I’ve been using my Ahab Noodler fountain pen to sketch out a graphic novel I’m collaborating on with a certain librarian but I noticed the pen is in need of some maintenance. I’m going to head out to Flax and buy a new nib so I can finish up these thumbnails. Until I get back, please enjoy this timelapse I made back when I was first test-running this pen:
Ahab Noodler Fountain Pen Test Read More »
Last year, over on Twitter, illustrator Lee Gatlin posted this sketch:
It made me think about a topic that’s been nagging at my mind in recent years. Namely, I have a worry that that young people’s visual literacy is dropping at an alarming rate. Why is this a concern to me? Let’s talk about CRT TVs.
Computer monitors (which essentially looked like CRT TVs) were a big staple in my early career as an illustrator. I worked mainly in kids educational media and was often called on to draw kids sitting around computers. These computers were big and bulky and hard to draw in an appealing way. I always kind of wished there was a better looking computer. And then came the candy colored iMacs.
That was an exciting moment. I actually remember the first time I drew one of those. They were fun, friendly, and gave me the hope that maybe we were entering a new golden age of design. Maybe we’d get back to things like this:
As an illustrator, you want to draw interestingly shaped and proportioned things. When you do this your imagination runs wild, and connections happen in the most unexpected ways. Could a TV double as a fish bowl? Maybe the TV is full of teeny tiny actors who put on shows just for you? Maybe the TV can be mixed with other types of electronic or mechanical gadgetry? The possibilities seemed endless.
The educator in me thinks a lot about how illustrations help shape how kids see the world. At their best, picture books are gateways to imagined worlds and a kid who reads picture books can learn to create their own imagined worlds, and then their own real worlds. The artist in me wants to draw worlds rich in design and in meaning. I hope that these worlds inspire kids to make their own, better worlds. I might draw a bubbly computer, but maybe the next generation will draw a bubbly computer with wings, that works off solar energy and delivers educational programming to kids all over the world. Endless possiblity!
But, sadly, it was only a year or so later that the first iPhone came out and very soon all tech was designed to be a black rectangle. TVs? Black rectangle. Computers? Black rectangle. Telephones? Black rectangle. Digital books? Black rectangle. Everything is a black rectangle these days and it depresses me.
One of the most magical things in the world to me when I was a kid was the toy store. San Francisco had a four story tall FAO Schwarz, San Mateo had the shorter (but wider!) Talbot’s Toyland. Both are gone. Do they make sense in books anymore? Would a young reader understand what a toy store is? 3 Magic Balls was one of my nephew’s favorite stories. I read it to him dozens of times.
When kids today grow up and become illustrators themselves, what will they draw? The toy aisle at Walmart?
Okay, I just said “kids today”. It’s totally possible I’m indulging in Boomer Doomerism—after all, Corduroy took place in a department store—maybe none of this is a big deal but I can’t help but think that it is.
Other things that are going extinct that makes our world poorer:
Bus drivers
Newspapers and paperboys
Paper maps
Colorful elders
And anything Richard Scarry drew.
One time my nephew and I were watching old cartoons and we saw an old Mickey Mouse short in which Mickey and Donald ate corn on the cob. They did it like all good cartoon characters did, thus:
My nephew said “Why are they eating like that?” I explained they were mimicking the action of an old typewriter. His reaction: “Oh.” It didn’t diminish his enjoyment of the gag that he didn’t know what a Remington was. And his curiosity was fired up for a moment so I dunno, maybe none of this is such a big deal. But, still, those damn black rectangles.
So… is there a point to any of this? So much of what I’m describing is out of our control. Apple isn’t going to suddenly make cartoonishly round iPhones again and Toys R Us has long ago declared bankruptcy. I guess what it comes down to is that the job of the children’s book illustrator has become more important than ever. Sounds dour and dire (and maybe self-aggrandizing) but it’s entirely possible picture books have become the best last stand against the death of imagination. So let us fill our books with the richest, most beautifully imagined worlds we can conjure. The fate of the world may depend on it.
“The Hungry Typewriter” or “A Dwindling Assortment of Visual Iconography” Read More »
Alright, I asked you yesterday which Edward inspired James Marshall. You had the choice of Edward Gorey, Edward Ardizzone, and Blake Edwards. The answer?
The gentleman on the right is none other than Edward Gorey. And, yes, Marshall considered him a master (alongside Maurice Sendak) of picture book illustration. You can see Gorey’s influence in Marshall’s earliest work. Here’s a page from PLINK, PLINK, PLINK (Baylor, Marshall, 1971).
You can see Marshall’s working hard to capture the atmosphere in Gorey’s work and in some places he’s successful (that tree, especially) but his crosshatching isn’t there. Lines in crosshatching are often oriented to follow the form of the object they’re decorating. Marshall accomplishes this in some places (the sloping bannister and the ball top) but in a rudimentary way. Crosshatching can also be used to denote the illustration’s light source but the shading is indistinct and, in some cases contradictory, (the ball at the top of the post is shaded on the left, the post itself is shaded on the right). Mostly, he’s using crosshatching to fill space.
Marshall would later find his strengths in shape, form, and composition to give his characters volume.
But he’d never give up using at least a slight bit of crosshatching. Or in the following example, a lot. Here’s three attempts at filling in Old Mother Hubbard’s skirt, none of which were used as the final art (please excuse the dim quality of the first two pictures, I took these in a low-light archival setting, the last photo is darker and triggered my camera’s flash… if the original should suddenly dissolve, you know who to blame).
The final? It’s wonderful. That drapery is a hard effect to achieve in any technique. James Marshall absolutely nails it here. It’s incredibly intentional (as is my jeans folds being kept in the image).
Oh, incidentally, today (the tenth) is James Marshall’s birthday. Maybe I’ll dip my pen in ink in honor of the occassion. As for the rest of the week… I’m playing it by ear, I’m not sure what else I’ll talk about. If you have any Marshall questions you’d like answered, let me know and I’ll do my best to answer them. See you tomorrow!
James Marshall Week Day 2: Gorey Details Read More »
In one of those moments of synchronicity, Fuse Eight and Kate covered THE RAINBOW GOBLINS in their most recent podcast. What’s the coincidence? Well, I was wrestling with colors today (I’m preparing some large sheets of paper to use in collage illustrations, a technique you’d be most familiar with in Eric Carle’s work) and, like the goblins in the story, found myself elbow deep in acrylics and ethical dilemmas.
Acrylics are a plastic-based paint and their use releases microplastics into the environment. I don’t use acrylics often, but when I do, I try to keep my water waste to a minimum. I don’t use paint palettes, I use scraps of cardboard or old paper plates that I let dry and then throw away. I use pretty cheap brushes and don’t make an effort to rinse them perfectly clean but nevertheless, when I do run them under the tap, I see rivers of paint pigment, each a constellation of nano-scale plastic particles, swirling down the drain. It’s not a good feeling.
The papers, I like those. When the color and pattern come together in a pleasing arrangement, anyway. I could maybe scan them, and then use and reuse them in digital compositions. I don’t know, that doesn’t really excite me. If you’ve seen any one of my donut process videos, you’ll notice I draw on the fly with an x-acto knife. I’m not sure how I’d translate that onto an ipad.
I guess the best I can do is mitigate the amount of harmful byproducts working in this style creates. I’ve started using disposable brushes (which come as a bundle wrapped in plastic) so I can stop washing them all together. They’ll eventually wind up in a landfill which, granted, is only marginally better but it keeps me from worrying about microplastics in our water. The ones I put there, anyway.
You might be wondering what in the Rien Poortvliet I was talking about up in the post title about gnomes living underground. It’s this:
Now those guys knew how to make some eco-friendly paints. I’ve always wondered if Ul de Rico could have been inspired by this cartoon. I seriously doubt it. But then again, I think it was Italian film director Bernardo Bertolucci who said the “Baby Mine” sequence in Disney’s DUMBO was one of the greatest scenes in all of cinema, rivalling in beauty the works of Michelangelo (citation needed).
UPDATE: TikTok to the rescue. Turns out there’s another microplastic mitigation technique.
Oh, To Be a Gnome Living Underground, Grinding Colors Out of Crystals Read More »
