Acquiring the Fruit of Life

Here is a glimpse into the process of creating another page for Ophelia book 1. Story details are left out to limit spoilers, but as you can see, Ophelia is climbing a strange mushroom-shaped tree to grab fruit high in its horizontal branches.

The art was created by Thai artist Kompischok Chuangsaenguthai. After some explanation about the story and a description of this particular page, he offered this initial sketch.

We can see some nice ruins here and the tree which has roots that mold around structures like I saw when I lived in Thailand (That is one reason I chose him to be the artist—familiarity with temples and these trees).

Close up | © podk / Pixabay

My vision included this being a sacred tree like the one in the Garden of Eden story. Our discussions led me to make one of my squiggles to show visually the general shape and winding horizontal branches I was describing to him.

There are so many things to consider when creating a scene like this. One example is: how can Ophelia actually make her way up this tree and not be camouflaged within the detail? Showing her leaping this high was not going to be believable. Such is the uncertainty of choices we make in this process.

At this point he offered two options for how Ophelia could be climbing. I chose the right one. At this point it was still unclear if her detail would be lost within the lines of the tree.

And suddenly there is color! It is starting to look vibrant, and he did a great job making Ophelia pop out from the tree.

Some corrections and deletions were requested, and finally we were done.

The action of acquiring the fruit seemed incomplete without seeing Ophelia actually grab it. Early on I asked if he was open to the idea of creating a smaller image of her grasping the fruit. Now begins the close up!