"Gina" - Older vs. Younger

Here is my male protagonist's mother, the feisty Mrs. Gina! When I originally drafted her - before this sketch- I envisioned an elderly Italian woman in black with white lace. The more I wrote the story, the more I realized the character was anything but ordinary or typical! Gina is proud of the fact her husband was a Roma/Gypsy, as well as a wolf, and tries to instill that pride in their children.

I also realized that because Gina married her husband at such a young age, she is only middle-age and has grandchildren, so she is quite young for a grandmother!

What I will do is redraw her in the black shirt with lace in a different manner - she will dress this way sometimes when attending Mass or a holy day - and remove the puffed sleeves. She's also a little stouter than what I originally intended for her body type.

In the second sketch is Gina and my gangster when he is several months old! This is the youngest I've drawn him.
The draft is inspired from many Ellis Island photographs I've viewed over the years, as well as what photos I studied from the now extinct gathering place for many immigrants in the late 18th to 19th century.
Before Ellis on the East Coast, it was Castle Garden.
Castle Garden went by the wayside, I believe I read, in the mid-18th century, to make way for Ellis Island to become the gateway to the U.S.
The West Coast had its own whose name now escapes me, but when I remember, I will mention in a future post.

I also altered Gina's hair, making it more lush and thicker. She's a young woman, a mother of 15 years, and many women in the 1870s-1900s wore their hair long, usually piling it on top, or pulling it back in a bun or ponytail or other headdress-type coif. I realized this and added more hair to her younger picture, using a dark wash pencil to represent thickness.

Older, and during the 1920s-1930s, many women wore their hair short, often pixieish, so, I will change the older Gina's hair in a final draft.

"Children Isabella & Giovanni ages 8 and 9"

Sometimes, you get an image so perfect, so right, that you really don't want to redo it to final form. This rough sketch is one of them.

I'm not saying that, as an artist, I don't think it needs improvement or refinement. It most certainly does. What I mean is the spirit of the draft, how both characters' personalities shine through, at least, to me.

Isabella and Giovanni grow up together. As adolescents, they become lovers. They break up, each going their separate ways. She marries respectively as he grows into a life of crime. In spite of this, the childhood sweethearts still keep in touch on occasion.
Even in this picture, circa 1914, as they walk side-by-side, they appear to hold hands.

There are several periods and/or decades that are my personal favorites. While I often mention the 1940s being my earliest love, I was especially fond of the 1880s - 1900s, what would be quaintly named 'Turn-of-the-century', or the more aptly historical 'Industrial Age'. I especially like drawing Isabella's pinafore (I believe that's the 'apron' or 'smock' that went over most girl's dresses at the time). They wore these during school and house/yard work, and almost never in church or special occasions such as house parties.
Notice the laced up boots both genders wore. I like drawing these. Also, I have Giovanni in knickerbockers.
My dad once mentioned he wore these as a boy!
I LOVE History.

'Giovanni & Francesca' in Sepia

Being an artist first and writer in close second, I am driven by images and sights. As a writer, I then tend to analyze those images in order to better understand the world and myself.

As in the earlier image of this post, the image is in Sepia. For the purists (for which I count myself), 'photograph' was taken in 1912.

"Giovanni and Francesca Castellano"

Photographs are powerful, as anyone can see from the time of Ellis Island's ushering in many of the immigrants that helped to build the modern age in the late 18th to early 19th centuries.
In History class, my textbooks drew me in by the photos, social commentary, and political cartoons of the time.
The next images is inspired from photos and political cartoons from those times and places. I hope you will enjoy them!

'Giovanni & Francesca Castellano' & Social Reform Photography

We, as writers, have to remember WHY we tell a story.

What held the 'gangster dog' WIP (Work-in-progess) back for an incalculable amount of time was by the fact I remained stuck in one character's head and POV (Point of View).

Since rewriting the story to show other characters' stories became my watershed moment. The floodgates literally and figuratively opened and I began to see the possibilities and connections being made and reinforced.

The above picture is supposed to be a family photo of my male protagonist with his eldest sister. They are only months apart and therefore, extremely close.

While researching this story, I came across many historical photographs with children and their families in Turn-of-the-century New York, as well as from photo albums.

Jacob Riis - please refer to my links at the bottom of this post! - was an important documentarian through the pictures he took in preserving history of Old New York.

I have tried, because this is a historical drama, to capture the feel of what it meant to grow up, live and die during those years.
What did Native New Yorkers want for their families, and what did New York immigrants want for their children? I hope as a writer, as well as storyteller, to capture such in the illustrations above. I hope as an artist to let readers be drawn into this story as I am.

NOTE: There was a documentary called "The Other Half", about the social reforms brought about because of Mr. Jacob Riis and Mr. Lewis Hine.

Here are two official links: Documenting "The Other Half": The Social Reform Photography of Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine

&

Jacob Riis: Shedding Light On NYC's 'Other Half' by Robert Siegel

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