What I’m Doing at Kirkus This Week,
Plus What I Did Last Week, Featuring Soyeon Kim
March 29th, 2019 by jules
Your lungs swell with oxygen that plants create.”
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I’ve got babies on the mind today over at Kirkus.
That is here.
Last week, I wrote here about Laura Purdie Salas’s Lion of the Sky: Haiku for All Seasons, illustrated by Mercè López. (I featured some art from the book in yesterday’s 7-Imp post, which is here.) I also wrote last week about Elin Kelsey’s You Are Never Alone, illustrated by Soyeon Kim.
Today, Soyeon (pictured below) shares process images and talks about creating the three-dimensional artwork for this book. I thank her for visiting. I’ve also got some final spreads form the book. (You can also see more about the book and the artwork here.)
Enjoy!
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Soyeon: I started to create diorama art when my family immigrated to Canada. We had a lot of cardboard boxes lying around in our house after the big move. Each box was packed with our personal items and everyday objects that we brought from Korea. As we started to unpack, I thought, why not re-use them to create art? After all, the purpose of a box was to collect, package, and/or present something.
When I started to incorporate a box as part of my main art material, I was really excited with its endless possibilities. A box could hold my feelings and thoughts. The space within a box was private and personal when it was closed, but it was also shareable by opening. Boxes came in different sizes and shapes, which I could also stack and arrange in any ways I wanted to. Creating the world of my own inside a box, I came to diorama art.
Here are my thumbnail sketches [for You Are Never Alone] — brainstorming and quick sketches with idea notes:
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Here are my rough sketches (more detailed, planned sketches before moving to the final art):
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Here are character sketches (character studies, considering ethnicity, clothing styles, etc.):
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Now to the woodshop and building diorama frames:
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Now to the art studio, where all the drawing, painting, cut-outs, and assembly magic happens!
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These are pictures of a photo shoot — from 3D diorama to picture book illustration!
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Here’s a video walk-through inside a diorama:
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YOU ARE NEVER ALONE. Text © 2019 Elin Kelsey. Illustrations © 2019 Soyeon Kim and reproduced by permission of the publisher, Owlkids Books, Berkeley, CA. All process images reproduced by permission of Soyeon Kim.
I am an artists who falls down the illustration rabbit hole from time to time. A friend asked if I could illustrate a poem and I leaped and said “Yes” Like you I am in love with diorama. I found this blog by “accident” and felt like it was a sign to move forward with my diorama dreaming. Thank you for the inspiration, the illustrations are beautiful.