Jen and I took a walking tour of the beautiful College Hill in Providence on Sunday, taking note of many of the important locations of H.P. Lovecraft’s works and life. We followed the wonderfully helpful map created by the kind folks at http://www.hplovecraft.com.

“I never can be tied to raw new things,
For I first saw the light in an old town,
Where from my window huddled roofs sloped down,
To a quaint harbour rich with visionings.

Streets with carved doorways where the sunset beams,
Flooded old fanlights and small window-panes,
And Georgian steeples topped with gilded vanes ~
These are the sights that shaped my childhood dreams.”

- Quote on H.P. Lovecraft Memorial

These photos are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

One of my favorite gaming illustrators spoke at the Eric Carle Picture Book Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts today. Tony DiTerlizzi (site blog) has worked on numerous games throughout his career, such as Magic the Gathering, the Planescape Dungeons and Dragons campaign setting material and White Wolf’s Changeling game. He’s on to books now and has received kudos in the picture book field for The Spider and the Fly, among others.

Besides talking about his childhood love of DnD and Star Wars and the influence they had on his artwork, Tony talked about a childhood book he created. It was a 75-page field guide of mythical monsters, some from folklore and some from his own imagination.

Many years later, after years of illustrating their game books, he tried to pitch the idea of a monster field guide to the makers of DnD, but they passed.

In time, he found great success with his picture books. After The Spider and the Fly won awards, his editor asked him an open-ended question, “what book would you like to do next? You can do anything you’d like.”

Again he returned to the idea of the Field Guide as written by Arthur Spiderwick on several adventurous expeditions, with tips about how to handle various monsters. The editor liked the story, maybe even more than the field guide idea, and told him to work it out. That’s when the Spiderwick chronicles were born!

He worked with Holly Black to create the chapter books. He said he wanted to fill the books with illustrations because, as a visual kid, when he turned 10 years old, he stopped reading books and switched to comics. He just couldn’t get into the words-only style! When do we stop appreciating illustrated books? I don’t think we do, we’re just tricked into not expecting them.

He showed us a piece from a new project he’s working on called “Kenny and the Dragon,” a retelling of “The Reluctant Dragon,” with a rabbit as a protagonist.

The exhibit featured photographs and maquettes from the upcoming Spiderwick movie and best of all, lots of original paintings and inks from Tony. His ink and watercolor pieces were lively … you know the energy you get from your original sketches sometimes? He keeps that energy throughout the piece.

He mentioned Arthur Rackham, an illustrator from the early 1900s as an inspiration to his artwork for the series as well as the design and typography of old books from the period.

His gouache on bristol paintings were the real draw for me. The field guide pieces showed a deft and subtle handling of color with beautiful neutrals and hints of bright colors throughout. The Seeing Stone cover piece was really amazing, showing his ability to really push a brush around a piece of board.