The prompt was the first paragraph of Alice’s Adventure’s in Wonderland which I absolutely adored tackling. A part of me wanted to make it classic and part of me wanted to see a modern Alice. So after wrestling with it a few weeks, I decided to do both: Illustrate in a classic style, but have the actual era be present day.
For the composition, and this was really the fun part, my mind kept being seduced by the magic of a pop-up book, 2D and 3D intertwined. When I worked on the piece I actually worked in three separate planes: rabbit, Alice, and the sister (do we ever even learn her name? I can’t remember….must consult Carroll again) and the city line. I had all these figures on separate sheets of paper that I moved around and taped together. Even once I scanned in each “plane”, they were moved around and resized a bit. The whole process was a time-consuming mess and I didn’t know exactly what it would result in, but in the end, it all came together and most importantly I had a blast playing with it.
Now I want a pop-up book project!
