Design & Execution

Black Wolf of the Glacie r, my most recent children's book project, is about an almost-black wolf. Colors eyedropped from a photo of Romeo revealed saturation levels ranging from 8 to 42%. While I didn't have an eydropping tool while I was mixing my wash colors, I tried to keep this in mind. On the cover, Romeo will be charcoal colored with 10% saturation. Of course, part of me thinks: mythology doesn't give a rat's hindquarters about your point samples. An archetype is an archetype; he should have been licorice-flavored, a wolfish essence of a sumi-e ink drawing.   In the end, though, my reasoning became practical; several of the author's illustration descriptions called for more detail than a silhouette, which is what Romeo might have become had he been much darker. I had to create internal contrast somehow. I chose to use a little bit of brown color rather than including solid whites. Romeo had to be a blend of colors for visibility's sake, bu...

Sometimes I wonder how the pictures alone would work as a story. Of course, pages 4-5 give away the aesthetic ending. These are the wordless layout sketches for Black Wolf of the Glacier , which will shortly be printed on watercolor paper and painted in an aqueous wash. The first page will most likely compose the cover art. I have tried to maintain consistent appearance of the characters throughout the story. The girl and her dog now have names compliments of Deb Vanasse : Shawna and Buddy, respectively. Black Wolf is a story of the rich life, death, and incomplete resurrection of a wolf in the form of an audio tape of Romeo howling, perched on a rock near the edge of Mendenhall Glacier. When the watercolors arrive, I might convey the howling sound somehow using emitting shapes in all the negative space surrounding the moon. Or perhaps I'll just leave it negative; maybe that's what a howl sounds like, anyway: a...

This installation of Black Wolf of the Glacier drawings should probably appear in black, a tone of mourning. Since I last posted illustrations, I have lost the company of my generously-sized Intuos3 Wacom, the drawing tablet I used to complete all of my illustrations for Lucy's Dance . I never went as far as naming it, but its flat grey countenance had borne the tracing of some of my best current line drawings. It weathered my dropping it, tripping on its cord, and sullying it with foodstuffs enough that like the Velveteen Rabbit, it became real. Then a loose power cord did it in at last. and I watched its blue connection LED flicker away like a fairy, and yes, I did try clapping it back to life. When hope seemed distant, I also resorted to prying it open and looking inside, but it was no use. My new wireless Intuos4 is pulling its slight weight. The smaller 8x5" surface doesn't feel restrictive, considering I draw primarily from my wrist; rather, it makes each movem...

Here's what's happened in illustrations 1-8:  We know that a Romeo the wolf enjoys roaming the forest, perching majestically on rocks, and breakfasting on small, furry animals. We know that a young girl and her dog live in the area and enjoy recreating on forest trails. We've been here before. Remember Red Riding Hood? Peter? A trio of pigs?  The suspense behind pages 9-17 rests on layer after layer of cautionary folklore about wolves. If wolves are at large, and if one owns a brick house, one stays inside and stops up one's chimney. Those brazen enough to hazard the woods alone might find themselves and their grandparents being freed from a canine esophagus by the business end of a woodsman's axe. And that's in the happy version of the story. Those old fairy tales didn't pull any punches. I can still feel those anti-wolf instincts when I hear even the cheerful part of Tchaikovsky's theme to Peter and the Wolf . But seasons change--stories, like layer...