I chose the story, Rapunzel, written by the Grimm Brothers, to re-illustrate. Growing up I've always enjoyed stories of strong, dashing princes and gorgeous princesses falling in love and wanted to draw this story in an elegant and beautiful way to show the fairy tale aspect of this book.
Research
To start off, I originally wanted to do my own take on the art nouveau style because of the beautiful details of each layer found in the background of every nouveau artwork. To me, the art nouveau style really matched the style of how I imagined Rapunzel would be in. The first image didn't match the nouveau style since there was too much highlights and shading and not enough emphasis on the background. Meanwhile, the second image is getting closer to the style but not quite there. I thought I was settled with the last image but ultimately changed it into a style with more rendering, details, and emphasis on the characters instead of the background after drawing the rough storyboarding sketches. I also chose a limited color palette to keep colors simple, elegant, and cohesive.
My biggest challenge, I would say, was dealing with the text. The story of Rapunzel, written by the Grimm Brothers, did not have a lot of text and was a really short story that had around three to four pages of text. The shortage of text was fixed by adding more spacing towards the top, bottom, and sides, along with a simple border on text pages. I really enjoyed this project despite all the sleepless nights it took to finish. It made me grow as an illustrator and I learned so much whether it came to illustration, layout, type, or bookbinding.
Institution: Tyler School of Art and Architecture
Course: Publishing
Instructor: Paul Kepple
Fall 2022