DILLON
CORSAIR
CORSAIR
Illustrations for the classic Italian fable “The Adventures of Pinocchio” by Carlo Collodi, done with watercolor and watercolor pencil.
A limited collection of prints are currently being sold at the Pinocchio Museum in Florence, Italy.
Designed to distill the book’s major themes into a single image, this illustration draws from early 20th century magazine cover illustrations with its balanced, rhythmical composition and collection of symbolic elements.
Pinocchio is portrayed in motion—caught between destinations, much like the episodic structure of the book itself. He is lured forward by the coins he’s tossing carelessly into the air, a metaphor for the themes of greed and naiveté which repeatedly divert him from his path.
The pages slipping from his school primer nod to his neglect of responsibility and personal-growth. His long nose, which symbolizes his immaturity, loops back around the composition to nearly “stab him in the back”—a dark but whimsical visual irony that reflects the consequences of his actions.
This illustration captures the turning point of the chapter as the puppeteer Fire-Eater wavers between malice and compassion. The composition acts like a balance scale, with Pinocchio and Harlequin positioned on either side, their lives being weighed in the Fire-Eater’s mind.
The structure references Renaissance Holy Trinity imagery with its symmetrical, pyramidal composition. However, In contrast to traditional devotional figures, the puppets are turned away from the central figure, emphasizing their isolation and opposition to Fire-Eater.
The puppeteer‘s beard divides the composition and visually corners the puppets. The subtle arch in his suit frames the puppets in niche-like spaces, reinforcing their narrative significance despite Fire-Eaters’ visual dominance.
This illustration portrays Pinocchio swimming towards the Blue Fairy, who appears as a goat, just before he’s swallowed by the monstrous shark. Like my Chapter 11 piece, the composition hinges on inter-character dynamics and strategic positioning.
Pinocchio’s fetal position expresses his vulnerability and desperate yearning for protection as his outstretched arm intersects his gaze with The Blue Fairy, who remains just out of reach. Her silhouette cradles him from a distance but doesn’t completely enclose him, symbolizing how she can’t guard Pinocchio from his own flaws.
The massive shark looms over the image with gaping jaws that envelop the characters, asserting its dominance as an inescapable force of chaos. A spiraling visual hierarchy, created through scale and positioning, guides the viewer’s eye through the turbulent emotional and narrative descent of the moment.
A limited collection of prints are being sold at Florence’s Museo del Giocattolo e di Pinocchio for $35 each.
Each character was developed through a research-driven and iterative design pipeline. To find a cohesive visual direction for the project, I experimented with design and medium in tandem.
Pinocchio’s skeletal structure was inspired by the hinge-jointed construction of 19th-century marionettes. Referencing renaissance sculpture, particularly Donatello’s David, Pinocchio’s wooden body is exposed beneath his iconic headwear. The blend of youthfulness with structural complexity highlights the magic of his creation.
For Fire-Eater, I began by analyzing past illustrations and the eccentric hairstyles I sketches from traditional European portraits. I explored various silhouettes while adhering to Collodi’s description of the character to find a striking design capable of delivering the character’s emotional complexity.
The shark in the book is notable for its massive scale and gaping mouth, so I looked to basking sharks for inspiration. During the early ideation phase, I explored more kaiju-inspired silhouettes and exaggerated monster forms. However, I decided that these concepts were incompatible with the visual direction I had established for the project and risked drifting too far from a faithful adaptation of the original text.
The final design is a stylized exaggeration of real-world biology. I incorporated visual elements from classical sculptures of fish and anatomical references from great white sharks to enhance the monster’s recognizability and predatory menace.
After many iterations, I arrived at a set of clear and cohesive compositions which I finalized digitally in Procreate. For the cover, I deployed Andrew Loomis’ compositional technique from his book Creative Illustration. The greyscale digital versions were printed, traced, and used as a reference for the final watercolor illustrations.