Sunday, August 19, 2012

N is for Nemo

This week's entry for AlphaBooks is a little fellow with big dreams: Nemo, the star of Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland. Yes, I know this is stretching the book definition a bit, but I first encountered Nemo in a Dover book (from which I scanned these panels), so there you go. It might have been more kosher to do Captain Nemo, but I'm not nearly as fond of him as I am of this guy. Nemo truly has magnificent, bizarre, dramatic, one might even say cinematic, dreams, & McCay makes them all look spectacular.

I'm afraid I rather obliterated McCay's gorgeous scenery here, but I was aiming for an effect of the dream fading as Nemo awoke. And of course I completely changed the small panel below (although I left the original text).
His bed doesn't really look like an "N" (though if it did it would surely explain his troubled sleep)-- nor was he quite so N-ishly contorted himself in the original panel. I threw in a few more dreamy "N"s for good measure.

Acrylic on 2 panels of a page from the aforementioned Dover book,
~4" x 9" (The book is out of print, but apparently still available, by the way!)

4 comments:

  1. Oh goodness, I feel like I have not been here for a long time!!! So good to visit. You know, I have this thing for striped pajamas so I immediately noticed Nemo. Plus, like Nemo, I have dramatic vivid and exhausting dreams. Just woke up from one. Sleep makes me tired. Heheheh. I miss your illustrations. Hope your summer is great!

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  2. Couldn't help but get a chuckle out of this one, as I was JUST telling someone I have a low profile bed, in case I fall out! Thanks for the smile!

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  3. So clever...I love all of the ways you used the letterform. Such fun!

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  4. Gosh, I think I would tumble out of an N-shaped bed quite often. Nice piece and tribute to Windsor McCay.

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