My 1.5-month hiatus has been due to an eyebrow-deep miring in revisions to my children's book illustrations and other projects*. As anyone who has finished a creative project knows, revision work spreads like sticky mud over everything one touches, often binding one in a standstill, while seldom beading into neat, polished units suitable for publication. I will attempt to knead some of this stickiness into a little lump and so give it the value and emphasis it deserves.
I received feedback about my illustrations for the children's book, Lucy's Dance, from my cultural consultant about a month ago. One of the most challenging of the revisions required me to redraw the qasgiq huts that show up at the beginning and end of the book in the historical Yup'ik moments. My reviewer urged me to make the huts appear as though they were made of sod, and not of grass. This request puzzled me a bit at first, considering the definition for sod is grass rooted in earth clumps. It was later clarified that in the winter, sod generally meant clumps of mud.
I had based my original depictions of qasgiq huts on photos taken of replicas at the Alaska Native Heritage Center.
I assumed that native consultants had been recruited to see that these replicas could speak for the originals and inform my illustrations. I didn't count on the factor of airborn grasses, which were impertinent enough to invade the ANHC and nestle snugly in to the authentic naked, or at least scantily-grassed sod surface, converting it to a lawn of deception. Smitten with the ANHC qasgiq's grassy exterior, I worked to develop a simplified rendering of the green tufts, which satisfied me greatly.
Then came this request for earthen clumps. I experimented.
I was shooting for something with finer green growth. Drawing soil lumps, malt-o-meal style, felt too . . . mealy. My illustration style involves distilling the composition of objects into the patterns and shapes that compose them, and I wanted the qasgiq to tell more story than a brown blob was capable of doing. On a page, what is a brown blob? Skin? Mud? A melted, oversized, inhabitable chocolate kiss?
At first I thought that the color was the problem, and I resolved to work in some minor greenery . . . moss or lichen that would surely be nascent in the spring.
However, a glance at the historical photos made this feel dishonest. Even if the photos were in color, I suspect they include little greenery in the winter. Besides, none of my moss designs seemed as elegant as my old grass pattern. Sometimes the detail seemed too delicate. Other times, it felt too abstracted or two-dimensional. Something about my old grass tendril-shapes seemed appropriate. Finally, I noticed that some of the huts were composed of mud and topsoil lumps, stacked in almost a brick pattern. I decided to show that stacking pattern to hint at the building process in the image.
*Other projects may include local swimming pools and/or lakes in Helena, Montana, which occasionally reached and exceeded my eyebrows.
I received feedback about my illustrations for the children's book, Lucy's Dance, from my cultural consultant about a month ago. One of the most challenging of the revisions required me to redraw the qasgiq huts that show up at the beginning and end of the book in the historical Yup'ik moments. My reviewer urged me to make the huts appear as though they were made of sod, and not of grass. This request puzzled me a bit at first, considering the definition for sod is grass rooted in earth clumps. It was later clarified that in the winter, sod generally meant clumps of mud.
I had based my original depictions of qasgiq huts on photos taken of replicas at the Alaska Native Heritage Center.
I assumed that native consultants had been recruited to see that these replicas could speak for the originals and inform my illustrations. I didn't count on the factor of airborn grasses, which were impertinent enough to invade the ANHC and nestle snugly in to the authentic naked, or at least scantily-grassed sod surface, converting it to a lawn of deception. Smitten with the ANHC qasgiq's grassy exterior, I worked to develop a simplified rendering of the green tufts, which satisfied me greatly.
Then came this request for earthen clumps. I experimented.
I was shooting for something with finer green growth. Drawing soil lumps, malt-o-meal style, felt too . . . mealy. My illustration style involves distilling the composition of objects into the patterns and shapes that compose them, and I wanted the qasgiq to tell more story than a brown blob was capable of doing. On a page, what is a brown blob? Skin? Mud? A melted, oversized, inhabitable chocolate kiss?
At first I thought that the color was the problem, and I resolved to work in some minor greenery . . . moss or lichen that would surely be nascent in the spring.
*Other projects may include local swimming pools and/or lakes in Helena, Montana, which occasionally reached and exceeded my eyebrows.
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