Artistic Process

I continue my progress on inking the final colored frontispiece for The Spiderwick Chronicles finale, The Wyrm King…

My desk is actually a light table. Its large size allows me to transfer images onto the Bristol board which I use for most all of my artwork. Here is a shot of my desk with the frontispiece in progress. Also present is some of the reference used in this final drawing stage.

First off, you’ll notice Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide (ASFG). I am referencing the mermaid designs so that these are continuous with the look of the story. Also present is the last S’wick book, A Giant Problem, in which I illustrated only bobbing heads. In this new illustration, we will now see the merfolk in all of their underwater glory, and you’ll be able to match faces from Giant Problem to faces here in The Wyrm King. Lastly, the paper behind ASFG is the printout sketch that I refined and sized on the computer.

This shot shows how the lines transfer from the rough sketch and get detailed and reworked as I prepare for inking. Nick has simply been traced and slightly refined, while the mermaids are almost complete. All of this is done simply with a #2 Ticonderoga pencil.

Here the final drawing is almost completed. I’ve also added lines to aspects of the image that will only be dictated in color, such as the ocean surface and the light rays. Note that forms are drawn through others to continue their lines correctly, even off of the border.

Here’s a detail of the mermaids’ faces. Though they are individuals, they are rendered as one formation to retain the sweeping movement of the composition.

And here is a detail shot of Nick. Unlike the fluid, dynamic shapes of the merfolk, Nick’s arms and legs are sprawled out in a clumsy (helpless turtle) pose as he drifts to the ocean floor.

As I’ve mentioned before, the basic shapes are in place and SOME of the details are worked out. However, I’ve purposely left room for me to render with the inks only. Simply tracing perfect pencil lines creates a static, non-energized line for me. I have to do some of the final spontaneous drawing with the pen.

Next stage: inking. Including a warm-up study courtesy of Mr. Rackham…

With my thumbnail approved by the team at S&S (and Holly), I was off to refine the sketch and prepare it for finish. For that, I began looking at reference of swimmers photographed underwater, like this image from LIFE magazine:

Immediately I was struck by how wonderful the light refracts through the ripples onto the pool walls and the swimmer’s body. This was great inspiration to me. Energized, I redrew the image and began to hone the composition. Below is the thumbnail sketch redrawn:

Some have observed that the pen & ink illustrations in the Spiderwick chapter books are rendered a little different than say, how I would paint a book jacket, or even the “natural history-esque” plates of Arthur’s Field Guide.

For these books (and my picture books), I use more of an animator’s approach: I study life, collect reference, but draw the scenes from my mind so that the characters are a touch cartoonish. I feel this exaggeration helps them convey their emotion better from the 5 x 7 inch stage of the illustration in the book.

Speaking of, I have the border that I use for the Spiderwick books as a template in Photoshop. Once I find the sketch I like, I drop it into this template and continue to rework the composition.

Here you’ll see that I’ve not only nudged our hero, Nick, up in scale, but moved him so that he overlaps the ring of mermaids. This helps to create a sense of depth in the image. Also, I’ve begun to add some tonal fields (which are really nothing more than notes to myself) as I continue working.

I mirror flip the art around in Photoshop, correcting any errors I find. I then size the piece (here 11 x 14 inches) and print it out on bond paper.

Next, I’ll transfer it to bristol board and prepare it for inking…

I delivered the last original colored image to the Spiderwick series today to the art director. Sure, there are a TON of pen & ink drawings still needed for the interior of the final book, but the colored frontis (done in the style of old fairy tale books) is finished, that means no more new colored Spiderwick art…wow, the end is near.

I am feeling a bit nostalgic as I approach the finish line on my work for Spiderwick. It has been a long and glorious adventure with much more highs than lows. I have a game plan for doing the interior art too: I will intentionally repeat compositions I have done already for the series so that it may act as a bit of a reprise – and I’ll start with the colored frontis.

In truth, the frontispiece has always been very important to me. It is usually conjured early on from Holly’s first draft, and is an image which may be too complicated for the immediacy required of the cover. I believe its function is to entice and intrigue the reader now that they’ve actually picked the book up and are looking inside. But the image has also shown a bit of my personal journey as well. Take, for instance, the frontis to book 1: The Field Guide:

Sure, its Jared looking at the portrait of Arthur Spiderwick in his secret study. BUT it is also me, as a young artist, shining a light on my hero Arthur Rackham (whom Spiderwick was modeled after). I remember when I finished this image that I knew Holly and I had created something special in this little faerie world. Here’s the frontis to book 2: The Seeing Stone:

That’s Holly and I fighting off the fast-growing excitement (and subsequent pressure) of the success of the books. This was also done very early on in the history of the series, but already there was a lot of buzz at Simon & Schuster for the books – we were certainly on our way.

So for this last frontis, I wanted there to be something special and personal for me, that would bring everything around in a big circle. I returned to one of the first finished pieces I did for (what would become) Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide, a “Blue Finned Sea Maid” from around 1994. Incidentally, this was part of the presentation I had created for TSR to see if they would be interested in making the book – as fate would have it, they were not.

I’ve done merfolk off-and-on for gaming over the years. Here are a couple that I’ve always liked:

“Merfolk of the Pearl Trident”, a Magic: the Gathering card done in 1997. My brother, Adam, posed for this holding a broom. Here’s another, more Rackhamy, image…

…done in 1998, probably for Dungeon Adventures magazine. These two fellas are not as cleverly designed as the others, but they are less static and show the movement one would want in an illustration of a mermaid.

With all of that in mind, I did my first sketch of the frontis for The Wyrm King, doodled right on the front of Hol’s manuscript:

Next post, I’ll show how I refined the drawing and began the inking process…

TGIF! What a week in DiTerlizziland! I have been up to my eyeballs in creating the artwork for the Spiderwick finale, The Wyrm King. As I continue my drawing/inking warm-ups for each day’s session, I have been rendering some fun stuff that is looong overdue to some of my friends – including this pen & ink art trade with Dinotopia demigod, James Gurney.

Jim rendered a super-cool piece for the upcoming Spiderwick Chronicles Completely Fantastical Edition – which (as I’ve mentioned before) contains the first five books, lost chapters from Holly, a sketchbook from yours truly, and a SICK art gallery by some of my drawin’ pals. Jim said I could have his submission for a trade, and (of course) I jumped at the opportunity.

I went back to the original Dinotopia and found a nice vignette of the hero, Will, meeting Bix, the benevolent protoceratops. I wanted to do my take on this scene, mainly because I would LOVE to be in Will’s shoes. (And, also, because the idea of becoming friends with a dinosaur is not too far removed from becoming friends with a creature of the faerie realm).

What got me juiced was re-interpreting the dinosaur and incorporating some of the current theories linking dinos to birds. So that is the place that I went to for my reference. I cracked open Dr. David Norman’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs, which had reconstructions of the protoceratops, but (more importantly) had a very detailed line-drawing of the skeleton – a structure to build upon.

Immediately, I thought exotic parrots in the rainforest…or even prairie chickens found in the western U.S.. Right away, I knew Bix was going to be feathered.

I sketched Will up on a second sheet of paper and composited the two sketches in Photoshop. This is great for sizing and moving around the figures. I even adjusted the balance of Bix by straightening his left leg to hold his weight.

I transferred the 11×14″ sketch onto Strathmore plate 2-ply bristol using my light table, refined the pencil lines, and inked it up using FW inks and a Hunts 102 nib. I even gave it the trademark Spiderwick dual-border (which I outline with a ruler and pencil, then ink freehand.)

I hope you like it Jim, I’ll have to blop some watercolor on a print out at some point…unless someone out there is really good at digital coloring…

PS – Update! Jim posted his image (of Hogsqueal riding on Bix) on his site. He even included a little video of himself inking the piece…check it out!

This week I did, in fact, sketch a whole lot more. However, I found myself working on characters and scenes from my new novel…and I am not quite ready to unveil that world just yet…so you’ll have to wait a bit before I share those sketches.

But I broke out the pen and inks (and even a little watercolor) to get my brain back into the realm of Spiderwick. Below are some gestural sketches of fantastic characters from the new series, Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles.

Okay, the first thing worth mentioning here is that none of these are referenced. I know what I said back in the previous posts, but for me, these are less about visual accuracy and more about getting loose (and reacquainted) with the tools. So I took this giant doodle and brought him up to a finish pencil drawing.

Then, I put a little ink wash on him and even inked in some of the darker spots. I have found that inking an image after gives a very different effect than when inking prior. I tend to be much more conservative on where these rich blacks go, so as not to overwhelm the pencil marks and pools of ink wash.  Peter DeSeve is a contemporary illustrator who excels at this approach.

But usually, I ink first – in the tradition of most Golden-Age illustrators (Arthur Rackham, A.B. Frost, Edmund Dulac, etc). I keep the sketch very loose, like this doodle of Sandspur.

…and force myself to do some serious drawing with the ink. This prevents that frozen, lifeless look which happens when all of the lines are simply traced over with the ink. Both approaches have their merits, but for loosening up, I prefer this.

Here I take this simple sketch of Taloa the nixie…

…and add a little watercolor wash to the linework. To me, this excercise is more like tinting a doodle. It is a vignette, a study.

Normally, these little warm-ups find their way into the flat file, or are given to friends. These three, however, will be given away as prizes from Simon & Schuster at various conventions this year (including San Diego Comic Con and BookExpo America). Stop by their booth if you are planning on attending, perhaps you may even score one…

I realize I’ve been doing a lot of writing, designing, plotting, and even a little art-directing lately. But the one thing I haven’t done a lot of is some serious drawing. As I warm up to begin the interior art for the last Spiderwick book, The Wyrm King, I blow the dust off of some old sketches in an attempt to track what I’ve learned in the last decade.

This is nothing new. French artist Claire Wendling did it masterfully in a fascinating revisit to one of her earlier published sketchbooks, Iguana Bay. In the same spirit I took my first self-published sketchbook, aptly titled DiTerlizzi Sketchbook (it was limited to 100 copies and sold at the 1994 GenCon game fair), and looked at it with older, possibly more astute, eyes.

I started with the goblin on the cover. Certainly he was a classic Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual-inspired character. Though there is some fun gesture with the penwork (especially in the hand), I really had no control over the ink. I was trying to learn how to put it down on paper without making too much of a mess. The overall gesture doesn’t say much about his character either – he is simply a grotesque head popped on a scribbled torso.

The first thing I did, before I sketched anything, was take a quick snapshot of me acting as this goblin. I figured he was a grumpy sort of character (perhaps due to dental problems). So, with my computer, I struck a pose:

Young artists out there: this took less than 90 seconds to pose and print. One and a half minutes. If I had Ang take the shot with our digital camera, then perhaps 5 whopping minutes to shot, download, and print. There is no excuse why you cannot have reference to help make your imagery more convincing. You are never too old, or experienced, to do this. Okay, rant over, blog resuming…

Great, so the grumpy goblin pose helped. I was able to sketch the pull from his crossed arms on his tattered shirt convincingly, and play with some nice facial lighting. In fact, I twisted and pushed his facial features to give him a battered appearance. (Personally, I think most D&D characters would be a little worse for the wear from all of the adventuring anyhow).

Next, I found a fairly decent ink doodle of a chameleon lizard man shaman. Surprisingly, my linework here was pretty solid, if a bit overworked. The aspect I did not capitalize on, though, was the awesome anatomy of the lizard itself – he has humanish arms and legs plopped on his reptilian form.

My quick redo retains his lizardy features with a couple of hints at intelligence: jewelery, belts and pouches, and a staff.  By the way, I used the same book I used as reference for this original drawing: Chameleons, by James Martin.

…more tomorrow…

This week I enter the home stretch on my journey of searching for the strongest jacket image to represent the new package design for the first-ever collection of The Spiderwick Chronicles books.

After viewing John Lind’s design for the Spiderwick exhibit program from last year, I began exploring a simple illustration from the book that could be used in a more graphic style which would echo some of the inspirations I was looking at from the start.

I was really attached to the idea of this belly-band crossing over a darkened image, especially if the band was laminated and embossed to rise up from the background. This shot of the gates was interesting, in that I liked the idea of a very limited palette, but the word “Spiderwick” being used twice was sort of odd.

Next, I played around with this image, one of my favs from book 3, with Simon and Mallory leaving the elves’ enchanted grove. I had colored this illustration for one of the calendars, so there was some nice background textures to manipulate in order to create mood – more so than if this was simply just a pen & ink drawing.

I tried including more intrigue by knocking the logo out in a cavern (ala the dwarven mines in book 4), but I felt that the two parts were not connecting cohesively.

For some reason, the simplicity and color palette reminded me of Francis Cugat’s original cover to The Great Gatsby, (especially when you compare the word “The”), so I toyed around with a simple typesetting versus the busy Spiderwick logo. Since there was all that black negative space in the bottom half of the image now, I added very subtle shadows of hidden goblins tracking the heroes. I felt like I was now truly onto something.

Showing it to the team at S&S, John Lind, Ang and Holly, we all agreed that this was the right image for the cover tonally. It took place outside in enchanting woods, and yet there was a very real threat looming about in the gloom. To further this idea, we decided to make the goblins simple line art and use the glossy laminate to make them pop against the matte image. The effect works: you don’t see the goblins right away – just like the kids in the story. Above, is the final art (with Jared added).

…and here is the jacket at last. The type is all set in gold foil (just like the Pullman book) to pop off the dark, mysterious cover.

The Spiderwick books always bring new challenges to me – whether its the collaborative storytelling process with Holly, the varied art styles required for the various titles, or just simply creating a new and enticing image just like this collected version. Always, I am thankful to have these challenges on such a fantastical project.

By the by, this week I finished up the layouts on the 30+ page sketchbook that will also be included in this tome…more on that later.

My quest for a successful cover to the upcoming Spiderwick collection continues with a brief exploration into Art Nouveau.

The Spiderwick art is actually influenced by this artistic movement, especially the notion of nature’s spirit (the fey-folk) twisting its writhing tendrils around mankind. These two explorations were my attempt at making Spiderwick feel more classic (like The Jungle Books), but we (the art director, editor, and Ang) agreed both were not quite right tonally with this new version, so I left the Art Nouveau behind and continued searching.

I had been reading Joshua Mowll’s Operation Red Jericho (which is a cool book with even cooler packaging) and tried a cover inspired by its simple layout.

The problem we’ve encountered with the “Vitruvian Faery”, the Spiderwick International Sprite League logo (and an obvious nod to da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man“), is that it sometimes can feel a little pagan/witchcraft-ish at first glance, hence us never using it as a cover image. Though it was actually what I originally envisioned on the cover to Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide (ASFG) as I feel it conjures up the bond between science and art…but I digress.

I returned to the actual art I did create for ASFG, and tried a couple of cover ideas using the art in a more graphic way.

This first comp is meant to sit side-by-side with ASFG stylistically. Again, there is a faery and a goblin which I hoped would appeal to all sorts of readers. But the ugly toadish goblin, with his fashionable scarf, wasn’t working…

So I attempted an “adult fiction” version using Thimbletack as both brownie and as a boggart. Though busy for a cover, I really liked how this illustrated the lightness and darkness of the story. Furthermore, I thought it alluded to the theme of Jared dealing with his anger, and what that uncontrollable anger can do to a person. But alas, I was on my own here – no one on the team really liked this take.

Then I glanced down at the cover to the program catalog I had worked on with designer-pal John Lind for the exhibit we did last year at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. There was something so fresh, yet aged and classy, to John’s simple and successful design.