'Twas the Night Before Christmas... behind the scenes

With Christmas fast approaching, I thought it would be fun to post some photos I took while I was working on illustrating 'Twas the Night Before Christmas (Candlewick, 2002). A lot of work goes into illustrating a book, and much of it takes places before the pencil ever hits the paper. Here's some of what I did to try to bring this story to life.

Every time it snowed during the winter of 2000-2001, I went outside and took pictures. To this day, when I see new-fallen snow, it's hard not to grab my camera. This one is of my backyard, back when I lived in Arlington, Massachuestts. Guess I forgot to put the patio furniture away...

I decided to set the story in Beacon Hill, in Boston, since the buildings in that neighborhood were from the right time period. I spent some time wandering around Beacon Hill, and settled on The Nichols House Museum as the perfect setting. For one, it's a beautiful building. Plus, it's a museum house, so it looks much the same as it looked back in the 1800's. And most importantly, there's a lawn outside! I realized that I needed a house with a lawn, because of the line, "When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter". 

One day I headed into Boston right after a snowstorm and got some great pictures that really helped me envision how I wanted my book to look.

This is the point of view I decided to use for the scene when Santa is landing on the roof.

Same view, different snowstorm.

 

They even let me inside!

 When I draw people, I usually find real people to pose for me. Oftentimes I pose myself, because I know what poses I need, and I'm always there. When I was trying to decide what the narrator should look like, I kept picturing him as my friend, author M.T. Anderson. So I asked him to pose for me, which he did. He was such a good sport about it, and he did an amazing job. This was back before he was a National Book Award winner. I bet he doesn't do this sort of thing anymore!

Tobin Anderson kindly posing as the narrator in 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, while my then-girlfriend, now-wife Sarah works as lighting technician. I'm sort of the director at this part of the process.

I wanted to make sure Santa looked really good in my book, so I went right to the big guy himself. He took a few minutes out of his busy schedule to pose for me.  Fortunately he was at the mall, so I didn't have to go all the way to the North Pole (good thing, because I didn't have any money!).

My wife, Sarah, remembered that there was a barn full of old sleighs and wagons at the horse farm where she used to work when she was in high school. So we took a road trip up to Maine, and found this amazing red sleigh, which I used as the model for Santa's sleigh:

sidenote: I used a slightly altered version of this sleigh in Over the River and Through the Wood

I set up this fake Christmas tree in my basement, with nineteenth century decorations. It was up for about a year. It got really dusty.

Sarah and I were on vacation in New Orleans when I found this great model reindeer. Sure, I probably could have found it at a store in Boston, but I bought it. His antlers mostly survived the plane ride. I would hang him in front of my drawing table while I was drawing.

And my mother-in-law's cat, Oscar, kindly agreed to pose as the cat.

Happy Holidays, everyone! Thanks for reading my blog.

-Matt