Project One: Alices adventures in Wonderland 

For this project I undertook Alice's Adventures in Wonderland written by Lewis Carroll, it wasn't a story I liked as a child so I thought it'd be a good challenge. 

Initial thumbnailing 

In this project I set myself the parameters of 
Front cover x1
Full bleed illustration x1
Spot illustration x2

Tall Alice

I had a few ideas on how I could illustrate the scene of Alice when she drops into the rabbit hole and experiments with the potion and the cake. I wanted to push scale here while showing her still as a child character. 

Tall vs. small Alice

This is another version of Alice growing, particularly in the White Rabbits house. 

Small Alice

Here I played around with Alice being shrunken enough to fit into a teacup 

The Tea party

The Tea party scene is one of the most iconic parts of the story, I got a lot of ideas of just how I could illustrate this scene. 

Big Alice in the house

I also thought illustrating Alice growing in size while in the White rabbits gaff would be a good excuse to experiment with perspective. 

Image references

After reading the story I had started conjuring up images of what wonderland looked like, a mixture of eccentricity, eclectic design, gothic hints and whimsy where what came to me.  This being a modern book and imagining Alice was a modern girl also made me want to make Wonderland look slightly dated to help differentiate the settings.

Alices appearance 

For my reimagination of Alice I wanted to keep her quite colourful, either keeping her blue dress or the more practical a set of dungarees. I imagined her as being from more recent times, compared to a vintage feeling Wonderland. Adding to why she stands out. 

While I was thumbnailing for this project, I thought about how it was that I could diversify my reimagination of Alice. I wanted her to represent something more than a girl who got lost down a rabbit hole. The story is one of adventure and it made me think of what types of characters appear in these genres. I couldn't think of a case where a physically disabled character took the lead. So that is what I decided to make my Alice, someone with a physical disability. 

I also wanted to go against the grain of Alice's stereotypical portrayal as a white, blonde, blue eyed, middle class girl. I thought about it some more and landed at illustrating her as a black character. I listened to these videos to properly engage with the impact of my choices. I am not black myself so I dont know the impact of not seeing myself in classical literature. Listening to black voices definetly helped me think a little bit more in my portrayal. 

This take plays off her original colour palette, yet is a modern and a practical take on it, replacing her blue dress with a pair of dungarees more appropriate for an explorer. Importantly I designed Alice with a prosthetic leg. Initially it was inspired by porcelain prosthetics. However i changed it out for something more suitable for adventures. 

When it came to understanding my choice of a POC Alice, I did research on a topic called Texturism. Alice is characterised by her blonde shoulder length hair. However if I was to illustrate a black Alice it is likely she would have a type of textured hair. 

From what I understand within the black community it is pretty common to have 4c hair, this could also be called a coil or spring. It is characterised by the tight curl within the hair fiber. While other races can also have this non black hair tends to be looser in curls or wavy. 

Cover

For the cover I was inspired by artist Camille Rose Garcia, she paints gothic imaginations of childrens books classics. I was also inspired by English rose gardens and wild gardens. My idea was to illustrate Alice when she first goes into the queen of Hearts garden. 

Single page illustration

For the full bleed illustration I thought Alice growing for the first time in the rabbit hole would be a cool composition. I also thought of using one-point perspective to give the illusion of the burrow being extremely long. For this I looked at abandoned hallways in grand homes as it had the odd aesthetic I wanted. 

Spot illustrations 

For the two spot illustrations I chose to illustrate the Tea party scene and a scene between both big and small Alice. For the Tea party scene I wanted to make it appear handmade and as weird as the Mad hatter is. So I illustrated a large set of mushrooms and a tiny house cake. For the other spot we see Alice drinking the potion to become smaller and her eating the cake to become bigger.

Finals 

Cover 

Full Bleed

My cover was kept simple, I chose to focus on Alice's first time in the secret garden. I thought surrounding her with foliage that was alive was a weird concept but one that'd catch the eye in a shop. I did this traditionally using mixed media, watercolours, alcoholic markers and watercolour pencils. I used photoshop to remove any marks on the paper, and add some saturation back to the scan. 

The full bleed was the completed using collage and mixed media. I stumbled across a new released version of the book in a charity shop. It made me think of an idea of the words of the page in which Alice grows and shrinks in the rabbit hole being somehow incorporated into the illustration. I ended up collaging around the rim of the illustration, this acted as a border and allowed for it to not be cut off. 

Spot Illustration 1

Spot Illustration 2

For this spot I chose to illustrate the tea party scene. The colours of the Mushrooms are fantasy however I looked at Amanita, Russula and Porcini mushrooms for reference 

This illustration shows both big and small Alice, this scene doesn't happen in the book however I thought it'd be an interesting concept. 

Mockups 

Obviously this book will not be printed, however making final mock-ups of the book was a really nice end to the project. It was nice to see everything put together. 

Finals page