Editing The Little Prince (section)

=== Illustrations ===

All of the novella's simple but elegant [[Watercolor painting|watercolour illustrations]], which were integral to the story, were painted by [[Antoine de Saint-Exupéry|Saint-Exupéry]]. He had studied architecture as a young adult but nevertheless could not be considered an artist – which he self-mockingly alluded to in the novella's introduction. Several of his illustrations were painted on the wrong side of the delicate onion skin paper that he used as his medium of choice.<ref name="NYTimes-2000.09.10" /> As with some of his draft manuscripts, he occasionally gave away preliminary sketches to close friends and colleagues; others were even recovered as crumpled balls from the floors in the cockpits he flew.{{refn|

On one of Saint-Exupéry's flights his aircraft engine started failing. His aircraft mechanic onboard later recalled that Saint-Exupéry was completely calm, "Saint-Ex simply started doodling cartoons which he handed back to me with a big grin."<ref name="NYTimes-1993.10.28" />

|group="Note"}} Two or three original ''Little Prince'' drawings were reported in the collections of New York artist, sculptor and experimental filmmaker [[Joseph Cornell]].<ref name="Life-1967.12.15" /> One rare original ''Little Prince'' watercolour would be mysteriously sold at a second-hand book fair in Japan in 1994, and subsequently authenticated in 2007.<ref name="Globe&Mail-2006-04-07" /><ref name="CBC-2007.04.07" />

An unrepentant lifelong doodler and sketcher, Saint-Exupéry had for many years sketched little people on his [[napkin]]s, [[tablecloth]]s, letters to paramours and friends, lined notebooks and other scraps of paper.<ref name="BrainPickings" /><ref name="NYTimes-1993.05.30" /> Early figures took on a multitude of appearances, engaged in a variety of tasks. Some appeared as doll-like figures, baby puffins, [[angel]]s with wings, and even a figure similar to that in [[Robert Crumb]]'s [[Keep On Truckin' (comics)|''Keep On Truckin''']] of 1968. In a 1940 letter to a friend, he sketched a character with his own thinning hair, sporting a bow tie, viewed as a boyish alter-ego, and he later gave a similar doodle to Elizabeth Reynal at his New York publisher's office.<ref name="BrainPickings" /> Most often the diminutive figure was expressed as "...a slip of a boy with a turned up nose, lots of hair, long baggy pants that were too short for him and with a long scarf that whipped in the wind. Usually the boy had a puzzled expression... [T]his boy Saint-Exupéry came to think of as "the little prince", and he was usually found standing on top of a tiny planet. Most of the time he was alone, sometimes walking up a path. Sometimes there was a single flower on the planet."<ref name="NYTimes-1942.12.06" /> His characters were frequently seen chasing butterflies; when asked why they did so, Saint-Exupéry, who thought of the figures as his alter-egos, replied that they were actually pursuing a "realistic ideal".<ref name="NYTimes-1993.05.30" /> Saint-Exupéry eventually settled on the image of the young, precocious child with curly blond hair, an image which would become the subject of speculations as to its source. One "most striking" illustration depicted the pilot-narrator asleep beside his stranded plane prior to the prince's arrival. Although images of the narrator were created for the story, none survived Saint-Exupéry's editing process.<ref name="Fast Company-2014.01.31" />

To mark both the 50th and 70th anniversaries of ''The Little Prince's'' publication, the [[Morgan Library & Museum|Morgan Library and Museum]] mounted major exhibitions of Saint-Exupéry's draft manuscript, preparatory drawings, and similar materials that it had obtained earlier from a variety of sources. One major source was an intimate friend of his in New York City, Silvia Hamilton (later, Reinhardt), to whom the author gave his working manuscript just prior to returning to Algiers to resume his work as a [[Free French Air Force]] pilot.<ref name="NYTimes-1993.09.19" /><ref name="NYTimes-2014.01.23.a" /><ref name="Telegraph-2014.01.24" /> Hamilton's black [[poodle]], Mocha, is believed to have been the model for the Little Prince's sheep, with a [[Raggedy Ann]] type doll helping as a stand-in for the prince.<ref name="Fine Books Magazine-2013.12.03" /> Additionally, a pet [[Boxer (dog)|boxer]], Hannibal, that Hamilton gave to him as a gift may have been the model for the story's desert fox and its tiger.<ref name="Wall Street Journal-2014.01.23" /> A museum representative stated that the novella's final drawings were lost.<ref name="NYTimes-1993.09.19" />

Seven unpublished drawings for the book were also displayed at the museum's exhibit, including fearsome looking baobab trees ready to destroy the prince's home asteroid, as well as a picture of the story's narrator, the forlorn pilot, sleeping next to his aircraft. That image was likely omitted to avoid giving the story a 'literalness' that would distract its readers, according to one of the Morgan Library's staff.<ref name="NYTimes-1993.09.19" /> According to Christine Nelson, curator of literary and historical manuscripts at the Morgan, "[t]he image evokes Saint-Exupéry's own experience of awakening in an isolated, mysterious place. You can almost imagine him wandering without much food and water and conjuring up the character of the Little Prince."<ref name="Fast Company-2014.01.31" /> Another reviewer noted that the author "chose the best illustrations... to maintain the ethereal tone he wanted his story to exude. Choosing between ambiguity and literal text and illustrations, Saint-Exupéry chose in every case to obfuscate."<ref name="EphemeralPursuits" /> Not a single drawing of the story's narrator–pilot survived the author's editing process; "he was very good at excising what was not essential to his story".<ref name="Fast Company-2014.01.31" />

In 2001 Japanese researcher Yoshitsugu Kunugiyama surmised that the cover illustration Saint-Exupéry painted for ''Le Petit Prince'' deliberately depicted a stellar arrangement created to celebrate the author's own centennial of birth. According to Kunugiyama, the cover art chosen from one of Saint-Exupéry's watercolour illustrations contained the planets [[Saturn]] and [[Jupiter]], plus the star [[Aldebaran]], arranged as an [[Scalene triangle|isosceles triangle]], a celestial configuration which occurred in the early 1940s, and which he likely knew would next reoccur in the year 2000.<ref name="Shimbun" /> Saint-Exupéry possessed superior mathematical skills and was a master [[Celestial navigation|celestial navigator]], a vocation he had studied at [[Salon-de-Provence Air Base|Salon-de-Provence]] with the [[French Air Force|''Armée de l'Air'']] (French Air Force).