Design or illustrate Literature's Greatest Opening Paragraph. In the right hands, a novel’s beginning alone can make you feel like you’ve just fallen into a fast-flowing river, snatched away from reality and hurtled downhill. They range from hard-boiled pulp fiction to classics to, well, The Bible; the only thing they have in common is that they’re so good it’s impossible not to read on. Unfortunately, right now you can’t. But you can share your minds eye view of that special moment in a graphic representation of that moment in time…
Steps and Requirements
1. Choose 1 of the the following paragraphs to create your graphic representation of that moment.
2. Choose the medium or mediums you would like to use to create this illustration. You can use multiple mediums to create your final image
• Photoshop and or illustrator
• Cut paper
• Charcoal and pastel
• Montage of images
3. Include your paragraph in the illustration: Note in the examples below, the paragraph became part of the design. You must type your paragraph, Handwritten words are not acceptable
4. Size is 11" x 17" or 17" x 11"
5. 4 Detailed sketches showing placement and size of image are required. Sketches must be in your sketchbooks and not on loose paper. I will collect the sketch books during this quarter, so be prepared.
Choose from the following Books and opening Paragraphs
NORWEGIAN WOOD (HARUKI MURAKAMI)
I was 37 then, strapped in my seat as the huge 747 plunged through dense cloud cover on approach to Hamburg Airport. Cold November rains drenched the earth. lending everything the gloomy air of a Flemish landscape: the ground crew in waterproofs, a flag atop a squat building, a BMW billboard. So - Germany again.
THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE (SHIRLEY JACKSON)
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone…
PRIDE & PREJUDICE (JANE AUSTEN)
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.
A TALE OF TWO CITIES (CHARLES DICKENS)
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
A FAREWELL TO ARMS (ERNEST HEMINGWAY)
In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves.
THE STRANGER (ALBERT CAMUS)
Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know. I had a telegram from the home: ‘Mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Yours sincerely.’ That doesn’t mean anything. It may have been yesterday.
Example:
Moby Dick bodily burst into view! For not by any calm and indolent spoutings; not by the peaceable gush of that mystic fountain in his head, did the White Whale now reveal his vicinity; but by the far more wondrous phenomenon of breaching. Rising with his utmost velocity from the furthest depths, the Sperm Whale thus booms his entire bulk into the pure element of air, and piling up a mountain of dazzling foam, shows his place to the distance of seven miles and more. In those moments, the torn, enraged waves he shakes off, seem his mane; in some cases, this breaching is his act of defiance.'
Steps and Requirements
1. Choose 1 of the the following paragraphs to create your graphic representation of that moment.
2. Choose the medium or mediums you would like to use to create this illustration. You can use multiple mediums to create your final image
• Photoshop and or illustrator
• Cut paper
• Charcoal and pastel
• Montage of images
3. Include your paragraph in the illustration: Note in the examples below, the paragraph became part of the design. You must type your paragraph, Handwritten words are not acceptable
4. Size is 11" x 17" or 17" x 11"
5. 4 Detailed sketches showing placement and size of image are required. Sketches must be in your sketchbooks and not on loose paper. I will collect the sketch books during this quarter, so be prepared.
Choose from the following Books and opening Paragraphs
NORWEGIAN WOOD (HARUKI MURAKAMI)
I was 37 then, strapped in my seat as the huge 747 plunged through dense cloud cover on approach to Hamburg Airport. Cold November rains drenched the earth. lending everything the gloomy air of a Flemish landscape: the ground crew in waterproofs, a flag atop a squat building, a BMW billboard. So - Germany again.
THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE (SHIRLEY JACKSON)
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone…
PRIDE & PREJUDICE (JANE AUSTEN)
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.
A TALE OF TWO CITIES (CHARLES DICKENS)
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
A FAREWELL TO ARMS (ERNEST HEMINGWAY)
In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves.
THE STRANGER (ALBERT CAMUS)
Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know. I had a telegram from the home: ‘Mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Yours sincerely.’ That doesn’t mean anything. It may have been yesterday.
Example:
Moby Dick bodily burst into view! For not by any calm and indolent spoutings; not by the peaceable gush of that mystic fountain in his head, did the White Whale now reveal his vicinity; but by the far more wondrous phenomenon of breaching. Rising with his utmost velocity from the furthest depths, the Sperm Whale thus booms his entire bulk into the pure element of air, and piling up a mountain of dazzling foam, shows his place to the distance of seven miles and more. In those moments, the torn, enraged waves he shakes off, seem his mane; in some cases, this breaching is his act of defiance.'