my green life

This is a page from one of my art journals. I pasted a used greeting card envelope and scraps of other paper to the page, then coloured everything with Crayola crayons. A scrap of graph paper with a floral illustration sits inside the envelope.

yellow stars

This collage is from one of my art journals. The Post-it Notes contain lists of people I had to call. The image is coloured with Crayola crayons and black china marker.

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.

neptune

The Grandparent replied, "There was another planet named Neptune that was discovered with a telescope in 1846. It was named after the Roman god of the sea, because it was so blue. It is the eighth planet in our solar system."

Neptune is a scrap of blue construction paper, and a scrap of photocopied music makes of part of the sky. The image is coloured with Crayola crayons and black china marker.

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.