Sophie Blackall Illustration

Drawings and Snippets and Breaking News, (but more snippets than breaking news).

Friday, January 24, 2014

A Fine Dessert - Part 7




You may be forgiven for thinking I've not done a lick of work on A Fine Dessert since November, but in fact I've been drawing and painting so hard I haven't had a moment to mention it.
The research process is all but finished, the sketches have been made, the dummy has been submitted to the editors, I was summoned in for questioning, and I've just been given the green light to paint; one of the best moments of this whole picture book-making process.
In each of the four centuries in this book, (for those of you just joining me, I'm working on A Fine Dessert, written by Emily Jenkins), the dessert is served after dinner and I decided to set up the scene the same way. I wanted to make the most of the differences between the families: differences in culture and economic status and gender roles and racial equality, not to mention clothing and furniture design. It made sense to put them in the same setting; four equally shaped spaces.
Here are some of the stages of a sketch, in this case, a scene in a family dining room in Boston in 1910. 






Here are some of my bits of inspiration:

I found this "inexpensive dining room" in a furniture catalog from the turn of the century. You can see I've willy-nilly lifted the light fixture, the mirror and the wallpaper.

And I chose this walnut dining setting for my Boston family, which reminds me of chain-of-hearts, which my mother always used to grow.
http://www.golatofski.de/Pflanzenreich/gattung/c_bilder/ceropegia/ceropegia_linearis_ssp_woodii.jpg










2 comments:

Elizabeth Rose Stanton said...

Period perfection. I love it!

Kathryn Ault Noble said...

Looking forward to the book. . . thanks for sharing your process!