Picture and Word was an exponentially rewarding double-credit class about the writing and illustrating of children's books, led by Stacy Graham O'Connell and Judy Sue Goodwin Sturges. During first semester of my junior year I wrote one 32-page children's book per week and also produced one illustration per book to represent each book's potential aesthetic.
For my final I brought one of these books into semi-fruition, creating and binding two fully designed dummy versions to be submitted to publishers. Clarimonde is my response to the prompt to make a Halloween-esque story with significant use of poetic devices (as well as personal critique to focus on creation myth): it is the story about how the raven chose his color, written mostly in unrhymed verse, and its message is one of individualism and acceptance.
The book includes a final draft of my text with full-color sketches of every illustration and a few "final" illustrations. I hesitate to show too much of the book here, because it is now being submitted to studios for consideration, and I'm not sure how the sharing of these images on the internet should work--but I believe that if this book were to be picked up, all existing images would be edited; this final project would ultimately become mutable "sketches" anyway.
The final critique took place in Studio Goodwin Sturges' lovely new Providence location and was augmented by brunch, dogs, and the feedback of special guests from the field.
Thank you everyone involved!
Critique photos courtesy of Ivy Tai.
