What I’m Doing at Kirkus This Week,
Plus What I Did Last Week, Featuring Matt Phelan

h1 September 23rd, 2016 by jules


At Kirkus today, I’ve got picture books and grandparents on the mind. That is here.

* * *

Last week I wrote here about Matt Phelan’s Snow White: A Graphic Novel (Candlewick, September 2016), as well as Shaun Tan’s The Singing Bones (Scholastic, October 2016). I’ve got a bit of art here today from Phelan’s book, as well as some preliminary images he sent along, but unfortunately I don’t have any images from Tan’s book. You can, however, see some here at his site.

Enjoy!



 

Preliminary Images & Notes from Matt:


 


Matt: “My meticulously organized reference desk. Many happy hours spent pouring over the costumes, architecture, and photography of the period. Plus, lots of great movies. This stage of the book threatened to go on indefinitely.”


 


Matt: “Here’s an excerpt of the script, which is written and edited before I draw anything. I scribbled the first round of thumbnails in the margins of the script.”
(Click to enlarge)


 


Matt: “The dummy was drawn on 5.5” x 8.5” Strathmore grey sketchpads,
using black, white, red pencils.”

(Click to enlarge)


 


Matt: “This stage is really where the book comes together, and most of the compositional decisions were made here. The tone and atmosphere of the book were also established in these loose sketches.”
(Click to enlarge)


 


Matt: “Character sketches for Mr. Hunt and Snow (around age 13).”


 


Matt: “The finished art was drawn in pencil on cold-press watercolor paper and painted using watercolor, gouache, and ink. For the finals, I didn’t use a light-box or any kind of guide sketch, aside from just looking at my small dummy sketches. I wanted to have as much energy and freshness in the drawing as possible for each page.”


 


Matt: “Finished paintings, lined up in the studio.”


 

A Bit of Final Art from the Book:


 


(Click to enlarge)


 


(Click to enlarge)


 



 

* * * * * * *

SNOW WHITE. Copyright (c) 2016 by Matt Phelan. Final illustrations reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA. Preliminary images reproduced by permission of Matt Phelan.





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