Designing Dragons (Favs)
I’m teaching a class tomorrow at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art on creating your own unique interpretation of known fantastical creatures. One of the several designs the students can choose from will be a dragon, so I’ve amassed a library of some of my favorite images to share. It seems the timing is serendipitous with my ongoing dragon conversation here on my blog, so I decided to include a few.
Henry J. Ford was best known for his illustrations in Andrew Lang’s Rainbow Fairy books which were a HUGE inspiration to the design of the Spiderwick books. He did this piece back in 1909.
Of course, many know Arthur Rackham’s work, and I have mentioned him many times as my main influence. This is Siegfried killing Fafnir in his book version of Wagner’s The Ring.
John Bauer is a Swedish illustrator from the turn-of-the-century. He was certainly influenced by Rackham, but had his own unique take on trolls and fairies. I am certain he was a big influence on Brian Froud. This is a title page to one of his troll books, done in 1915.
Moving ahead in time, this is the cover to a picture book called Dragon Feathers done by a Russian couple Andrej & Olga Dugina. I have seen some of their originals in person, and they are BEAUTIFUL. The detail is stunning. Try to look up their books next time you are in a library or book store, you won’t be disappointed. (and this dragon design is amazing!)
Last, but not least, is one of my favorite dragon designs. This was done by Ernest H. Shepard, best known for his work in A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books and Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows. This is an image from another Kenneth Grahame short story, The Reluctant Dragon, from a book titled Dream Days.
This image means the most at the moment, for you see my next book, Kenny & The Dragon, is a fully-illustrated retelling of this very story. More to come next post…
November 4th, 2007 at 11:06 am
Cool stuff. Thanks for posting it.
November 4th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
I can’t wait to read your new book! And thanks for posting all this. I love it!
November 5th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Just wanted to say that my son and I LOVE the Spiderwick illustrations! We can’t wait for the movie and we also just read The Spider and The Fly. He said he got it from the library at school because of the “awesome” pictures! Thank you so much for lighting up my son’s face and imagination with your talent!
November 8th, 2007 at 8:08 am
Dear Tony, I just wanted to drop in and say that I’m a big fan of your work & of Holly’s. I really enjoy watching you guys in interviews, you give such added depth to the world you’ve created.
I hope that when my son grows up, he’ll enjoy your books too. Also, congratulations on the bundle of joy! You’re painting murals in his/her nursery/room? That’s one lucky kid!
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November 10th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Wow! The Dragon Feathers book looks amazing!
November 13th, 2007 at 10:12 am
I always liked the design of the dragon from the film Dragonslayer, . . .also my dear friend Stephen Hickman has painted some pretty amazing dragons, . . .take a look at his website.
Last year I had the chance to visit the studio of Miles Teves and see some sculpture based on his designs for the film Reign of Fire (i think the sculptures looked better than the films final CG rendition, . . .just some random things
Hope all is well,
-T