Junior Shannon Enslow walks the halls cradling a dark red notebook close to her chest. Inside her notebook lies a myriad of illustrations, lush hills of green, vibrant blue skies, ornate feasts and a bustling village.
What started as an English assignment last year swiftly blossomed into a long term passion project to Enslow: the notebook holds together a comic book adaptation of “The Hobbit.”
“We had to read a book [of our choice], and then one of the project options was to make a comic book based on that [book],” Enslow said.
After Enslow’s father recommended she read “The Hobbit” for her English assignment last year, she quickly fell in love with the story.
After Enslow finished the assignment, she decided to continue working on it since she already had the supplies and had a portion of the work done.
With a lot of the work on the comic book being done at school, Enslow often turns the classroom she's in into her personal workshop, painting away with her art supplies in hand.
“I take a few things of water colors, the water pens, pencils, and waterproof pens everyday. Occasionally I'll take other supplies if I know I'll need it like markers, glue, scissors or colored pencils,” Enslow said.
“She has her little water color container and she carries around the actual Hobbit book with her,” junior Saffron Hansen said.
Hansen was in the English class with Enslow when she started the comic book, and has seen it evolve ever since it was only a couple of sketches.
Enslow’s creative process consists of figuring out what information is relevant to the story, how to draw the scene and deciding what dialogue to use.
Although it might seem like her teachers would find this to be a distraction, they usually pay little mind to it.
“Teachers are just kind of like, what is this?” Enslow said. “As long as I do the work, nobody seems to mind.”
The comic book is currently growing. Enslow gets one full page finished every week. Right now, 15 pages of the novel have been illustrated and written into the comic book.
“It takes a long time to get anything done,” Enslow said.
Although Enslow isn’t sure as to why she’s devoted so much of her time to the project, she just felt like it was a good idea.
“It's just one of those things where it's like, ‘Oh that sounds like a good idea, let's do it,’” Enslow said.
To Enslow, the comic book isn’t just an art project, it’s her hobby.
“It’s kind of a distraction, while most people would be on their phones or something, [the comic] is what I do instead," Enslow said. "It’s more of just entertainment.”
Since the comic book is a long-term project, she hasn’t decided what she’ll do with it once she finishes.
Enslow has been doing art for her entire life. She began to paint when she was going into middle school. She is using her painting skills for the comic book, with all the coloring work done using water color paint.
A lot of the designs in the comic book are based off of “The Hobbit” films, with some artistic liberty being taken.
But those designs were the biggest challenge for Enslow. It’s oftentimes difficult for her to draw the intricate character designs from “The Hobbit” films.
“The character designs from the movies are really complex and won't work for a [comic] book.” Enslow said. “So I've had to go in and simplify them a lot. And so the hardest part was probably finding designs I was happy with for all of them.”
With “The Hobbit" being around 300 pages long, it’s difficult for Enslow to showcase every detail. So she made the decision to not incorporate every last detail from the novel in her comic book.
“There's some stuff that I don't include because it's just like, ‘Why would you need to know that?’” Enslow said.
English teacher Jordan Dombrowski, the teacher that gave Enslow the assignment, has been supportive of her journey.
Even though Enslow is no longer in her class, Dombrowski routinely checks up on her progress.
“She transformed [the assignment] beyond my expectation.” Dombrowski said.
Dombrowski has seen the comic book grow from the very first page.
“I think the progress is incredible.” Dombrowski said. “It’s just really cool to see her grow as an artist and see her do something that she can show to people and it has that purpose and it makes people really happy, especially people who are fans of ‘The Hobbit.’”
Dombrowski gets to see the lively world that lives inside her notebook grow, and it was all sprouted from a regular assignment.
“So even now, I'll see her in the halls and she'll be like, ‘Wait,’ and then she'll open up a page and show me what she's worked on.” Dombrowski said. “It's so awesome. She's incredibly talented.”
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