A Cyclone and a Rainbow --Oz page 3 and 4

Hello lovelies! I completed page three and four today of my altered book illustrating The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

I wanted to create a cyclone with movement--the ability to open the spiral and expand the storm making the book more interactive. I am super thrilled at how it came out!

I looked back at the text which tells us this:

The house whirled around two or three times and rose slowly through the air. Dorothy felt as if she were going up in a balloon. Foreshadowing! 

The north and south winds met where the house stood, and made it the exact centre of the cyclone. In the middle of a cyclone the air is generally still, but the great pressure of the wind on every side of the house raised it up higher and higher, until it was at the very top of the cyclone; and there it remained and was carried miles and miles away as easily as you could carry a feather.

It was very dark, and the wind howled horribly around her, but Dorothy found she was riding quite easily. After the first few whirls around, and one other time when the house tipped badly, she felt as if she were being rocked gently, like a baby in a cradle.

Toto did not like it. He ran about the room, now here, now there, barking loudly; but Dorothy sat quite still on the floor and waited to see what would happen.

Once Toto got too near the open trap door, and fell in; and at first the little girl thought she had lost him. But soon she saw one of his ears sticking up through the hole, for the strong pressure of the air was keeping him up so that he could not fall. She crept to the hole, caught Toto by the ear, and dragged him into the room again, afterward closing the trap door so that no more accidents could happen.

I chose the line The house whirled around two or three times and rose slowly through the air as my anchor for the page. I thought about making the sky dark the text says, but it was so dark that I was afraid the cyclone might not show up well, so I decided to make the sky bright blue and paint in a swirly style to indicate that the winds were whipping up. I decided to tear up some cotton wool and glue it on to be clouds to show that she was higher than the clouds. I saw this technique used by children's illustrator Ezra Jack Keats. The Amazing Spiderman and I once went to the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg where the de grummond Children's Literature Archive is housed. We saw some original illustrated storyboards from Keats' book The Snowy Day. He used this technique and I squirrelled it away in my brain for future use. 

I cut the cyclone from dark patterned card and cut it in a spiral. I used silver watercolour paint to lightly tint the words The house whirled around two or three times and rose slowly through the air and then pasted them on the spiral. I attached a ribbon loop so that the spiral could be lifted and form a 3D tunnel like a tornado.

Then I needed to work on the next page--the landing. Since Dorothy is going "over the rainbow" I wanted to create an asymmetrical rainbow effect. I used torn tissue paper that I layered on to the page to create my rainbow. But I also wanted a riot of colour to support the text as we see from Dorothy's point of view how different OZ is from Kansas. The text says:

The little girl gave a cry of amazement and looked about her, her eyes growing bigger and bigger at the wonderful sights she saw.

The cyclone had set the house down very gently--for a cyclone--in the midst of a country of marvellous beauty. There were lovely patches of greensward all about, with stately trees bearing rich and luscious fruits. Banks of gorgeous flowers were on every hand, and birds with rare and brilliant plumage sang and fluttered in the trees and bushes. A little way off was a small brook, rushing and sparkling along between green banks, and murmuring in a voice very grateful to a little girl who had lived so long on the dry, grey prairies.

I chose The cyclone had set the house down very gently--for a cyclone--in the midst of a country of marvellous beauty as my quote for this page. I wanted to create a sense of falling with the text. I cut the line into 6 parts and used watercolour paint to give each phrase a gentle wash of colour in the order of the rainbow (well...without indigo) and glued them in a haphazard way to create movement. 

Then I attached the house in the bottom corner made from the same materials on page two when you meet Aunt Em and Uncle Henry.

Here are the two pages side by side.

Sty tuned for two illustrations definitely NOT found in the film!