This exercise is a reverse one ie taking two illustrations and simplifying them into possible line visuals. This gives an understanding and insight into how the artwork may have been developed.
The first piece chosen is a poster entitled “In the Night Kitchen” by Maurice Sendak. It is a busy image of a make believe aeroplane on a back drop of buildings in a starry night.
Maurice Sendak (born 1928)’s career spanned over 6 decades in America. He published his first children’s book in 1951 and received the Hans Christian Anderson Award for illustration in 1970.
Here is the first line visual. It is completed at twice the size of the illustration as directed however in order to upload it here it is necessary to reduce and photocopy it to fit through the scanner. In this visual there are already a lot of guidelines to follow from the illustration eg the lines around the aeroplane and the oblong/square areas allotted for the buildings, so the areas where the detail can be spared is the green foliage of the beans, decorations on the buildings, adverts and lighting. I also omit the American star on the far left wing of the plane, leaving the one on the right on display.
The second illustration has less content however the lines are less clear and are more descriptive. I like the work by Fina Rifa (born 1939). Fina illustrated her first children’s book in 1988. As well as being a successful illustrator for over 200 book titles, Fina is also a toy designer – winning Spain’s Industrial Design for Development of Decorative Arts for outstanding toy design.
The selected work here is a book illustration (1982). You can see here her interest in toy making in her depiction of pinocchio:-
Again with restraints of a large scanner, I draw the image scaling to twice the size as directed, then photocopy to reduced size to scan it here:-
The details of the straw chair seat, attire, coat pocket, facial features/hair style/hat are not included. I revisit this again at a later date and reduce the visual further:-
If this exercise were to be repeated I would probably draw the chair broader and shorter, however the main point of the exercise is to communicate the image with basic lines and I think I have achieved this.
Generally I find it easier to work out the possible line vlsual for the poster illustration than for the illustrated drawing. And it has been interesting to choose two different designs in this way to investigate the underlying process involved.
Adelaide Art 