Diane
Stanley speaks on how she
creates her books...
"Once
I choose my subject, I
naturally do a great deal of
research. But in addition to
finding out the facts of my
subject's life, I soak up the
atmosphere of the time and
place in which he or she
lived. This is reinforced by
traveling to Italy or Egypt or
wherever my subject's story
took place. I take hundreds of
photographs of the landscape,
the architecture, and actual
buildings such as the
birthplace of Joan of Arc or
Michelangelo. All of this is
reflected in the design of the
book and the style of
illustration."
How
does she use her computer?
"Let
me use as an example the
picture of Michelangelo
painting the Sistine Chapel
ceiling. I scanned the image
of God creating Adam into my
computer. I transformed the
image slightly to give it
perspective then went over it
with the cloning tool in
Photoshop to take out the
cracks which were obviously
not there in Michelangelo's
time. Then, I
"erased" part of the
art which, in my illustration,
Michelangelo had not yet
painted. The next step was to
create the rest of my picture.
But instead of drawing this on
paper, I did it on the
computer, using a Wacom tablet
and stylus. The drawing
technique is the same, but the
image I draw goes up on the
screen. Then, I transferred my
drawing into Photoshop and
sandwiched the two images
together, with Michelangelo in
front. I could move each image
around until I got the
composition I liked. Then I
printed it all out on
watercolor paper. This is the
same way I transfer sketches
when I am working in the good
old-fashioned way."
Will
Diane use this process again?
"It's
hard to know whether or how I
will work with the computer
again. One thing I have
learned is that the computer
is a tool like any other.
There are fascinating effects
you can achieve with the
computer, and exploring them
can be exciting and stimulate
your creativity. It gives you
flexibility to try lots of new
things (I wonder how this
pattern I just spent three
days creating would look in
red instead of blue?). It was
a different way of thinking."
"Still, after all that is said,
I don't ever want to get too
far away from real paint on
real paper."
|
 |
