Reality Distortion Field

A quick follow-up here to the last post, just to show that I do read the articles that I recommend, and heed their lessons, too.

Lightship out of water

Earlier this summer I was riding in a car in New England when in my peripheral vision, lo, there appeared a big red truck that had on its door a familiar silhouette and this word:

LIGHTSHIP

Also a R.I. phone number and something about marine services and repairs and so on. The main point, though, was: Red Truck + Lightship. Out came the camera I had closest to hand. The truck was moving, the car was moving, so I never got the shot framed as I would have liked. (As you can see, I barely got it framed at all.) But I did learn two things. First, that truck drivers look at you suspiciously when you point an iPhone at them. (Maybe he was thinking I should upgrade to the 3G?) Second, that the camera on the iPhone, under certain circumstances, produces distortions which, in this case, at least, reminded me of the distortion in that great Henri Lartigue photograph of a racecar. Turns out that illustrator Brian Biggs has written an article that provides very cool information on the how and why of this, and incentive to go out and take a lot of pictures, too.

Also if you’ve never watched Biggs’ movie Stop Metric Madness, with music by One Ring Zero, then, ah, I’d say watch it now. It will make you like the Internet again.

Seconda stella!

I’m playing catch-up here today with good news from last week of a second starred review for The Hinky-Pink, this one in Publishers Weekly. Says the review: “Like the text, the art hits just the right tone of tongue-in-cheek earnestness....” (You can find the whole review here. It’s the second review from the top.) Thanks, PW!

I also wanted to put up a little bit about process in this post. Part of the fun of The Hinky-Pink is how full of incident and action the story is. It’s an illustration challenge, though, when a scene contains more drawing-worthy moments than can fit easily on a page. For one especially busy passage, we (editor, designer, and I) played with the idea of using comic panels to squeeze in as much action as possible, as shown in this sketch. That didn’t feel exactly right, though. It did, however, put us on the path to a happier solution, which was to keep the idea of the panels, but to frame them with an Italian Renaissance altarpiece. (You can see how that drawing turned out here.) That device not only allowed for showing multiple moments from the book, it also reinforced the story’s themes and setting. Also, it gave us all a chance to dust off the part of our brains where we keep our art history lessons and to relearn the word predella, and that was gratifying.

See also

Every now and then the online procrastination yields up something of actual interest. This week, it was the recently revamped website of the great Quentin Blake. (Pause here to bend the knee.) It’s too good not to mention. Especially if you’re in the drawing business yourself, you’ll enjoy the postings about process filed under Illustrators, including two videos that show Blake at work. Terrific stuff. And those sideburns!

The Hinky-Pink is Independent

Some recent good news for The Hinky-Pink: the book will appear on the forthcoming Fall 2008 Kid’s Indie Next List, “Inspired Recommendations for Kids from Indie Booksellers.” This list is voted on by (God bless’em) independent booksellers across the country, and it’s great to be on it. Thanks, booksellers! The full list should go up (I think) mid-August, and you will be able (I think) to find it here.

(EDIT: No, not there. Here. Then click on “For Ages 4 to 8.” Ecco!)

And anyone wanting a look at drawings from The Hinky-Pink can now see a few images up in the Portfolio section of the web site, here.

New London Wrap Up

What happens when you forget to bring a large, audience-friendly sketchpad to your reading in New London? First you stalk around downtown looking for the stationery store that someone told you about (J. Solomon, closed weekends) or anyplace else that might sell oversized paper. Ten minutes from the reading, you give up and make the best of the situation by drawing not on a big pad on an easel, but in a small sketchbook on your lap. As it turns out, this gets a young audience to crowd in close, and in a parlor trick sort of way works pretty well. As a blog bonus, it makes the drawing easy to scan, too. Note that as far as I know there never actually was a New London lightship, but I’m not above playing to a crowd.

Ahoy, New London

If you’re in or near the nutmeg state this weekend, consider a Saturday (July 26) trip to New London. I’ll be appearing there from 11:00 to 11:30 at the Fish Tales, Tugs, and Sails Festival, reading and doing a drawing or two from Lightship.

Lightship will get the spotlight but from the program notes it seems that the festival will also have on hand the second book that I ever illustrated, from long, long time ago: Robert Kraske’s The Voyager's Stone: The Adventures of a Message-Carrying Bottle Adrift on the Ocean Sea. The Voyager’s Stone was a fine book, if I may say so myself—but over the years we have sold a total of I think six copies. Maybe seven. It’s a miracle it’s still in print. Well, come check it out for yourself. You could walk home with number eight!

Links:
Fish Tales, Tugs, and Sails Festival
Lightship
The Voyager’s Stone