starry sky #2

The curious child's eyes began to droop, and the Grandparent gently carried the curious child to bed.

This illustration changed part-way through its creation. I started with a magazine photograph for the grandparent's face, but didn't like it and pasted an inkjet print of one of my drawings over top (you can just see the remains of the first face in the upper right corner). The star is a scrap of envelope. Everything is coloured with Crayola crayons and black china marker.

starry sky

The curious child stared up at the heavens and asked, "Are there more?"

The child's face is a photocopy of a magazine photograph, and the stars are drawn on scraps of paper. Everything is coloured with Crayola crayons, plus black and white china markers.

grandparent

The curious child stared up at the heavens and asked, "What are the names of the other lights we can't see with our bare eyes?"

This collage contains scraps of construction paper, a photocopy, and a magazine page. I was getting tired by the end of the story (I created most of the illustrations in chronological order), and started getting really inventive with my colours (hence the brown sky).

I love the elderly woman's face with her kerchief tied around her head. She has timeless eyes...

grandparent and child

The curious child stared up at the heavens and said, "Grandparent, there are fast lights, bright lights, reddish lights, and large lights... but are there slow lights?"

This image contains a scrap of a photocopy (the face, from a photograph in a book), and an old Post-it Note. The background of the grandparent figure is blue construction paper. The head of the child and the hands are scraps of white paper. Everything is coloured with Crayola crayons and black china marker.

It was important to me that the figures of the grandparent and the child not be gender-specific. Sometimes they seem to be female, and other times male. Curiously, most of the children I taught assumed they were male.

jupiter #2

The Grandparent replied, "That is the largest planet, named after the kind of the Roman gods, Jupiter. Jupiter is so big, it is more than twice the size of all the other planets put together. It is the fifth planet in our solar system."

Jupiter's face is an inkjet print of an earlier pen and ink drawing of mine. There are scraps of an old poster (the green background) and some gold mylar (Jupiter's crown). The image is coloured with Crayola crayons and black china marker.

jupiter #1

The curious child stared up at the heavens and asked, "Grandparent, and what is that light over there?"

This illustration contains scraps from magazine pages (Jupiter and the grandparent's face), and is coloured with Crayola crayons and black china marker.

sun and mercury

"There is a light that moves quickly across the sky - it is the planet Mercury. It lives closest to the sun, and it moves so quickly because its year - the amount of time it takes to travel once around the sun - is so much shorter than our earth year."

This illustration contains scraps of construction paper (Mercury and the sun) and is coloured with Crayola crayons and black china marker.

the earth (everything)

I was visiting my sister in Smithville, Ontario this weekend, and she played me a song which I can't get out of my head - Everything, from Michael Buble's latest CD Call Me Irresponsible. (Listen to a sample here - scroll down to track nine.)*

It's a real feel-good song; I was dancing around my sister's kitchen with my five-year-old niece, swaying with her and spinning her around.

The chorus goes, "And in this crazy life, and these crazy times it's you, it's you. You make me sing. You're every line, you're every word, you're everything."

I remembered the lyrics incorrectly, and thought it said "in this crazy world." Which made me think of the earth... which made me think of this illustration.

It's another one from my solar system series. The earth is made with a scrap of Ontario roadmap, and the moon is a scrap from a magazine ad. It's again coloured with Crayola wax crayons and black china marker.

In a funny (strange) twist, one of the students in the class looked at the illustration and said, "That's where my cottage is." I hadn't picked the Parry Sound area on purpose - I just wanted a piece of map that included land as well as water. In an even stranger twist, when I showed the illustrations to my friend Mary Hamilton, she also commented that her cottage was in that area.

*And in an even stranger twist, when I Googled Michael Buble to find a link for the song sample, I found his homepage - where Everything was the track of the day.

sun and planets

The Grandparent replied, "Not all of those lights that we see are stars. Some of those lights are called planets, and they also spin around the sun - the star at the centre of our solar system. The planets are like mirrors, reflecting the light of the sun, and so we can see them."

This illustration contains scraps of map (the earth), pink construction paper (Mars), and a used Post-it Note (on the sun). Again coloured with Crayola crayons, and china markers in black, green and red.

sunset

They watched the sun slip below the horizon, and slowly the lights of the night appeared.

The curious child stared up at the heavens and said, "Grandparent, tell me about the stars in the sky."

This in another illustration from my solar system story. There are many collaged elements: an inkjet print of an old drawing of mine (the sun/face), a scrap of magazine page (the blue advertisement) and some yellow construction paper (the star). Again the image is coloured over with Crayola crayons and black china marker.

the sun #3

This illustration is the title page for my solar system story. There are collaged papers (blue contruction paper and a scrap of a map) coloured over with Crayola crayons and embellished with black china marker.

the sun #2

Another illustration from my solar system series. This image includes a collaged scrap of manila envelope and a torn photo from a magazine. I coloured over the entire page with Crayola wax crayons, and emphasized the shape of the tree and the outline of the sun with black china marker.

the sun

This is another illustration from the series I did for my solar system art class. It's the last page in the story, when daylight again returns.

The image began as a collaged scrap of brown kraft paper on the page. I wrote the text from this page of the story over top of the kraft paper, then coloured over everything with Crayola wax crayons. Black china marker emphasizes the outlines of the shapes.

uranus, neptune and pluto

This is another of the illustrations I made for the solar system visual art class. The black lines are made with china marker, one of my favorite drawing tools. I love them because they come in many colours, and you can make marks on top of wax crayon with them. This collage has scraps of magazine pages, and some handwriting in pencil in the background.

pluto

This illustration is from a series I did on the solar system for an art class I taught at an elementary school. The class was learning about the solar system, so I incorporated their science learning into a creative visual art lesson. Each child was asked to illustrate one page from a children's story I had written about how the planets in our solar system got their names. I made a master set of illustrations myself, as preparation for the project. This is my illustration for Pluto.

The collage contains a large scrap of a business-reply envelope, and Pluto is torn from a magazine page. The colour comes from pencil crayons and wax crayons.

For the entire set of illustrations I created a simple "grid" of two lines intersecting at right angles somewhere on the page. The point of intersection was never the same place on each page, but moved about in a kind of progression from one page to the next. The point of intersection became the focal or "visual tension" point on each page, and helped me vary the size and scale of the planets in an interesting way.