Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Classic with a twist!

Halloween will soon be upon us, so let’s do something spooky!
Your challenge is to take a classic piece of literature and create a book cover for it with a supernatural element added.
For instance, Pride and Predjudice and Zombies. Sense and Sensibility and Sea monsters. Android Karenina. Etc. (you can check out the cover images and synopses at quirkclassics.com) You’re picking a classic story and adding another context to it, while still being recognizable as the original story. This means: do research! Get costumes/characters/time period spot on.
Your supernatural element should be recognizable as well--ghost, werewolf, swamp thing, witches, zombies, alien, robot, gryphon, dragon, demon, or any other type of specific monster or being. Take a look at different mythologies and pick a being if you like. DO NOT just make something up however, like your own 5-headed one eyed purple monster.

You can pick a specific and memorable scene from the book to use for the cover, or the cover can be more of a general summation of the book.

5 sketches due next week. Vertical. Needs to have a background (and the background can be helpful in indicating what time period/place the book is set in). Think about your title, but do not leave room for text in your image, imagine it will be displayed beneath your illustration.

Some classic literature writers/examples:
Mark Twain-- Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, etc.
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
Charles Dickens—A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist etc.
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Shakespeare’s plays (pick one of them without supernatural elements—Othello, Merchant of Venice, Romeo & Juliet, etc.)
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
Jane Austen—Pride and Predjudice, Emma, Mansfield Park, etc.
Charlotte Bronte—Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Etc.

Blog assignment:
5 5-min observational sketches of environments. Sit and draw your room, draw a street, draw the cafeteria, whatever, but don't just draw an apple on a desk or something. I want to see more of a space, rather than just an object. Draw a rectangle for each sketch before starting, so you can compose your environment. Do not just crop the image later—actually draw the rectangle.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with!!

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