Hi again SCBWI fam! It’s me, Sibu TP, and I wanted to think out loud for a bit with you about references.
My author-illustrator debut, Home, Home, released recently through Viking Press, and a great deal of the imagery in my book was based on references. The vast majority of these references were photos that I took while traveling to India, and some were from old family photographs that my parents keep in yellowing albums at home.
I use references a lot in my work. For my previous project, A Taste of Home, I photographed a lot of references in the lower east side, NYC, where the story takes place. Reference usage is super important for telling stories. Having real-world references injected into your work not only adds an element of legitimacy and ethos to what you’re making, but it also grounds your work, allowing your brain to then think beyond those details to ideas you may not have otherwise gotten.
I use references a lot in my work. For my previous project, A Taste of Home, I photographed a lot of references in the lower east side, NYC, where the story takes place. Reference usage is super important for telling stories. Having real-world references injected into your work not only adds an element of legitimacy and ethos to what you’re making, but it also grounds your work, allowing your brain to then think beyond those details to ideas you may not have otherwise gotten.
I mean where do we get ideas for our stories? They don’t just come from nowhere. Even the most outlandish brainstorm session yields ideas that are filtered through our brains before they end up on the page. So it's always colored by our personal thoughts and experiences and would thus come from a place specific to us. It has to be both. It's an accurately depicted illustration, yes, but it's also a fuzzy message from your memory and imagination.
And to me, that’s key to reference use. It’s not always a 1 to 1 type of situation where you copy something down. References are like a sturdy guide post upon which your ideas can lean. They’re meant to inform and aid, not to necessarily be the primary content of the artwork itself. That's why I always try to use references as a supplement to flesh out my ideas, not as the end goal.
Here are two illustrations I did for my last book, A Taste of Home, written by the wonderful Richard Ho, and published by Roaring Brook Press. Below each illustration is a reference photo I used for them.
In both instances, I started by drawing out the composition, placing my characters and deciding on the lighting. Only after those decisions were all made did I implement changes based on the references I shot. In fact, the reference photos I took were also informed by the composition that I worked out for the spread. So there was a lot of synergy between illustration and reference informing each other.
I'm going to end off here. Does this one look familiar? If it doesn't, then you probably blocked it out of your memory because I spent SO much time (too much?) talking through the process in my last post. I didn't, however, talk about how I used reference for it. This illustration is from Home, Home, and it represents what I feel is my personal ideal for good reference use.
Just like I did with the two illustrations above, I made all of the decisions for this piece before using my references. The composition, the subjects, the perspective, the light source, etc. were all decided and loosely drawn. Unlike the two illustrations above, I actually had this reference photo for a couple years before I worked on the book. So I actually had to search for an appropriate reference from my library (Yes, I have a reference library. And also Yes, it is disorganized and impossible to sort through :) ).
The reason why I feel like this particular illustration process is my ideal for reference use is that there's a looseness in how I worked on it. I was able to work with openness and use reference that worked for the composition, and not just the other way around. Because I used the imagery that was in my mind as the north star for where to end up, the reference worked to serve that image. And in those moments that the real-world implications of the reference photo necessitated change in the illustration, I was able to make those changes because the process is so malleable and allows for alterations without negotiating the essence of that ultimate image. And in the end, that's exactly where you want to wind up: that beautiful and abstract message from your imagination.
Until next time, happy art-making, friends!
If this post interested you, please reach out and let me know!
sibup.art@gmail.com
About Me
I'm a storyteller. I make cultural and societal picture books that are rich, colorful, and touch on universal stories. I work through the belief that we're all connected by those small moments in life that I try to capture in my illustrations.
Born and raised in New York, I am a first-generation child of immigrants from Kerala, India. I spent a great deal of my childhood years scribbling and sketching, dreaming and imagining. I studied English Literature at Stony Brook University and received my MFA in Illustration at the Hartford Art School.
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