Vote Sun or Moon

A high stakes election is underway in the USA. It is time to vote. It is also time to vote here at Books Around the Table.

Ingri and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire

The election here is between The Sun and the Moon. Please look at THE SUN images and THE MOON images below, then cast your vote.

THE SUNS

Abner Graboff

Boris Artzubasheff

Brian Wildsmith

Beatrice Tanaka

Eva Rubin

Mariana Malhao

Yuri Vasnetsov – The Stolen Sun

THE MOONS

Arthur Rackham

Josef Lada

Alice and Martin Provensen

Lev Tokmakov

Melissa Sweet

Tomi Ungerer

Maurice Sendak

Thank you for voting.  And now that you have exercised your voting muscle, go to the polls and cast a real vote!

P.S.Who can really choose between the sun and the moon?  I am selling a 2021  calendar to raise money for the ACLU . It includes both the sun and the moon! This one page poster that sells for $12 and ALL of the money goes to the ACLU. If you buy 5 or more shipping is free. Please click here to find out more or purchase one. Thank you.

 

 

Kerlan

Last week I learned about the Kerlan Collection at the University of Minnesota. How could I not have known about it before?

by Raúl Colón

The Kerlan Collection is an amazing, world class collection of children’s literature. They have more than 100,000 children’s books, as well as manuscripts, galleys, dummies and original art. It is a book orchard, laden with tasty images and fruitful information.

by Jesse Hartland

If you can’t get to Minnesota this week, you can still explore a lot of their on-line resources. I saw work by old favorites, and discovered new artists.
Here is a link to an article exploring the many ways that picture book art has been made. You can learn about color separations. You can see examples of illustrations that were created with drawing, printing, scratchboard, paint and collage.

by Leonard Everett Fisher

by Melissa Sweet

Another part features Melissa Sweet explaining how she illustrated Balloons Over Broadway. There are sections on how she developed the ideas: her research, meandering and techniques. There are curriculum ideas. Reading about Sweet’s process enriches the experience of looking at this buoyant book. Here is a link.

A third section compares versions of Little Red Riding Hood. I found this particularly interesting because of the books by Paul Fleischman that I have illustrated which combine multiple versions of fairy tales. Here is a link to the Red Riding Hood exploration.

Ames 1901

Platt- Munk 1924

Benji Montresor 1989

I had never heard of the artist Edgard Tijtgat before seeing his version of Little Red Riding Hood.

Tijtgat 1918

I found it so haunting and beautiful that I hunted down other images by him on the World Wide Web. (I wandered away from the Kerlan for this digression.)

 

I am grateful to the Kerlan for amassing such a collection and for sharing it with the world. I liked learning more about people I already admired such as Melissa Sweet, and discovering new artists, like Edgard Tijtgat. I am honored that I might be included in the Kerlan collection in the future.
Check out the Kerlan here! Who knows where your discoveries might take you.

Sendak

Color Full

Recently I found a tube of Cobalt Blue gouache and I swooned.
I painted several blue paintings.

Painting is always a matter of choosing one color to go next to another, and lately I’ve been carried away by the sheer pleasure of doing that.

 

 

Sometimes when I look at other people’s paintings I can feel the artist swooning from the pleasure of the colors. (Angel by Paul Klee).

This image by Borghese di Pietro Borghese was painted in 1448, and the pink still astounds.                                                                                                     .

 

In Melissa Sweet’s illustration from Firefly July each shade of pink adds to the ones around it . The greens are gifts to the pinks and vice versa.                          .

 

Georgia O’Keeffe experienced synesthesia. She heard colors. This is a collage illustration from Through Georgia’s Eyes by Rachel Rodriguez. Rachel said that O’Keeffe walked through the hills, humming the colors she saw.                                     .

Do you hear the reds in Margaret Chodos’s illustration for Buzz by Janet Wong?

The little red triangle says AHA to the orange and yellow/green in this paintingby Douglas Florian.                                                                                               .

Radio Lab has a podcast all about COLOR, rich in information. One fact: butterflies (and pigeons and lampreys) have pentachromacy and can see many more colors than people .                                                                                                  .

In addition to the physical capacity to see a color (rods and cones etc.) your brain and your eye also need practice and coordination. When you learn a new language it takes time for your brain to learn the sounds that it hears. The same is true with visual perceptions. If you have never seen the color blue you will not be able to see it even if you have the physical ability to do so. Here is a landscape without blue, by Paul Klee- just lush oranges, reds and greens.

In Seattle right now there are blossoming trees, bushes and flowers everywhere- a profusion of color, light and shadow. Are humans hardwired for these colors and contrasts to give us joy? These cherry blossoms are from Maira Kalman.

This painting by Klee (below) is called Blossoming.                                                   .

The podcast used a choir to illustrate the harmony and depth of colors. The bass note of  dark colors brings out the soprano yellow and white. Bright boats and buildings sparkle in the alto fog in this illustration by Melissa Sweet.                     .

Pink and green add harmony to the red and blue duet in this bouquet by Joe Max Emminger.

And finally here is a swooping, swooning, humming landscape from Matisse.

I hope you have a color full week.

p.s. I am having a show at the Bitters Co. Barn in Mt. Vernon, WA , opening on May 9th. Please come by if you are in the area.