Colors are Relative (part two) - Jeremy on the Power in the Grays

Check out this fascinating video, "Power in the Grays" by Jeremy (posting as Lighting Mentor), who worked on the animated film Ratatouille, among others. A few stand-out moments:

The color in the circles within both squares is the same.
It just appears darker on the left and lighter on the right because of the different colors it is against.

"I highly suggest that you don't ever leave white on the canvas, because of color relativity. It will look like a lighter color... on white... I don't want to confuse my eye by leaving white on the canvas."

and

"Gray is where the magic happens."

and

"Color relativity can actually be a tool, not just an optical illusion."

It's well-worth watching!

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee

Colors Are Relative (part one) - Illustrator AC Bodnar Plays with Color Theory and Practice

Did you know that in many ancient cultures, the ocean was described as "wine" colored because they didn't have a word for blue? I was gob-smacked by that, and amazed to learn that the way we perceive colors is so relative to what other colors are around them.

A.C. Bodnar explores this with some theory and four illustrations that are broken down and analyzed in her post Color Theory Practice: Playing Around with Color Relativity.

One of the illustrations, broken down by color

As A.C. explains it,

If you do not know what color relativity is, and color theory more broadly, let me endeavor to explain it as well as I am able. Essentially, our eyes do a lot of adjusting as we look at the world. Our brains want to see a full spectrum of colors like you see under white light/sunlight and will change our perception of what we look at to achieve that. The first time that I actively noticed and engaged with this in my life was with ski goggles (though sunglasses, blue light glasses, or any other tinted eyewear have a similar effect). I remember the first time my dad buckled me into little kid skis, strapped a helmet to my head, and snapped on a pair goggles, so tiny that I was still young enough for free lift tickets (I wonder if they still do those). I whined when my goggles came on because they turned the world orange. How could I have a beautiful snowy day if everything was orange?! My dad told me to just wait because, in no time, I wouldn’t notice it anymore and things would look normal. To my surprise, he was right. Soon enough, the world appeared the almost same as it would have if I was just seeing it under white light, despite the fact that what I was actually seeing could only be the orange light that passed through the lens of my goggles. And then, when I took my googles off, the world was so eye-searingly blue and bright that I could hardly look at it! Transfixed, I remember taking my goggles on and off, waiting for my eyes to adjust and then immediately switching back. I did not understand it at the time, but what I was witnessing was color theory (along with some optics, but I am artist, not a physicist). 

It's fascinating reading (and by reading I mean spending time with both the words and the illustrations.) 

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee

Queer Representation in Picture Books - An Online Exhibition from the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art

Have you seen this wonderful online exhibition? ALL: A Look into LGBTQ+ Representation in Picture Books was curated by Chandra Boudreau, the museum’s former Trinkett Clark Intern and a current librarian, and it's a celebration and exploration!

Chandra's opening statement:

Western society has long judged the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer/Questioning (LGBTQ+) community for the way they live and whom they love. While people who identify as LGBTQ+ have always existed throughout the world, their visibility has been intentionally hidden by those who see them as “different.” Historic events—from the Stonewall riots of 1969 to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality in 2015—have advanced social understanding, paving the way for the publication of LGBTQ+ picture books.

This exhibition explores representations beyond the seminal books Heather Has Two Mommies (1989) by Lesléa Newman and Daddy’s Roommate (1991) by Michael Willhoite. The publishing field has widened in the last 20 years to include more diverse identities and stories. The books in this exhibition support

LGBTQ+ readers, validating their experiences while allowing others to read, learn and build empathy. Above all, the books confirm there is no one right way to live or to love.

Organized into the sections "All Loving," "All People," "All Overcoming," "All Valid," "All Families," and "All Together" the exhibit showcases more than two dozen amazing illustrations from picture books that show LGBTQ+ lives and loves.

It's well-worth checking out!

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee 

Color Me INFINITE PRIDE

 

Conveying the Deeper Stories Through Art

by Maya Gonzalez

We know that art can heal.  But how do we get there? 

More than just illustrating text, how do we use art to tell the unspoken stories beneath the words? The stories of belonging, of pride, of freedom to be… How do we as creators reach in and express out in a way that kids can feel these deeper messages when they look at our books...

...even if no words are spoken.

In-process art from The Gender and Infinity Book for Kids

 
I lost my voice once. It was gone for years. If I did write something, I would hide it away. It was back when much writing was still done by hand or on a typewriter. I would take the pages of an accidental poem or story and fold it up and slip it between random books on one of my shelves. I couldn’t handle what I was writing then, but I trusted that one day it would be there when I needed it or maybe understood it better.
 
During that time of mostly silence, I invested in my visual vocabulary. I poured my heart into my drawings and honed the language of the nonverbal. My art began as a place to heal and find my own reflection, but the stronger and more embodied I became, the more my art came in service to my community. On the journey, I let go of my own image and focused on conveying my growing experience of belonging. This is what I healed into and this is what I wanted to pass on, especially to LGBTQI+ and BIPOC kids.
 
In my picture book illustrations I use all the things that healed me in real life. One of the most important things is somatic awareness - or awareness of the body. Holding hands, laying in the grass, looking up into the sky…I use physical experience and sensation as a touchstone to show that my characters are in their bodies, connected to others and in their environment. They are present and they belong.

 

Creating Safe Space on the page - art from I Can Be...Me!

In I Can Be...Me! written by Lesléa Newman and illustrated by me, the kids have the freedom to freely explore who they are without stereotypical gender expectations or pressure to conform. To this end of full and free embodiment, the kids have their own space, take up space, make space, create space, and feel their safe space--to be and do everything they want to. More than clothes and activities, their freedom and presence is visible in their body postures, and their spatial relation to the page. Up front, in your face, full circle, all around…

Creating their magical, mythical safe space was probably my favorite part. I still imagine myself there.

Exploring perspective and experience to convey belonging
In-process art from The Gender and Infinity Book for Kids

 

In my upcoming Gender and Infinity Book for Kids, the kids are a part of nature’s massive flow of infinite diversity all around them. I play a lot with perspective and experience. Kids are looking up into the trees, swimming underwater, gazing into the night, dancing amidst all the different elements of the earth. They are in their bodies amidst the lush and colorful flow of nature. Later in the book the imagery goes stark with pink and blue gender boxes on white backgrounds conveying the pressure on kids to conform in comparison to the lushness of nature’s diversity from the opening spreads.
 
I want to create illustrations that plumb the mystery of our being and celebrate our infinite diversity in a way that kids can feel in their hearts beyond words. People say nice things about my work, but I can’t know for sure if I’m catching infinity or conveying real inner freedom and belonging. I’m still working on it. Sometimes the only thing to do is to go nonverbal and play. 

Grab some color pencils and color some Pride with me!
INFINITE PRIDE! Happy pride! 

Download your Infinite Pride coloring page on the Gender Wheel website. 

Learn more about the Infinite Diversity of Nature:

Maya Gonzalez is an award-winning children’s book artist, author, activist and progressive educator. Maya's work addresses systemic inequity in relation to race/ethnicity, sexism and cissexism using children’s books as radical agents of change and healing, both personally and culturally. Maya co-founded Reflection Press, a POC, queer and trans owned independent publishing house that uses holistic, nature-based, and anti-oppression frameworks in their books and materials for kids and grown-ups. Maya is also the creator of the Gender Wheel, a tool to express the dynamic, infinite and inclusive reality of gender, and provides lectures and workshops to educators, parents and caregivers. 

Website: www.mayagonzalez.com
Instagram: @mzmayagonzalez and @genderwheel

A Picture is Worth a Thousand (Foreign) Words

Seasoned picture book writers know the maxim is less is more.  

For the past couple years, my critique group has set aside the first half hour of every meeting to chat and share our favorite new picture book finds. We fawn over stunning illustrations and beautiful prose, we marvel at hilarious new concepts, and try to dissect each illustrator’s process and media. As we pore over these books a couple themes we always come back to are: 

1) The author’s economy with words

2) The illustrator’s ability to illustrate more than the words on the page.

Rarely does a picture book writer complain of not having enough words. More often than not, most of us are working on ways to cut down to the seemingly arbitrary 350 word limit and to let the illustrations speak for themselves. (Show, don’t tell, right?) 

How do other successful illustrators and author/illustrators pull this off? Many of us turn to well-reviewed and successful picture books as a source of study. However, I find it difficult to focus solely on what the illustrations in these books convey when the words are in right front of me. 

We all recognize words in our peripheral vision. Literate adults process words so quickly that it doesn’t really require our conscious attention. So what to do? You can always ask someone else to cover the words with post it note for you, but this often removes part of the image as well. 

An interesting solution presented itself at one of my critique meetings. I was delighted when a critique group member brought in a couple books by a Russian author and illustrator. (Russian happens to be her native language.) She shared these books because the quality and tone of the illustrations was something she was trying to achieve in her own work. However, I found myself fascinated by the fact that I could understand the entire story from the illustrations alone. I realized what a great tool these books could be because the words weren’t in the way.

Since then, I’ve been checking out foreign language picture books at our local library. Large metropolitan library systems often carry many of these books, though smaller library systems may not. The advanced search function of your library’s catalog will have options for language and collection (picture books).

If you’d like to try it yourself, here’s how I recommend you “read” a picture book in a foreign language: 

The first time, page through the book slowly and tell the story you see aloud to yourself, the way a pre-literate child might. “Once upon a time, there was a mommy and a daddy and a little girl. The mommy was going to have a baby very soon. They all loved each other very much.”

On your second time through the book, examine the illustrations and ask yourself the following questions:

What is my eye immediately drawn to on each page? 

How would I describe the mood on each page and how does the emotion conveyed change from beginning to end?

Is there a correlation between the amount of text on the page and the amount of action in the image?

If there seems to be a big jump in the action between pages, what words would have been necessary to smooth this transition? Should this have been two illustrations?

Practicing this has helped me focus on the minimum number of words needed to effectively impart the story and to ensure each chosen word packs in as much meaning as possible. Not only that, but it sheds a light on the experience of our preliterate and early readers, too. 

Ellie Peterson is an author and illustrator of many picture books including HOW TO HUG A PUFFERFISH and SCHOOL IS WHEREVER I AM. Find out more about Ellie and her work at elliepetersonart.com. 

 

Illustration Inspiration - The 2021 New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children’s Books

Screen shot of the New York Times article, "The 2021 New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children's Books" showing an interior spread from one of the ten winners, "I Am the Subway," written and illustrated by Kim Hyo-eun.

Since 1952, the New York Times has pulled together a rotating panel of three experts to look at EVERY illustrated book for kids published in the USA for that year. This year's judges, children's literature critic Catherine Hong; New York Public Library youth collections librarian Jessica Agudelo; and Caldecott medalist Paul O. Zelinsky (a member of SCBWI's Board of Advisors and a past winner of this honor), chose ten winners ”purely on the basis of artistic merit.”

Announced in the New York Times Book Review on November 12, 2021, The 2021 New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children’s Books includes interior images – and there's a bonus article with interviews with the artists and views of them working in their studios!

The ten winning books are:

I Am the Subway
Written and illustrated by Kim Hyo-eun
Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith

The Night Walk
Written and illustrated by Marie Dorléans

Time Is a Flower
Written and illustrated by Julie Morstad

It Fell From the Sky
Written and illustrated by Terry Fan and Eric Fan

The Little Wooden Robot and the Log Princess
Written and illustrated by Tom Gauld

¡Vamos! Let’s Cross the Bridge
Written and illustrated by Raúl the Third
Colors by Elaine Bay

While You’re Sleeping
Written by Mick Jackson
Illustrated by John Broadley

Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre
Written by Carole Boston Weatherford
Illustrated by Floyd Cooper

Keeping the City Going
Written and illustrated by Brian Floca

On the Other Side of the Forest
Written by Nadine Robert
Illustrated by Gérard DuBois

Congratulations to the winners, and what inspiration for the rest of us!

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee

Wisdom from Uri Shulevitz

Uri Shulevitz is a Caldecott Medal-winning illustrator and author, and his "Writing with Pictures: How to Write and Illustrate Children's Books" is highly recommended - cited by more than ten authors and illustrators as an "Essential Reference Book on Writing and Illustrating for Children & Teens," an article I pulled together a few years ago for "SCBWI The Book."

Early in the "Writing with Pictures," Uri offers a number of illustrations in sequence to help us understand readability, pacing, progression, and so much more about how we read picture sequences. As he writes on page 29,

When the actor-stage relationship is clear, when the picture code is consistent, when the progression is appropriate to the action, the picture sequence will "speak" to the reader. The more clearly the picture sequence speaks, the more enjoyment the reader will be able to get from it. And giving a feeling of satisfaction is essential in children's books.

There's so much more... "Writing with Pictures" is certainly worth checking out from the library or grabbing a used copy for yourself.

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee

One Point, Two Point, Three Point Perspective

While clearly a fundamental art skill (so certainly not news to all of you illustrators) this short article, Learn the Basics of Perspective to Create Drawings That Pop Off the Page, has helpful examples for the rest of us, sharing one point

two point

and three point perspective

It also suggests an exercise - for illustrators, to think about how adding another perspective might shift a drawing you're currently working on. And maybe try it.

And for those of us who don't illustrate, the same question is a pretty enticing metaphor: What if we added another point of perspective to what we're writing? How fascinating might that be?

Check out the full article here - and the Leonardo DaVinci sketch that shows one of those three perspectives...

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee

Hashtags for Illiustrators - Some suggestions (add your own in comments!)

#childrensbookillustration (note that with 297,466 posts as of this week, #childrensbookillustration it is different than #childrenbookillustration, which has 54,108 posts)

There's #picturebookart, #picturebookillustration, #childrensillustration, and so many more...

Some have over a million posts already (like #illustratorsoninstagram) and some are much more specific, calling out the medium/materials, (like #fountainpengeeks or even super-specific like #pilotfalcon, or the process (like #foundobjectart).


A good suggestion over at CreativeHowl is to separate the hashtags from the description with a hard return and a few lines of dots, so it seems more tidy (a big block of 10-30 hashtags can be visually intense.)

Perhaps the coolest thing about hashtags is you don't even need to be signed up for instagram to watch the flow of creativity - just go to instagram and search!

Do you have other good illustrator hashtags to share? Please do so in comments! Thanks, and

Illustrate On!
Lee