I guess it’s about time I announced some new work on my website, including illustrations for Richard Due‘s masterful YA fantasy, The Dragondain and for Abuelita’s House, available on the FarFaria app by Intuary, Inc.
More details about these projects to come!
Ink, watercolor, digital (c) Carolyn Arcabascio, 2012
This illustration of Alan Rabinowitz has been floating around in my head for the past couple of months, and with this week’s Illustration Friday theme of “vocal,” I figured what better time to actually put pen to paper for this one.
Rabinowitz, one of the world’s leading wildlife conservationists, was born with a debilitating stutter that dictated every aspect of his life through his childhood to his early adulthood. The New York City school system placed him in special classes through the sixth grade, deeming him handicapped; he didn’t fluently speak a complete sentence to other people until he was nineteen (that’s right, not for nineteen years!). But like other severe stutterers, for psychological reasons, he was able to speak to animals all the while.
The Bronx Zoo in New York was a refuge for Rabinowitz growing up. In interviews he tells a story about one particular visit, watching a jaguar pace in the Big Cat House at the zoo, and empathizing with its silent frustration. He whispered a promise to the jaguar: “I’ll find a place for us.”
Through therapy, Rabinowitz was eventually able to find his voice, and as promised, became that voice for animals — and especially for big cats. I won’t attempt to summarize the profound and wide-spread impact Dr. Rabinowitz’s work has had on big cat populations throughout the world, but to any and all reading this, I highly encourage you read (and listen) on elsewhere!:
Here’s the finished product of an ink and watercolor map of Treling, a tree nursery and home to Lily and Jasper Winter, and Ebb Autumn, stars of Richard Due’s The Moon Coin. Stylistically, this was a departure from the work I’ve done in recent years, but I had such a blast with it that I’m considering busting out the ol’ microns more often.
Richard Due’s The Moon Coin is a story (…tale? Read the book, there’s a difference), of Lily and Jasper Winter whose eccentric Unlce Ebb has gone missing. Ebb is the kind of uncle whose presence colors life’s ordinary days with magic, and whose bedtime stories tales of the far-off Moon Realm have for years sent the siblings off into dream-filled nights of nine orbiting Moons and their beautiful and strange inhabitants. Even Uncle Ebb’s house seems infused with the wonder of the Moon Realm, which, any child knows, is not a real place. Not really.
Last summer, I had the pleasure of illustrating this project, which was released as an ebook for the Kindle, Nook, and iPad. Now, it gives me great pleasure to tell the people of Earth, and of any realms of Moons out there, that the print edition of The Moon Coin is on its way this spring. I’m of the ilk who find the war between ebooks and bound books tiresome (let’s all live together in harmony, shall we?), but if there isn’t still that certain something about a tangible bound book, spine facing outward from my shelf.
While Richard’s in the process of the finishing typesetting touches–a job I do not envy–I’m gearing up for the new cover, featuring one of Uncle Ebb’s inventions–the Tesla generator-powered coral reef walls of his mansion’s hallway. Here are some rough sketches to get a handle on the lighting and patterns of the wall, which is enveloping a painting of (spoiler alert!) Lily and Nimlinn–a Rinn of Barreth–in The Moon Realm. There, I said it. The Moon Realm is real, the suspense is over.
Click the image below for Richard’s tour of the mockup book jacket in action (featuring a cameo from Moppet, the pocket Rinn).
Some sketches from today’s animal study workshop at RISD’s Edna Laurence Nature Lab, hosted by NESCBWI. Thanks to Christina Rodriquez and all who organized this awesome event!
And of course, much obliged to all the scaley, furry, and feathery models for graciously donating their time. Particularly, Crackers the African Gray.
And finally, a posthumous thank you to this Long Horned Beetle and his exoskeletal friends for being encased in glass. I’m at once fascinated by you and so very, very creeped out by you.
