Campaign update 2

Campaign update 1

Stretch Goal 1 of CAD$18,000 reached! 

We will send a one-page Looking-Glass Calendar 2021 to everyone who has made a deposit CAD$20 and above, along with the rewards that are listed in your pledges.

Stretch Goal 2 of CAD$24,000.

Dear friends, if we reach it, there will be an extra gift for every backer who has pledged CAD$50 and above. The gift will be your choice of: 

The print of the first page of the chosen chapter illustration - 8.5"W x 11.5"H on archival acid-free paper, signed. 

Poster with my pen/ink drawings to Alice (my first series). Vertical composition. 

Poster with my pen/ink drawings to Alice (my first series). Horizontal composition. 

What makes this limited edition of 'Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There' a must-have? This book is going to live up to the legacy of the original 'Alice in Wonderland' that we illustrated and published back in 2008 (more details below). That project was a great success, having been meticulously illustrated and prepared, while sparing no expense on printing and binding - a true collector's item. After many years of hard work, putting great care into illustrations, we are ready to complete the sequel. What we need now is your help to fund the printing and binding process.

We are proud to dedicate this edition to the 150th Anniversary of publishing the 'Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There' which we will celebrate next year (1871—2021).

 Lewis Carroll's masterpiece 'Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There' is the sequel to his 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'. So, all this is not about the first book? Well, that's because it, 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' was already published in 2008, then in 2009. This work received a lot of favorable reviews and I was awarded by IBBY for illustrations. 

Of course, I wasn’t going to stop there, and continued to work on the second story about Alice — ‘Looking Glass’. There was a lot of sketching, composing, character development, etc. Time after time the 'Looking-Glass' was put aside for other projects, one of which was the illustrating and publishing of 'The Hunting of the Snark' by Lewis Carroll. Nevertheless, despite several breaks and intermissions, the work continued up to this day, and now we are very close to the end. We would much appreciate your support in bringing this book to life.

A long-long time ago when I read Alice first time I was charmed by Carroll's world. Naturally, I began drawing, sketching, doodling - visualizing Alice my own way, "cause I'm a damn artist". 

 In the beginning, there were no plans to publish my drawings. My obsession with Alice's visualization had a form of an endless and unpredictable game with characters, situations, adventures, and nonsense. Each time I reread the book I found new details, new aspects of the conversations or circumstances, which I had missed before. It doesn't matter whether you are an observant, meticulous reader or not — Carroll is a magician, his literary techniques are often similar to an illusionist's craft. A single passage can be read seven times, but suddenly, on the eighth time, you notice an obvious detail and think to yourself: "how in the world could I have missed this before?" 

  I drew characters, composed scenes, invented costumes and surroundings, everything was getting “curiouser and curiouser”. I just could not stop, it became an obsessive occupation, a kind of hobby, a favorite pastime. And at some point, I realized that all this madness must be turned into something, into a book. So, I collected all the graphic works and began to collate them into a series of illustrations with a coherent style for a book.

While reading "Alice", sometimes it is hard to understand what unites some parts of the book. Each chapter looks like an isolated event that isn't related to any other; different characters, locations, and events can be easily changed, can be rearranged, without losing the coherence of the story.

English is my second language, so some of the finer words and nuances elude me to this day, but at some point, I stumbled upon the word "scene" and thought it a perfect fit to describe each chapter. Yes, these chapters really look like theatrical acts.

Carroll starts the chapter like this:

     “There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting between them…”

Doesn't this remind you of the mise-en-scene (arrangement of the stage) in a play? Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) was very fond of theater, theatricality, and stage performance, and this love helped him to write and construct the story about Alice. Based on this idea, I built myself a peculiar image of the curtain, so the illustration as a whole consists of:

     1) The main part of the drawing executed in brown color.

     2) Frame or a kind of curtain, drawn in black and white with graphite pencil.

This curtain not only frames the illustration, but also tells “its own” story, explains to us some details of conversations, verses, thoughts, and/or various literary, cultural and historical reminiscences. 

Risks & Challenges

We have met certain difficulty with printing — the printer which had completed our request with 'Alice in Wonderland' Limited Edition, published in 2008, doesn't produce books anymore, so we had to search for another one with equal capabilities and ability to match the quality of the first book. We are lucky to have found one.
The possibility of delays during the pre-press and printing process has been considered, so our deadlines are set with a fair margin.