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May 12, 2009 Posted by Tony D in Artistic Process, Musings, Spiderwick Stuff

Final Frontispiece (part 1)

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:

arthurSure, 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:

goblinsThat’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.

mermaid8x10

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

merfolk

“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…

dungeon

…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:

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

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