer drawings from London Zoo 

II

III

The Kiss of the Snow Queen by Wolfgang Lederer

 I also had a tutorial with Louise today where she advised me on my work. Here were the points made summarised:

• Stop researching other artists - put pen to paper and draw!
• Draw from life
• Work larger
• Find out Gerda's background to create a more informed character design
• Create a modern interpretation of the story by the way I draw instead of changing the characters' appearance
• Go the print room to get an A3 sketchbook bound with different types of paper, as some of my work from the last project could have been used as final pieces

Week 2

• Continued research
• Beginning to develop characters from the story
• Find a suitable version of the story for my target age range
• Tutorial with Louise
• Guest Speaker Deirdre Mcdermot