Elvis may be the king, but Chris Sickels wasn’t a fan.
When an opportunity arose for the Greenfield artist to illustrate Jonah Winter’s latest children’s book, “Elvis is King,” Sickels had to be talked into it.
“Anne Schwartz (with the children’s books division of Random House) was determined that I was going to be the illustrator of this book,” Sickels recalled. “I’m not an Elvis fan, I don’t like to do likenesses, and I didn’t think it would be a good fit.”
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery
He worried about creating such a recognizable figure as Elvis, but he agreed to give it some thought.
Schwartz persisted, and Sickels realized he needed time to research Elvis and convince himself he could do it. Focusing on Elvis’ hair, clothes and chin, he came up with a couple of drawings he thought would work and decided he could pull it off.
A couple of drawings — the beginning of a project — for Chris Sickels starts with Post-it notes. The publishing company sent the text of the book with information about the number of pages as a guideline for how many illustrations would be needed. Sickels stuck the triple-spaced text into a three-ring binder, and before long, the margins were adorned with pencil-sketched Post-it notes of possible illustrations for the book.
Once the pages of the book were sketched out storyboard-style, Sickels began the work of creating 3-D scenarios for each illustration.
“Elvis the King,” a children’s picture book, traces Elvis’ roots from his birth — into poverty in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1935 — through the earliest days of his stardom. The book is laid out like a photo album; each page documents an event in Elvis’ life — his first guitar, his first public appearance, his first hit record — with one of Sickels’ illustrations as the photos in the album.
To create each image, Sickels constructed puppets — without strings — made of thick wire, foam, tape, cloth and polymer clay. Each puppet can take between 25 to 40 hours to complete.
He also created everything needed to build the scene. For example, one page of the book features an old rusty car laden with suitcases and a guitar. The car, Sickels said, came from a box of old plastic models an uncle had given him, while the guitar was cut from a cardboard cereal box and decorated with thread and stick-pins.
Once the table-top diorama was complete, Sickels photographed the scene, working hard to create the image in his mind’s eye.
For “Elvis is King,” Sickels made 12 models of Elvis, from Elvis as a baby to Elvis in his black slacks and gold jacket.
Sickels admits he struggled with his perceived message of Elvis that popularity and money are success, but his respect for Elvis has grown, and he has since changed his mind.
“It’s really about being your own person,” Sickels said. “You follow your own path to be who you want to be, not the person that others expect you to be.”
While working on the book, Chris “not a fan of Elvis” Sickels changed his tune. He spent hours listening to Presley’s music and even researched and listened to the music that influenced Elvis, including Big Mama Thornton. Thornton recorded “Hound Dog” in 1952, four years before Elvis Presley’s 1956 recording.
Sickels has grown into such a fan that he has a family trip planned to Graceland, Elvis’ home in Memphis, Tennessee, in the near future.
