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.
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| This is the point of view I decided to use for the scene when Santa is landing on the roof. |
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| Same view, different snowstorm. |
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| 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!
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| 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:
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| 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
