Children's Book Illustration #3
For the rest of the semester, we will be working on reillustrating a pre-existing children's book. I chose "The Hunter: A Chinese Folktale" by Mary Casanova. The original illustrations were by Ed Young, but they were so sparse, with these minimalist caligraphy line paintings that it's practically a blank slate for me to illustrate from.
First we typed up the text of the whole book and then decided how to break it up. Deciding the page breaks and which illustrations will hilight certain moments was a lot of fun. These are the first round of thumbnails that I did. I thought about posting the typed out text too, but that would be a huge copyright infringement, so instead, here is plot summary from Amazon.com:
In a Chinese village, a drought scorches the countryside and starves the people. Hai Li Bu, a hunter, tries to find food. One day, he saves a small snake from a crane, and in return the snake brings him to the bottom of the sea, where the snake's father, the Dragon King of the Sea, lives. The Dragon King offers rubies and emeralds as a reward, but Hai Li Bu wants only to understand the language of animals so that he can be a better hunter and feed his village. The Dragon King grants the request on the condition that there will never be a whisper of what has transpired. This agreement works until Hai Li Bu overhears the birds and animals chattering about a huge storm that will destroy the village. The hunter tries to warn the people, but they don't believe. Hai Li Bu finally realizes that to save the villagers he must tell them how he knows about the storm. Heroically, he recounts the whole story--as he slowly turns to stone.
32 @ 2" x 2" - Ballpoint Pen - February 2007
