"Crictor" by Tomi Ungerer

"Crictor" is the story of a boa constrictor that was sent to a Madame Bodot (who lived in a French village) as a birthday present from her son (who studied reptiles and lived in Africa).

The gift of the snake was a total surprise to her but after going to the zoo and finding out the snake was not venomous, she decided to keep it and raise it.

She did all sorts of things to make sure Crictor was happy... such as decorate her home with palm trees so he'd feel more at home, bring Crictor with her when she went shopping, knit him a sweater...

...and let him sleep in a bed all of his own. 

Madame Bodot was a schoolteacher and would also bring Crictor to the classroom where he learned his lessons along with the other students. He would also play jump rope with the girls (he being the rope!), let the boy scouts twist him about to learn their knots and retrieve kites that got stuck in high places.

One day while Madame Bodot and Crictor were at the cafe (oh, I could see myself doing the exact same thing-ha ha ha), she was told about some burglaries that were happening in the neighborhood.

Sure enough, Madame Bodot's home was broken into that night and she was gagged and tied to a chair! When Crictor finally woke up from his sleep, he got right in there, surprised the burglar and then coiled around him so he couldn't get away. The shrieks from the burglar are what brought the police since Madame was still tied up and gagged.

Crictor was called a hero! He was given a medal, a statue was made of him, and a park was named after him too. And then he and Madame Bodot and everyone else in the village lived happily ever after.

  

Until yesterday, I had not seen this book since I was a little kid. The scene of Crictor in bed is exactly how I remembered it. However, the one thing in this book that really stood out for me (and my sister Laurie) were the letters and numbers that Crictor was able to shape himself into. Although I had remembered an entire elaborate alphabet, when I looked at the book fresh from the library yesterday, Tomi Ungerer only illustrated eight letters and only seven numbers. Whatever. They still made a heck of an impression on me. :-) The idea that you can make letters and numbers from a snake's body? I owe Mr. Ungerer my introduction to type and graphic design.

Click on the images to see them a little bit bigger since they're kind of hard to see otherwise. :-)

Arthur Szyk and "Andersen's Fairy Tales"

This was another book that I studied real hard when I was a little kid because the drawings were so elaborate and scary. Although we had the 1968 Encyclopedia Britannica in the house, there was nothing in it about monsters or ghosts. I looked. And unfortunately I was born before every little kid got to study dinosaurs in school and become an expert paleontologist. I knew the names of the dinosaurs of course, but monsters....those were the exotic creatures I really wanted to learn more about.

This illustration is for the story, "The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf." I can't quite recall the story but I think this little girl decided she'd rather step on the loaf of bread to cross a puddle rather than ruin her shoes. I'm not sure why pride is considered a deadly sin but pride is what caused this kid to sink into the puddle permanently attached to that loaf of bread, to be carried down, down, down, to be surrounded by lots of monsters in a black, cold cesspool......I think forever. When you're a kid, what's not to like in a story like that? And even better, an illustration like this to look at?

Personally, I think she was just being smart but I'm sure there's a moral message in the story somewhere. And apparently the moral had no effect on me since I think of this story with a weird sort of fondness.

And then there is this one. That pink faced devil still just gives me the creeps.

This illustration for "The Snow Queen" shows three demons holding a mirror that when it reflected anything that was good, would make it look bad and if it reflected anything horrible, would make it look even worse. Sort of like what you find in  a modern day fitting room, you know?

Arthur Szyk did have some illustrations in the book that were really pretty but even the pretty ones had a certain sense of ugly or weird in them. Which I liked.

Dick said one time he wouldn't want to work in a place where everyone was happy. And when I draw, I have to make sure I don't make everything pretty (...because I can really get carried away with that. An art director once told me that I could make anything look pretty and it wasn't meant as a compliment. Ha ha ha.). When things are all calm and happy, or things are all pretty and sweet, you have to have some sort of an edge to make it interesting...although  I think Arthur Szyk used the opposite proportions of pretty and ugly than what I do. :-) But he did make me notice that ugliness or exaggeration or caricature is something really dynamic and will make a character come alive. Also, that a little bit of ugly can make the pretty really stand out.

The Golden Book of Fairy Tales

This is another book that had a big influence on me when I was a little girl. I found the book again in my 30s and was just as smitten with the art. The artist is Adrienne Segur and I think from her, I learned how important the eyes are in the expression of a character.

The one thing I remember from this book was that there was a lot of crying, made more so because of the really large eyes.

Lots and lots of tears. Even the animals had large, soulful eyes (the swan in the above illustration has a falling tear too). Personal journeys were long and hard but eventually rewarded at the end with the life that was meant to be.

People and animals worked together and sometimes the animals became people and sometimes the people became animals. I had such a crush on this drawing of Kipp the falcon boy when I was little. :-)

This one illustration is so beautiful. I love how the little girl in the center has a glow around her. I also appreciate the accurate depiction of wild flowers around her and the accidental insect or bird that manage to get themselves into such scenes. As always, click on the image to see a larger version.

Some of the illustrations in the book are in full color and others are done just in pencil. I think the paintings started out like the detailed pencil drawings but then a watercolor wash was applied over each area that needed color. 

The book was originally published in France in 1956 but was republished in the U.S. a year or so later as "The Golden Book of Fairy Tales." However, it was republished again in its original large size in 1999 and is still available.  :-)

"Parsley" by Ludwig Bemelmans

Most people are familiar with Ludwig Bemelmans because of his Madeline series of books. My sister Laurie and I were more smitten by his book Parsley (not that we didn't love Madeline too).

Parsley is the story of an old twisted tree and stag who both lived together in a forest. The two had grown old together having survived many lumbermen and hunters who had entered their forest.

But one day a hunter spied the old stag and was just about to shoot it when the tree pushed the hunter down the mountain with the result that the hunter would "hunt no more." But before the hunter fell over the cliff, the tree grabbed his binoculars (supposedly the hunter was based on Ernest Hemingway).

Parsley was a very old stag. The reason he didn't see the hunter was because his eyesight was not as good as it used to be. But now that he had those binoculars always available, all Parsley had to do was look through them to see if any hunters entered the forest to cause him or his family harm. And you know the rest, everybody lived safely and happily ever after.

Besides being drawn to a story of nature triumphing over people's evil (Laurie and I will still side with the animal's point of view on things every time), we were both in love with all the detail in this book. I haven't seen the actual book since I was a little girl but I remember that each page with the text on it would have a border of some specific flower, usually with some bugs and things crawling in there somewhere too. Laurie and I loved that sort of detail. Here's what's going on behind the stag in the above illustration. To a little kid, it was a lot of fun to search for all this hidden stuff.

I found a republished softcover version of the book in the 80s and bought it for my sister. We were astonished at our memories because the illustrations were incredibly moire-ed and the detail? I think the illustrations used in this particular book must have been reproduced from an old "Woman's Day" magazine (or something similar) because there was no detail. I didn't think my perception of art was that off when I was little but I didn't think to question it because of my experiences with the Kirchner painting. 

I recently found a Bemelmans Parsley painting on a gallery site and am happy to discover that his painting is just as beautiful to me now as what I remember from when I was a little girl. I am relieved to know that the reprint I picked up was not what the original looked like.

My sister and I both grew up to become illustrators and to live with lots and lots of animals. Happily and safely ever after. And with much detail. The end. :-)

Kirchner's "Winter Landscape by Moonlight," 1919

Several weeks ago when I wrote about the Detroit Art Institute, it reminded me of a painting I first saw when I was a little kid (probably age 10 or so). We were on a field trip and there was one painting in particular which made an impression on me. The guide explained the thought behind Expressionism and commented on the mountains and the trees, etc. My young and untrained eyes did not see trees. I had no idea what I was looking at. It was all abstract to me. But I think I saw a mountain because I did recognize the painting when I saw it several years later.

I was in art school in Minneapolis when the Minneapolis Institute of Arts had an exhibition of German Expressionism. I had the opportunity to revisit the painting I had not seen since I was a little kid. My thoughts this time? That I was unimpressed with pink evergreens. I thought the artist could have pushed his color exploration further. Ha ha ha.

I was thinking of past influences of mine and did a search for this painting on the internet. I look at the painting now and my thoughts about it are so different, only took 40 years for it to really connect with me. 

One thing I always have to keep in mind in my illustration work is to keep things simple. I go through this every time when I design, put everything in and then start taking things out. One way to simplify a design is to edit your color choices. This painting is a perfect example of expert use of analogous color (colors that follow each other around the color wheel). The colors used are yellow, orange, pink, purple and blue. If the one missing color from the color wheel was added, green, it would ruin the painting. 

Another thing I keep in mind when illustrating is the direction lines that lead your eye around a design. The control of movement in this painting is brilliant. Those pink trees take you down the slope starting from the upper right corner and then swoop you across the snow and then back up to the other side to the mountain peaks where you're kept up by the yellow clouds that carry you back (they almost look like steps) to the upper right corner, avoiding the ouchiness of landing on those mountain tops. Then it's quickly back down the slope again (once you get to the safety of that tall pink tree) and when you're carried to the other side, you return to the upper right at a slower and gentler speed. In the middle of the painting is a little protected and calm area surrounded by the dark trees. I adore this painting. I wish this painting could live with me. :-) 

That's what I see in it now and who knows, years from now (when I might not be working as an illustrator), most likely something entirely different. :-)