Still, I think the message in Travels of observing ourselves and our country is an important one. Things do get a little heavy toward the end of the trip, and even in escapism we are forced to confront things. It's also an autobiographical book, and serves nicely as an About the Author section at the end of this doodle. You can see how elements of the sketch ended up in the Pearl, and thankfully, there was a chance to draw Ed in the form of Doc in Cannery Row.Ĭoming back to Charley, I guess one question people might ask is why not end Googl E with the obvious East of Eden? That's totally valid (and has been asked), but I wanted to end this doodle on a somewhat lighthearted note. This book was eventually cut out, but I intended it to be another homage to one of Steinbeck's biggest inspirations and closest friend, Ed Ricketts. The sea image became the final concept for the cover, but the village scene comes back to haunt us. In the above sketch, I drew the shape of The Pearl enclosed by the village, as Kino's discovery of the Pearl brings the entire town upon him and his family. I chose The Pearl because it is my dad's favorite (he's the one that got me into Steinbeck years ago). One of the things I wish I did a better job on was identifying more of these unexpected moments throughout the series. You're providing another viewpoint to the story without changing it, but creating more intrigue instead. The quote above is taken slightly out of context from the moment it occurs in the story and this, to me, was a small victory – when illustration is more than just drawing the text. He has definitely played a big part in my growth as an artist recently and this seemed like the right time to thank him for it.
He has a tonal sensibility (both artistic and social) that goes hand in hand with Steinbeck's words, and hopefully some of it trickled its way into these illustrations. You may also spot some influence from Ben Shahn, specifically his work, Beautitudes. The first illustration poses a question on that premise: Are the two men walking toward the physical farm to start a real job, or is this a walk through their imaginary "fat of the land"? What struck me most this time around was the struggle between reality and longing. I have a newfound appreciation for this book, having only read it before in high school. Placing one of the iconic cannery bridges in the reflection of a pothole pond was a subtle way of illustrating this parallel. The bums, prostitutes, store clerk, Doc, etc, all relied on each other in some strange unspoken way its own ecosystem. I really enjoyed the parallels between Doc's study of marine biology and how Steinbeck observes the characters within Cannery Row. Fun fact: the four of us from the trip are represented as frogs in the Cannery Row illustration: A few friends and colleagues came along (including the engineering mastermind behind the doodle, Kris Hom). On top of reading all of these books (the Penguin audiobooks are amazing, btw), part of my research included revisiting my hometown area of Monterey and Salinas. The final did not change too much, even after I read the whole book to find possibly better scenes and quotes. You can see that I was shooting for more of a book cover format originally. This was a bit confusing during test runs though, and our brilliant UX designer, Noah Levin, came up with the continuous parallax scroll concept as an alternative.īelow is one of the first sketches I drew for my initial pitch. Kind of like the blurbs on the back of books, only more interactive. I also thought it might be cool to have quotes pop up depending on where you clicked the illustration. I thought these initial spot illustrations could act as a row of book spines, and clicking on them would open up into full-bleed book-cover-style illustrations with light animations. My solution was to feature both, as well as a few other well-known books, with one letter in each title coming forward to spell Google. 2014 also marks the 75th anniversary of Grapes' publication, so that pretty much sealed it. That could have been the whole doodle right there (and of course there is a lot more to the story itself), but you can't really do a doodle for John Steinbeck and not feature something as monumental as The Grapes of Wrath. For those who haven't read it, John Steinbeck takes a truck camper and his standard poodle Charley, and drives around America. The doodle started out simple enough: Illustrate my favorite book, Travels With Charley.