Cobblestone Magazine Illustrations: The Blizzard of 1888

This past month I was contacted by the art director for Cobblestone Magazine to do three illustrations for their March issue! This was a HUGE deal for me since in over four years of my full time professional illustration career this is the first time I was contacted by a brick and mortar publisher. I've had a ton of great projects with excellent clients over the years. However it has always been a goal of mine to eventually work for brick and mortar publishers as that is really the only possible way for me to stay in business long term. The art directors with Cobblestone were a pleasure to work with and they Loved the final illustrations. They didn't ask for any changes to the sketches or the final artwork!! So looking forward to working with them again if I ever have the chance. Get a copy of the march issue when it's available!

This first two page spread illustration depicts the School children's blizzard in 1888.

    I originally expected all of these illustrations to be simple as most of the image would be snow. I soon realized the complexities involved with any historical illustration. I had to research the style of clothing, what the haystacks looked like at that time period, and then one of the hardest aspects ended up being in how to depict a blinding snow and yet not have it overtake the image entirely, as we do still want to see the action. I ended up painting the entire image normally and then lost a lot of that detail once I started adding the snow with a fan brush.  I had to resist the urge to paint mountains into the image since this story takes place out on the prairie. Placing eight people into a tight composition with lots of text and a gutter was a whole nother challenge.

 The image above tells the story of one group of children and their teacher who survived the storm due to the quick thinking of one father. Many kids tried to walk home that day in the storm and died. But in this case a father fought his way to the school and told the teacher to keep the kids there for the night. They all survived as a result. For this image I researched one room school houses, stoves of the period, clothing, and I kept trying to figure out what sorts of colors might be used in the clothing back then. All the pictures are of course black and white and generally very poor quality so a large part of this project I had to use my imagination along with informed decisions.

This last illustration depicts another blizzard that took place a little later that same year only this time it effected eastern cities. I found out that this storm is one of the main reason eastern cities decided to push to have all water, electric and even trolley transportation moved underground when they realized how a storm like this could easily put these things out of commission for a while. I researched building styles, street lamps, trolleys, carriages, and even the telegraph poles. The storm dumped up to fifty inches of snow in some areas and Snow drifts reached up to the second stories of buildings.