Trying Batik
PiBoIdMo a success!
Pictured here: my current idea journal before I started filling it. |
It was a delightful experience. I learned that I love brainstorming, that good ideas often do come after I've flushed through the first 5 to 10 starts and that I need not treat ideas so preciously -- rather it's great to spout them out! For me, quantity does bring quality in the case of ideas.
Be bold! |
So I'm sending happy branistorming thoughts out in the world today. I hope you catch some of them.
Let the craft season begin!
Drawings
A little more greatness
My cheerleader is in town!
To Bali and Back
by the scenery,
by the colors,
and perhaps most of all by the way it seemed everyone on the island was an artist (I'm not exaggerating that point).
Sometimes I'm frustrated living in Southeast Asia; I feel like there's more obstacles than usual to my work and I'm also so far away from the community I love.
But, as I've said before, I'm also so, so, deeply grateful for this experience and adventure into the new and unknown.
And I'm not sure why, but it's also making me want to break away from some of my shyness and share my own art with the world better.
I hope I can find a way to do so.
P.S. two of the above pictures (the crazy painted wall and the creative boat) are actually from a small island called Gili Trawangan, off the coast of Lombok -- the next island to the east from Bali in Indonesia, where we also spent a couple of days relaxing on the beach. There were no cars on the island -- only horse-drawn carriages and bikes. How cool is that?
Light
The note that greeted me when I walked into my condo at 4 am after more than 24 hours of travel
While I was anyway in Los Angeles...
Ashley Bryan pictures added
"If the children ask, 'What color is God?'..."
--Ashley Bryan, speaking today about an illustration in his book, All Things Bright And Beautiful.
I'm in Los Angeles, California, at the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators' Conference. And to be quite frank, the main reason I knew I had to come was because one of my favorite illustrators of all time, Ashley Bryan, 87, would be here.
I remember when his book, Let It Shine, came out a couple of years ago. I checked it out from the library, along with the enormous stack of picture books I usually check out (how I've missed this ritual in Malaysia!) and one afternoon I opened it to read while my nearly one-year-old baby, Oscar, napped in my lap.
It's a book of three African American Spirituals, all songs I, myself, regularly sang in church growing up. And Ashley's art opened something inside me up that first time I read it -- just like a real, spiritual hymn does, when it's sung from the heart. I remember crying there on the spot, sitting in our rocking storytime chair, cradling my precious little Oscar. I read the book over and over, several times in a row. And I sang the songs the pictures illustrate. Thinking about that moment now, I'm reminded of one of my favorite poems, by the 14th century poet, Hafiz, Dropping Keys.
Dropping Keys
by Hafiz
The small man
Builds cages for everyone
He
Knows.
While the sage,
Who has to duck his head
When the moon is low,
Keeps dropping keys all night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners.
To me it felt, and still feels, that Ashley Bryan's illustrations in that book are like the keys. They unlock and open something beautiful inside.
So that brings us back to today. Today also gifted me with a bit of magic. I spent an hour listening to Ashley Bryan talk about creating art. Eyes can tell you so much about a person. Ashley has the kind of eyes that dance. They are alive. (It might be my new biggest dream -- should I be so lucky -- to have my eyes do the same thing when I'm his age).
And his words, too, have the sort of spark that's contagious. By the end of the hour session, every person in that room looked more alive, fired-up, and ready to find and share the best of who they are.
Here's a few quotes (perhaps I should say they are as close to the real quote as possible, I tried as best as I could, but I might have missed the exact way he said them a bit):
"The Artist is not a special kind of person. Every person is a special kind of artist."Two more things I learned during the session. First, the xerox photos of scissors on the end-pages in Ashley's books are of his mother's embroidery/crochet scissors and his mother's dress-making scissors. He uses those two pairs of scissors to cut out every collage in his books. His mom never let him play with them as a child, but now he plays with them everyday. I LOVE this. So many artists use razors for cut-paper work. I'm with Ashley. I use a scissors. Scissors are a perfect thing.
"Everyone of us is writing to pull something real and true out of ourselves and give it to the world."
"Whenever we start something new, it's good to affirm who we are within, that's why I start with reciting a poem."
"African American spirituals came from people who worked from the break of daylight to nightfall. But they still created. They found a way."
"My editor wanted me to get something written down about my life. So we talked about it. And in that conversation, she asked me, 'How did you persist through all the obstacles, in your life and somehow still manage to do what you do?' and, well, I answered, 'Isn't that the very story of life?' And isn't it? That's what we do as people -- we work to overcome obstacles. Life's about not giving up when you face challenges but plowing through those challenges. It's everyone's story."
Second, Ashley said he always carries around his recorder. As in the instrument. Because he never knows when it will be time to play some music. So he played for us. So fun.
I did take pictures from the session, but unfortunately I didn't bring my camera cord so I can't download them! I'll add them later. *UPDATE*: added them! Sorry it took so long.
Tomorrow Ashley will give the ending keynote address for the conference. You can bet that the last poem of the conference hasn't been recited yet.
Like a tree
Sorry for the lack of posts. I suppose in the last couple of weeks I've dropped into the studio abyss. Or, forgive the cheesiness, the a-bliss? I'm hard at work, nose to the grindstone, with samples for a dummy -- some new collages that are just the right kind of harder-than-heck challenge -- and I'm loving every God-blessed minute of it. Sometimes life is difficult. Just the right kind of difficult.
Hey, on a similar note, I think it's fascinating to hear how long artists spend on any given piece. I know full well that I have many a practical peer who won't spend more than one day on a final piece (I've tried it -- I like it. But. The work I'm doing now calls for something different). I heard from an art director that one artist he knows only spent an hour on an award-winning cover. I've also watched a video of Eric Carle at work whipping out those fun and spirited collages he makes in a similar amount of time. How long does your art take? Are you fast? Or are you slow?
Me? With the work I'm doing now, I'm a bit of a glacier, or a redwood tree, I confess. I just finished a collage that I made while listening to 3 audio books, 11-to-14-hour-long audio books. That's right. Thirty to forty hours. And that doesn't even involve the prep work -- making paper, taking photos for the photo elements, painting the painted parts, drawing. Nope. That only includes cutting everything out and gluing it down. It's a rather embarrassing amount of time that, I'm certain, many people would chastise me over (including my family). But, whatever. It is what it is. I wasn't wasting time or anything. It's just what this particular piece called for (I use a surgical tweezers for small bits -- there were hundreds of small bits in this collage). It is what it is.
Some novelists write an entire draft in November (Nanowrimo anyone?) and others take years to finish a draft (even working constantly). And some of the results of both variety are amazing. And some of the results of both variety suck. It's just the way it is.
What works for you? And have you tried the opposite? What were the results?
Paper Marbling
A couple years ago, at an SCBWI picture book retreat with
, I learned a simplified version of paper marbling using shaving cream and food coloring.
This past week (after finally getting my paper-making area set up in my new studio) I put that knowledge to use!
I didn't use food coloring this time. Instead I used the paper-making dyes I use when I dye the paper I make. I did this so I could play with color a bit more.
I needed some "river" paper, which is why I took this on.
These are some photos of the blue versions.
I also made some muddy brown marbled paper too.
I'm so grateful to Denise for teaching me how to do this!
And I can't wait to see how it looks in the collages I'm working on.
Colorful Snippets From Singapore
I left the festival and Singapore feeling a bit dazed at what a big wide world we live in, with a mind-boggling array of differences in children' s book markets.
I also had many strange moments of seeing things from a different perspective regarding the children's book market back home in the United States.
One speaker, when talking about why small publishers and authors should have promotional materials in English, said something to the effect of, "Everyone thinks the U.S. is the Holy Grail of Children's book markets. Break in there and you can make it anywhere. Then why don't all small publishers and authors have their promo materials in English?"
It was strange to think about challenges some of my colleagues have here compared to those of my colleagues at home.
I'm so used to various speakers moaning and groaning about the state of the market back home that I forget sometimes to remember how wide and big it actually is compared to other markets.
I also had some culture shock moments, like the nervous twitch I had going when one speaker mentioned that art-based picture books have little market in many parts of Asia as many parents are still focused on Education based books.
I tried just now to write about some recent experience with this mindset that would cause such a nervous twitch, but well, the politically correct public blogger who's afraid of closing my mind when it should be open won out and I edited. Let's just say this is something that I'm having a hard time relating to when I encounter it here, not only as an author and artist, but most especially as a mother.
So I had a nervous twitch going through some of the conference. I had many reminders that we are a big world with lots of view points. It's a challenge to keep it all in perspective, be respectful to differences while remaining true to my own heart while working on my own craft (and mothering my son).
But, lest I forget, challenges are the colorful rich stuff of life. And I can appreciate their beauty.
Full moon over the city
Snapshots from the street
Lightning Strikes! (A way of taking good reference photos for action drawings)
I'd meant to post about this last fall but sometimes blogging has to take the back burner when there's lots going on. So here we are, better late than never.
While I was drawing the sketches for my mentor assignment, I was having a devil of a time capturing the movement of Dorothy tossing the pail of water on the wicked witch of the west.
When I first had the trouble, I tried what I usually have tried. I set my camera up on a shelf with the self-timer on and posed for a reference photo.
But it wasn't working.
Dorothy looked stiff and overly posed when I drew her. No matter how hard I tried.
I was brainstorming with my (patient) husband one night about it and he suggested that instead of photographing, I try videoing myself tossing the pail. So I did.
And I as I watched myself throw the pail I also remembered that I could pluck a single frame of the video out and save it as a picture. So I scrolled through the video, frame by frame, and picked a frame that I thought best caught the action. I used Quicktime pro to do this (if you are interested, type in "creating a still image from a movie" in help. I believe you do need the pro edition of Quicktime to do this but I'm not sure, you may be able to do it in regular Quicktime).
Voila! I had a decent reference photo that wasn't as stiff. By using the reference photo plucked from the video, I was able to draw a Dorothy that captured the action better. Yay!
Now the witches face...
That one was totally posed.
I bet she'd make the same face if she were caught in a thunder storm.
A new point of view
So I'm on the 18th floor of a different building in the heart of Kuala Lumpur's financial district. These photos are of the view I have from my new studio and living room. The first photo is of the iconic Petronis towers and KL tower. The second is of the adjacent park and Mosque.