Tales of the Peculiar by Ransom Riggs forgoes the eerie photos for carved art.
If you’re having withdrawals of Ransom Riggs‘ Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children trilogy, you should not worry so. For as you may already know, there is a movie based on the first book that will be coming out in the fall. But not only that, Ransom will be coming out with a companion book for said trilogy. Tales of the Peculiar will be coming out a few weeks before the movie, so you could once again be enchanted by the literature before you enter the theater.
Tales of the Peculiar will have a collection of fairytales based on Miss Peregrine’s universe, which is mentioned in book two, Hollow City. It should no doubt be just as intriguing and entertaining as the trilogy.
Check out the list of peculiar chapter titles:
- The Splendid Cannibals
- The Fork-Tongued Princess
- The First Ymbryne
- The Woman Who Befriended Ghosts
- Cocobolo
- The Pigeons of Saint Paul’s
- The Girl Who Could Tame Nightmares
- The Locust
- The Boy Who Could Hold Back the Sea
- The Tale of Cuthbert
Not only that, but you’ll see that Ransom has employed artist Andrew Davidson to create woodcut drawings to be displayed throughout the book. Ransom had this to say about the artist:
“I knew Andrew [Davidson]’s work from the UK adult editions of the Harry Potter books, and said ‘something like this would be great! Of course he’s too cool and fancy, we could never get him. But something like him.”
Fortunately for Ransom, Davidson agreed to partake in this peculiar world. Below is an example of one of those drawings.
Regarding the type of artwork done to create these illustrations, the woodcutting technique is a little more elaborate than just sketching it out:
“All the images for the book are wood engravings, a process which requires a design to be transposed onto a piece of English Box or Lemon wood. The design, which is of course back to front, is then cut into the block using very small engraving tools.
This method of image making was familiar when illustrations and type were run together on a letterpress printing machine in the early days of newspapers and periodicals. Each mark made on the block shows up white, so with stippling, cross hatching and cutting through the wood with different pressures, an image is built up.
When this is done, the block — which in this case is about 9” by 6” — is first carefully inked and then placed in my 1859 Albion hand press and printed onto handmade pager. A block this size would normally take about nine days to cut.”
Read the full article, which includes more of Davidson’s art at Mashable.