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the journey of
creating alice in wonderland has been
incredible because
it's so deeply original to have page
after page of the page of such
in-depth creativity it really
sparks the imagination on a very kind of
physical level
and you are a child again when we first
got the call
about potentially illustrating a book
for
the alice and wonderland exhibition it
was a magical
moment when you're dealing with
something of such historical
significance
then has inspired you and so many others
so richly you know
something good is going to come
the original illustrator for the alice
engravings
john daniel was originally a political
illustrator so he was you know very well
known at the time
and lewis carroll was very ambitious and
he wanted somebody really good to do the
illustration
looking at that and looking at how you
know salvador dali and
dorothy are tanning just all of these
people i've been so inspired that just
like
grew gross your mind again and again
a lot of my creativity comes from
walking through the halls of the v a it
is
like a treasure trove and you know it
really takes you on
a whole journey itself coming here and
seeing their collection of paper
theaters just been
hugely inspiring when you lift up the
book and you look through it it's just
like you are immediately transported
into another world you feel like
you are in the middle of the
conservatory you are one of the people
dancing
my work kind of works as a paper theater
so there's always
a few different layers so for me taking
people down on that path is very natural
what i like to feel like when i go into
the scene i want to be
like surprised i want to be kind of
encased i want to be able to go
all the way through it i want to go on
my own journey so that's always very
much what i want to create for the
viewer
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the victorian grimmings we're really
lucky to have a really
vast library of engravings that i've
been collecting
over the years a lot of them are from
plant studies
animal studies earth geometry space
architecture they're being presented
with this incredibly rich
mood boards looking over our vast
library thinking about how we're going
to
create these worlds it would be lovely
to
be able to use these to make these
journeys
and maybe we could create her out of one
of the mushrooms
in this one they will feel like it's
alice falling down in her dress you can
slightly see underneath her dress
that's always what i imagine when i see
the mushrooms
so in the very beginning putting
together these images it is literally
like having one blade of grass one
mushroom
it's very much a layered puzzle like
experience
the engravings in the very beginning are
almost quite yellowish on this antiquey
type paper
but you always need to take them in you
need to level them color balance them
get the best of the black girl to the
crispiest of the white
collaging digitally is very freeing
because you're able to just put things
back in front you can kind of duplicate
them you can play with them you can
twist them you can scale them
using the engravings a bit like a
painting brush or you could just take a
tiny bit of encraving and replicate it
and
almost paint with a great new world
so you have that patience you have that
connection with the story
if you have the patient you can really
create the magic
me and susie have been working on this
project together
and she's been in control of the colors
in this project
there's a lot of pastels they're not
just your usual pastels
we pushed for quite daring pastels so
you have peach
and turquoise and you've got reds and
you've got the yellows and the greens so
really proud of the colors that come
through in this but i feel like
they come out of the story
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alice was a huge part of it and we
really wanted to get her right
so i think she's been the most
challenging
part she wasn't this blonde disney
princess
she was you know a feisty little girl
with
a bob and so we wanted to capture
that she doesn't look exactly the same
in all the pages which
actually we thought might be a fault but
it's actually a richness
capturing the madness as well as the
beauty and the sanity keeping it adult
but kid-like
you know all of these things were a
fantastic challenge
i really hope that my illustrations
would be able to
show that story and that sense of
amazingness and wonder and
magic
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you