Look at some of these examples or find your own. What is it about the illustrations that links so well with the text? Is it simply familiarity, that we’ve got used to seeing these characters in this way, or is there more going on in the relationship between image and text? Pick a few visual examples to discuss in your learning log
For this research task, I needed to study a selection of illustrators who are considered to be the definitive illustrator for a particular book or character. The course text provided some examples to start with and invited me to find my own.
Axel Scheffer - The Gruffalo
The first artist that I am looking at is a suggestion from the course text. It's hard to not be familiar with the work and style of Alex Scheffer, given the multimedia success the stories have had. Scheffer has become synonymous with Julia Donaldson's work in general, and they have refined the broad appeal of the art style into a repeatable successful formula.
The art is colourful and is designed to bring Donaldson's evocative descriptions to life. The Gruffalo could, if handled differently, be depicted and a very scary and intimidating monster (the mouse, after all, is relying on this fearsome countenance to out-smart the other forest predators). Indeed you can see some of his exploratory work had a very different tone:
Scheffer manages to soften the Gruffalo, to make him appealing in his own way. This adds to the story, and takes Donaldson's text further by adding in context that would otherwise be missing. As a book designed at young children, it will often be read by parents to their children. This has embedded the characters and story into the collective memory across generations, and has enabled Donaldson and Scheffer's partnership to extend to animations, which strengthens the connection between the art and stories.
Sir John Tenniel - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Tenniel's illustrations for Alice in Wonderland were the first commissioned for the story. Tenniel and Lewis Carroll did not have a good working relationship when Tenniel was commissioned, and ordered that the first print run be destroyed (so unhappy was he with the quality of the illustrations) but thankfully some first editions still survive. His characterisations of the characters have formed the basis for nearly every other re-interpretation of the text. When the copyright to the book expired in 1907, others attempted their own versions of the characters. Tenniel's wood carvings were so closely-tied to the story and characters, that these other depictions received much objection [3].
Their sense of surrealism combined with the prim-and-proper Victoriana really helps them to stand out as a defining embodiment of the Victorian aesthetic and made the book massively popular to adults and children alike.
Ivor Wood - Paddington Bear
I think that this selection might be somewhat subjective - I am not sure I can claim that this interpretation of Paddington is the absolute definitive one. Much like many illustrations, there is a link between your childhood and what you consider to be 'definitive'. To me, the sketches of Ivor Wood, which translated themselves into the stop-motion animation from the BBC is the definitive depiction. I appreciate that this is animation, and not a relationship between printed word and image. However, the art style and direction of the short episodic stories feels designed to evoke the feeling of a picture book come to life. Combining the two-dimensional cut-outs with the three-dimensional set and main character feels like a pop-up book come to life.
Again, they created cross-generational appeal. His sketches, originally designed when planning the animation also had multi-media appeal.
Wood's depiction of Paddington was used in comic strips and as spot illustrations on a range of licensed Paddington products in the 70s and early 80s. Seeing this depiction of Paddington in multiple aspects of life embeds that representation of the character into the collective knowledge. So much that if someone asks me to think of the character, this version is what springs to mind.
Quentin Blake - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Quentin Blake is an incredibly famous and successful illustrator and author in his own right. However, to many he is the definitive illustrator for the books of Roald Dahl. It was hard to choose any single book as a comparison, given the range of Dahl's books that he has illustrated over the decades.
However, I decided to choose Charlie and the Chocolate factory as it is one of Dahl's stories that has been attempted in other media. What makes Blake's depictions definitive is not that he was the first to attempt them, it's that his loose, gestural and dynamic drawing style perfectly fits the writing style of Dahl. His illustrations seem to inhabit and evoke the feeling of the characters. They feel accessible and fun, making it easy for children to get a sense of the character. They are also loose enough for a child to build up their own mental image of the characters in their head, meaning they still get the rich imaginative experience of reading Dahl's stories.
Paul Kidby - Terry Pratchett's Discworld
Growing up in the 1980s, there was a time at school when everyone in my generation seemed to be reading Terry Pratchett. Despite his tone of humour and writing style being very-much aligned with my own, I never really got into his books.
However, I always knew when a friend of my was reading Pratchett by the amazing cover art of the books. Paul Kidby was Pratchett's illustrator of choice (and is a member of Pratchett's Order of the Honeybee - those entrusted posthumously to guard his legacy). His illustrations were usually full oil paintings, and that medium seems perfect for evoking the amazing use of colour in the illustrations. Kidby also possesses an ability to not only convey the fantasy humour of Pratchett's work, but does so in a way that has a quaint realism. His characters feel realistic despite elements of caricature to exaggerate their features.
John Romita Sr. - The Amazing Spider-Man
I also tried to think about characters that might have been drawn by multiple people. To that end main-stream comics seemed like a good place to look at. With the intellectual property of characters belonging to the publisher, over the year most comic book characters have been depicted by multiple artists.
I decided to focus on Marvel Comics' Spider-Man. There have been many artists who have depicted the super hero over the decades, and while Steve Ditko was the creator and original artist, I think that John Romita Senior's tenure is considered to be the definitive version of Spider-Man. He drew the character beautifully, but perhaps more importantly brought his experience on DC's romance comics to Marvel. The female form was depicted more naturally (even if all the faces seemed to be classically beautiful) and he created a separation between Spider-Man and his real identity as Peter Parker. Parker's day-to-day life was given more prominence and he was more relatable as a teenage boy. His art style and take on the character transferred into other media as well, so to many Romita Sr.'s time on the comic cemented who the character is at their core, just as much as Stan Lee's et. al's writing ever managed.
References:
Bear, P. (2023) Original BBC TV, Paddington. Available at: https://www.paddington.com/gb/back-in-1958/original-bbc-series/ (Accessed: 22 October 2023).
Grimley, N. (2020) Gruffalo artist Axel Scheffler: ‘This was something I could do to help’, BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-52414701 (Accessed: 22 October 2023).
Jaques, Z. and Giddens, E. (2016) Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s adventures in Wonderland and through the looking Glass: A publishing history. London, U.K.: Routledge.
Jones, N. (2016) The interview: Quentin Blake, illustrator, The Times & The Sunday Times. Available at: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-interview-quentin-blake-illustrator-kp7vskbj7 (Accessed: 22 October 2023).
Kidby, P. (2020) Paul Kidby Paintings, Paul Kidby - Terry Pratchett Artist • Illustrator • Sculptor. Available at: https://www.paulkidby.com/paintings/ (Accessed: 22 October 2023).
Scheffler, A. (2020) Axel Scheffler, Picturebook Makers. Available at: https://blog.picturebookmakers.com/post/623693862104432640/axel-scheffler (Accessed: 23 October 2023).
Tenniel, J. (2023) The Mad Tea Party, Illustration History. Available at: https://www.illustrationhistory.org/illustrations/the-mad-tea-party (Accessed: 22 October 2023).
Uccello, A. (2023) John Romita SR: The comics master who made Spider-Man a legend., Pluriverse. Available at: https://pluriverse.blackboxstore.com/arts/john-romita-sr-the-comics-master-who-made-spider-man-a-legend/ (Accessed: 22 October 2023).
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