Musings

This is a special edition of “Friday Fan Art”. Its an homage to that raspberry-colored pal-o-mine!

Despite all the love I have for Spiderwick, and its incredible successes, I must confess that my second picture book, Ted, is still a favorite.

Sure, it’s a little long for a picture book (especially nowadays) but I was proud of my boldness at such an early point in my career to make a statement about being a working parent (even though I wasn’t one yet) and holding onto your childhood. Heck, even Mrs. Cheney liked the book. She read it back in 2002 as part of her campaign, “No Such Thing As a Vacation From Reading“, for (you guessed it) summer reading.

A couple of years ago, my brother Adam, blew me away with one of the coolest birthday presents ever. Ted rendered in various animated styles. I simply HAD to share these as I think they are so cool! Enjoy! (Thanks bro!)

So, as I mentioned in my last post, I am waist-deep in my new book project Kenny & The Dragon. It is a retelling of the Kenneth Grahame short story, The Reluctant Dragon, which was found in his book Dream Days published back in 1898.

This is one of my favorite dragon stories that I remember as a child. The surprise here is that the dragon is hardly the fierce, fire-breathing variety – he’s more a poet and a pacifist. There is also a slight humor in both the original version and my retelling, so I wanted his design to reflect that, yet still be an interesting and unusual creature.

My first attempt was very closely based on Ernest Shepard’s design in the original version. I quickly abandoned it and moved along feeling there was nothing more I could add…

I came close to this birdlike beaky version (remember those Pern dragons?) which I felt looked intelligent enough to speak, read and write, but wasn’t quite warm enough for the mood of the text that I had written.

This turtle-inspired version was more on the right track…but I still wasn’t quite there yet.

Yeah, yeah its Saturday and I am posting the fan art – it has been a hectic couple of weeks here in DiTerlizziland. Speaking of DiTerlizzis, I have received some art from Celia, a distant cousin of mine who also can push a pencil and paint around:

…and here is an oldie-but-goodie from my brother Adam, who just graduated with a degree in animation and teaches up in northern Cali.

…my sister, Jenn, also does art and is quite the make-up artist. For us DiTro-kids, we have our mom to thank for spending all that time painting and drawing when we were little:)

Sometimes at book-signings, my fans will bring me little tokens of appreciation. Nothing warms my heart more than someone handing me a drawing that they did just for me. Take this one, for instance, that Samuel gave me last weekend at my event at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.

…I love the scales on the feet, and the crossed eyes. It looks like something out of G is for One Gzonk! Thanks Samuel!

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…

This week’s winner came from Silas. And I can’t tell you how touched I was by this one.

You see, Silas has copied a drawing from a book I created when I was 12 called Gondwanaland. It was about an island inhabited by bizarre creatures that I made up, along with dragons and goblins. The book was written by a scientist and structured as a field guide. So in many ways, it was the seed for Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide.

Here is my drawing from the original book I made:

I recap all of this (along with my new take of Captain Bassolf) in the anthology Guys Write for Guys Read, edited by none other than Jon Scieszka. There are a lot of cool short stories in it from a variety of people as well as drawings from lots of my favorite artists…you should check it out.

Thanks Silas! You MADE MY WEEK!

PS-in the letter, Silas also drew Link from The Legend of Zelda and asked if I have ever drawn pictures from that world. As my brother can tell you, he and I are HUGE Zelda fans, and yes – we’ve done lots of doodles from Hyrule:)

Early on, Holly and I thought it would be cool if the Spiderwick books slowly immersed the heroes into an entire world of fantasy. So, by the end of book 1, they finally see their house brownie, Thimbletack. By the climactic battle at the end of book 5, they are battling an evil ogre, his goblin army, and his brood of dragons.

The Spiderwick dragon design was clearly inspired from Asian dragons. I had not done a long and lanky drake before, and was very excited about it. After the Pern project, I also felt less inhibited and returned to birdlike features for the head and face.

The multiple legs came purely by accident. I was sketching where exactly the legs should be placed on the body not erasing any of my previous attempts. I realized it looked kinda neat having multiple legs and found that I had stumbled onto something not seen (to my knowledge) in dragon design before. Woo! A breakthrough!

The other aspect that we pushed for was a return to a prehistoric-ish wild creature. You see, all of the creatures in the Spiderwick universe were reverse evolved from the “big fish” stories that had been told over centuries.

We developed the notion that as storytellers retold the tales of dragons, trolls and goblins, they embellished these beasts to tell a grander tale. So we tried to rewind these creatures back to what their original form may have been like. In the case of the dragon, I removed the wings (commonly seen on European drakes), made the beast smaller (about 9 feet in length), and removed fire-breathing and the ability to speak. We felt that if the dragon was less intelligent and more feral, it would be harder for our clever heroes to conquer.

One thing we did do, though, was embellish the toxicity of the creature. I wanted everything about the Spiderwick dragons to be poisonous – their breath, saliva, blood, claws, teeth, everything. They were Mulgarath’s weapon of mass destruction.

I based this idea on a story I had read about a knight who fought a particularly dangerous dragon and vanquished it. Afterwards, the slain beast’s blood ran into the ground killing all the local farmer’s crops. The idea of environmental impact by a destructive force really resonated with me, and it also fit well into the themes used within the Spiderwick books.

I started to realize it may actually be less about what a dragon looks like, and more about it actions. Really that’s what makes some of those favorite examples I listed earlier so memorable.

You can’t believe how relieved I am that I’ve figured this out. You see, my next chapter book involves a classic well-loved dragon…but more about that next time.

Next: A new take on an old dragon…

Our family doctor is a swell guy. And not just ’cause he can make you feel better. He’s funny, loves Tolkien, and is very friendly, warm and caring – something you don’t always find in the medical field.

Of course, I had to give him a set of Spiderwick books (along with my covered version of Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales). His son supplied the thank you letter, along with a cd of him playing Vince Giraldi’s “Linus & Lucy” on the piano.

Thanks for the drawing Adam, and for clarifying who you were (in case I had forgotten:)