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"Creating a new Alice look was a fun challenge. I was happy to combine the traditional with the new, the scrupulously researched with the fanciful. I needed to forget all my preconceptions and work from the original source materials and my own imagination. For instance, the original book said only that the caterpillar was smoking a hookah. I took it from there, adding all sorts of Middle Eastern touches.
"Originally, I designed this image to be darker but I decided to shed more light on the subject, especially when I wanted to delineate the trail of smoke from the hookah and its effect on the surrounding flowers. To give it even more light and a gentle touch, I painted Alice's reflection in the caterpillar's coffee pot.
"I incorporated the emblems of playing card suits in both images to further the playing card theme that runs throughout the book. I all but hid them in the caterpillar's coffee table but they are the china pattern in 'A Mad Tea Party.'
"I particularly liked working on the tea party because most of the interpretations I've seen picture the Mad Hatter, March Hare and Dormouse almost as grotesques. I wanted them to have the same charm as my other characters."
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Storytelling through pictures has always held a certain fascination for Scott
Gustafson; be they the moving images in animated cartoons, or the epic
illustrations of N. C. Wyeth. Upon entering the Chicago Academy of Fine Art,
Scott was 99% sure that he wanted to become an animator, but it was that 1%
that ultimately drew him more and more into the world of stretched canvas and
oil paint. "As an animator, "Gustafson says, "your contribution to a given
film is, by necessity, limited to whatever character you've been assigned. But
as an illustrator, you're responsible for locations, sets, costumes, props,
lighting and character designs, not to mention the overall mood and emotion of
a given painting. It's about the best job there is."
Over the nearly twenty-five years that span his career, he has had the
opportunity to fulfill commissions for a number of varied clients and
publishers such as Celestial Seasonings, Playboy magazine, Saturday Evening
Post, The Bradford Exchange, DreamWorks and The Greenwich Workshop. His
illustrated books include The Night Before Christmas, Peter Pan, Nutcracker,
as well as two original titles, Animal Orchestra and Alphabet Soup. His newest
release, Classic Fairy Tales, was recently awarded a Chesley award for best
interior book illustrations from the Association of Science Fiction and
Fantasy Artists and is currently in its third printing.
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