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So what does this lullaby have to do with the art of  children’s book illustration?
I knew you’d ask, so I’ve come up with a list.

The artist is prominent musician Olga Kishkina of  Finland. Her instrument is the gusli, a sort of  Russian cousin to the zither.

“Her expression at the end is like a gangsta rapper, daring you to step up and challenge her skillz,” notes a fan on the YouTube page.

The list:  artistry. dedication, pride in craft, building upon on a simple theme,  throwing yourself into the expression of a passage, letting the music ( form) speak for itself.

Plenty of parallels to the illustration process here.

Working your art is developing your character.

You know that at some point, your attitude about your process will be tested.

You’ll have to patiently push through and not make a big deal about it.

Texas children’s author Janice Shefelman quoted Pablo Picasso on Facebook the other day. The quote was something like: “Inspiration will pay you a visit, but it wants to find you at work.”

So here is another video.  Caldecott Medal winning illustrator Ed Young talks about the time he lost a package of his completed illustrations just before he was to send them in to his publisher. (Read my HTBACBI interview with Young about the book here.)

They were due, his collage pictures for the picture book Wabi Sabi by Mark Reibstein. Once he got over the shock of their disappearance, Ed knew that he would have to start all over again.

First you’ll hear author (and former English teacher) Mark Reibstein talk about his inspiration for the book ( his Kyoto cat )
Stay with the video to hear Ed discuss the decision he had to make in a time of dismay and stress.

“Creating enough tension in me to make it better than the first version…”

Which brings us to two new books with  Ed Young art.

Tsunami by Kimiko Kajikawa and Ed Young

Tsunami by Kimiko Kajikawa is
a taut telling of a Japanese folktale about a wise grandfather who, with his grandson, sets fire to his own rice field.  It’s his way to draw the villagers up from the the beach before the Tsnunami,  the “monster wave”  strikes.
Only the grandfather and grandson can see the wall of water coming, because of their high vantage point over the small town and bay.

You see, the grandfather knows the villagers will rush up the hill to help him put out the fire in his field.

The crowd’s own sense of community and duty saves them — but not before the grandfather’s sacrifice of his harvest.

Philomel Books has brought out an exciting action story, while Young’s brilliant and  ingenious collage illustrations immerse the reader in a harrowing experience of fire and water and a Japan  of long ago.

You can hear my podcast review of  Tsunami on the children’s book audio blog  Just One More Book here.

'Hook" written and illustrated bv Ed Young

Roaring Brook Press has just published Hook Ed Young’s original story of a Native American boy who finds an eagle’s egg. He brings the egg home to his pueblo village, where the hens can look after it. The baby  eagle doesn’t fit in very well with town or chickens, despite everyone’s efforts to try to teach him to fly. “You weren’t meant for Earth,” observes a kind hen, before the boy takes the eaglet to the top of the canyon for the last  flying lesson he will need.

Instead of resorting to his now famous collage technique, Young illustrates with his evocative drawings. He uses luminous pastel  on  brown speckled paper that evokes the red rock and sand of the American Southwest.

* * * * *

Mark Mitchell hosts the How to Be a Children’s Book Illustrator blog.
Hear his review of  Tsunami on last Wednesday’s podcast of  Just One More Book.

Live anywhere near the Austin, Texas area?  Join a six week class in children’s book illustration that Mark is scheduled to teach beginning Monday, September 14 at the  Art School of the Austin Museum of Art.

The class will run Monday evenings, 6 p.m. – 9 p.m. until October 19. To learn more,  visit the website or contact the AMOA art school at (512) 323-6380.

Don’t live anywhere near Central Texas? Try out some free online lessons on using color in your painting.

These are some of the best lessons  from Mark’s 19 part online course, “Mark Your Splashes! Make Your Marks!” You’ll find the free Power Color lessons here.

Uralish Dance: Olga Kishkina plays the gusli and Arto Tarkkonen plays the accordian.

Wear the book.  Be in the square. Make test books. Do it on tracing paper.

Author illustrator David Macaulay puts words to his latest process in this video shot by fellow author-illustrator Thatcher Hurd for the San Francisco Center for the Book’s recent exhibition,’Once Upon a Book.’

English born, an honors architecture  graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, David Macaulay has delighted the world with his books that look at the inner workings of things — from 16th century caravel sail ships, to grist mills, to  more complex machines like, well, the human body.

He won the Caldecott Medal in 1991  for his book Black and White, of which ALA Booklist said, “It’s a story. It’s a puzzle. It’s a game.”

He’s also received one of those MacArthur Fellowship “genius grants.”

Judging by this video, he also has one of the coolest art studios, anywhere.
I would love to work in there every day.

Thank you, Diandra Mae for sharing the fantastic video clip page from the SFCB site with our Wiggio Children’s Book Illustration Group!

Jon Gnagy was the first artist to draw pictures on television, and I was there! I mean, in front of the TV screen. I may not have been in school yet.
“We would both watch him and be spellbound,” my mother tells me.

Shadows and shading, the cube, the ball, the cylinder and the cone…
The lessons were simple, though dazzling as magic tricks for the millions of children who watched him.

Andy Warhol learned to draw from him, or so he said.

“Mr. Gnagy, who was self-taught, was an advertising art director in New York before offering weekly art courses on television in 1946. His NBC-TV program was called ”You Are An Artist.” He switched to CBS-TV in 1950,” reported the New York Times in his obituary.

He passed away on March 7, 1981 at the age of 74.

A plain-talking midwesterner, the son of Hungarian – Swiss Mennonites, Gnagy did attend some evening classes at the Kansas City Art Institute as a young man. He became a company art director who won prizes for his paintings and poster designs.

There’s a wonderful (2006) article about him at the Dali House blog by crackerjack  arts writer and journalist Paul Dorsey.

Gnagy was not paid anything for the 700 telecasts he did over 14 years at the CBS and NBC networks, Dorsey says.  His revenue came from royalties on the sales of millions of  his art sets, “The John Gnagy Learn to Draw Outfit.”

I finally became the proud owner of one of these, at the age of six or seven. The kit had gray pastels to go with the black (and white) pastels and charcoal. The gray pastels were for stuff  like shadows. That seemed terribly interesting and sophisticated to me.

Alas, I lacked the concentration to stay with most of his exercises. His subjects — barns in the woods and vegetable-filled baskets on toolshed tables — seemed a little overwhelming and hard.  (I’d never be as good as him.) But, oh, how the thought of those lessons tantalized.

Maybe I should find another Learn to Draw set.  (You can still buy them!)
Really buckle down this time.

Because it’s never too late to ponder the cube, the ball,  the cylinder and the cone –  ahh, and those marvelous snow shadows.

* * * * *

Mark Mitchell, the host of “How To Be A Children’s Book Illustrator” is blogging tonight because he’s so behind in writing Session #12 of his course.

  
Clay sculpture in a diorama                                                                     

Illustration, diorama and mini-lesson by Theresa Bayer
http://www.tbarts.com

When I used to do a lot of clay sculpture, I got to the point where I didn’t need much reference. Over the years I developed the ability to sculpt something straight out of my head. When I started painting, I tried doing it purely from my imagination, only to find it much more difficult than sculpting that way. With sculpture, I didn’t have to deal with foreshortening, chiaroscuro (light/shadow), and composition. When I started painting from my imagination, these three aspects of painting confounded me, and I realized I was out of my depth, if you’ll pardon the pun.

Conversely, I found painting from life the simplest way to go. Easy enough to find reference by setting up a still life, or going outdoors to paint, or painting from a live model. But how to tie this in with composing from imagination? Photographic reference was good, but didn’t supply everything I needed for each project. Sketching from life was good, but it still presented some problems: it’s really hard to draw something that doesn‘t hold still, and I’m not skilled at photographing such things.

My answer came in the form of sculptural reference, ie., creating a little scene, or diorama, and painting from it.

I wanted to do a small, whimsical painting of a cat playing with a moth. I sculpted the cat from sketches of my two cats, plus photos I found of cats. I picked out a moth from Animals, by Dover Publications. This book has copyright free reference for artists– although whenever I am using reference such as clip art or photos I always change it around to keep my work original. I made a model of the moth using a clay body and cardboard wings. I set up the models in a box, and added some greenery–the boxwood hedge from our yard had tiny leaves, just the right size. I added a small pan of water for the pool. I painted directly from the diorama; the photo here is strictly for illustrative purposes.

There are three kinds of clay that can be used to sculpt from: pottery clay, which is water based, poly clay, and plastiline clay, which is oil based. The advantage of pottery clay is that it can be kiln fired, making the model permanent. Poly clay can be made permanent too, if it is oven baked. The advantage of plastiline clay is that it never dries out, so the same figure can be adjusted. I use both pottery clay and plastiline clay.

Creating your own models saves time and frustration. Last year I had a 24 hour deadline for an illustration of a hang glider.The photo references baffled me; I did not see how I could use them without running into copyright issues. I accomplished the task by making a model of a hang glider out of cardboard and wire, with a tiny clay figure of a man. I used several photos for reference for the model, and ended up designing my own hang glider (I have no idea if my design would actually fly). The model was fun to make, and easy to draw. I made my deadline.

Commercial figurines and toys also make good 3D reference (again, they should be changed for the sake of originality), but there’s nothing like sculpting your own models. Your own style comes through, reiterated in your painting or illustration. You can light sculptural models any way you want, and reuse them for other projects. To sculpt from any kind of clay, all you need is a book to inform you of the technical aspects of that kind of clay, or take a sculpture course or two. Once you’ve made the models, placing them inside a diorama makes it easier to come up with a good composition.

   Theresa couldn’t find reference of a cat in the pose she imagined for this scene, so she made her own cat of clay, and her own moth of paper and string. Then she assembled her own little stage set, replete with twigs and texture, to place her critters in.  After creating her world in 3-D, she felt comfortable recreating it in watercolor. 

 Theresa Bayer, a professional artist in Austin, Texas received her B.F.A. from the University of Texas at Austin.  See samples of her watercolors, acrylics, sketches, sculpture, caricatures, professional illustration, ceramic art, including ocarinas at her website http://www.tbarts.com and her three blogs: 
http://tbarts.blogspot.com (fine arts),  http://tbarts2.blogspot.com (fun arts) and  http://waterlark.blogspot.com (watercolors.)