Thumbelina Illustrations





Amirasolo and Other Essays     

 Part 3. In my Book                                          

Essay 41. THUMBELINA ILLUSTRATIONS

Before I began doing the illustrations for a book of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales, Tahanan Books publisher Reni Roxas lent me several foreign picture books for me to peruse and to be inspired or even challenged by. One of those books was Wayne Anderson's "Thumbelina". 

True enough, I was indeed so inspired by one of Anderson's illustrations that I patterned the composition of my Thumbelina illustration after it, with the difference that the human figure and the other elements in the picture I drew are realistic or un-stylized.

Anderson's Illustrations, although cartoony, rest on a higher level of artistry than comics Illustrations and manga or animation and anime, all of which are but black and white line drawings colored digitally. The Thumbelina character plus the flora, fowls, and fauna in Anderson's pictures were drawn in a cartoonish and charmingly distorted manner, yes, but they were painted the way a fine artist would paint, by hand, using watercolor, with touches of colored pencils perhaps. The resulting illustrations are therefore prized collectibles that any art collector would crave to add to his collection.

My Thumbelina was one of the illustrations that were very much in-demand on the opening day of my solo show at the Crucible Gallery in 2001. Four art collectors wanted to acquire it. One of them was my former UST High School classmate and now Meralco President Atty. Ray Espinosa. But Thumbelina was already reserved for and eventually acquired by Mark Yap, who also added the book's cover art, "The Little Mermaid", to his collection.

Incidentally, I was truly expecting Reni to choose Thumbelina to be the cover art for the book "Once Upon a Time".  But she chose The Little Mermaid instead. Which is not a bad choice, come to think of it.

Thumbelina had been illustrated by many illustrious artists, both past and present. The most notable ones in my opinion were those done by, well, the British Wayne Anderson, the  Russian Gennady Spirin, the Ukrainian Galya Zinko, and the Austrian Lisbeth Zwerger.

Since it took me around three weeks to finish each illustration for "Once Upon a Time", I completed the eleven illustrations for the book only after about a year. That's a veritable snail's pace, I would concede, especially when compared to the pace of other Filipino illustrators who can finish a book in one month. 

But I can't help it, being the obsessive-compulsive person that I am, who won't declare an artwork done until I saw that it won't compare too unfavorably with the works of the illustrators I admire.

(Photo collage below shows, clockwise from top left, illustrations by Wayne Anderson, Gennady Spirin, Galya Zinko, and Lisbeth Zwerger)




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