Picture Book at Maine College of Art

It feels like the blink of an eye, but we’re already at mid semester in IL 310, The Picture Book course I’m leading at Maine College of Art. We began with a snow day, and we’ve been catching up ever since.

I lugged in a suitcase of children’s books, my absolute favorite topic.

I am completely jazzed to have the jazzy Liz Long as my teaching assistant! She is an alum in MECA’s IL program and a recent graduate of MECA’s MAT program.

She, too, came armed with a batch of favorites plus stories of her blooming career.

We discussed what makes good picture books work, listing qualities in no particular order.

I read a short excerpt from Boodil, My Dog  and asked students to draw a character that came to mind. Please pardon the cell phone shadows 🙁

There are 21 students, more seniors than juniors, but all illustration majors possessing a wide range of approaches.

First they chose text to illustrate. This isn’t a course about writing books, but illustrating them.

Project 1: Creating storyboards, one preliminary step among many, many more to come.

This is Aric’s for a Neil Gaiman poem.

Cara is adapting one slice of Matilda by Raoul Dahl.

Sarah is finding text in interviews with astronauts, using actual questions kids ask them about space.

Critiquing storyboards gave everyone feedback to rethink composition, point of view, and drama.

Project 2: Character and setting development, which ideally involves piles and piles of drawings. This sketch is Jeremy’s.

Here’s one by Alice,  for an Elton John song.

This is Micheala’s color study.

I brought in small toys for a quick drawing prompt: draw your book character riding whatever you pull from the bag. Jen made a sculpture, because.

Look, Lauren’s character tries magic!

Veronica’s sketch playfully twists scale.

Katie’s character is on top of the world:

Project 3: Making book dummies. Crafting a paper mock-up brings all the mechanical issues to bear. A miniature book becomes the page-turning vessel into which plotting and pacing can pour.

Prior to a visit from Annie O’Brien, I led the class in a warm-up for her presentation about drawing race. First they quickly drew three children of different races, off the top of their heads. Liz and I tacked up a wall of photo references of children, and students chose a single photo to draw from, more carefully. Then they did drawings in their own manner of a child character, based on the photo, with different emotions.

These are Rachel’s:

Tyler’s:

Aric’s:

Annie arrived to talk about intergroup anxiety, systemic racism and the complexity of depicting racial difference. What fuels her long career in children’s literacy is “belonging to each other in all our beautiful differences.”

She quoted Lucille Clifton who said, “The literature of America should reflect the children of America.”

She asked the class to consider: why is diversity in children’s books important?

It comes down to representation. Majority children become overly centered, while marginalized children can’t see the possibilities for themselves. She asked us to focus on the practice of paying attention to differences. She said, “Paint a diverse world, but don’t take a story that doesn’t belong to you.”

Annie did a demonstration of drawing three different children, saying “race is only a social construct. It is powerful, but illustrators must avoid stereotypes. You can change your brain by what you feed it.” She advised students to draw at playgrounds, noticing eyeglasses, hearing aids, wheelchairs, hair styles and textures, gestures, attitude.

Art Director Susan Sherman from Charlesbridge Publishing arrived for the second half of class. She shared a presentation about her journey into publishing, and how she finds illustrators and works with them. She learned the mechanics of book production in her first job at Little Brown, followed by learning the aesthetics with legendary art director Walter Lorraine at Houghton Mifflin where she designed her “biggest seller” The Polar Express.

The Crystal Goblet by Beatrice Warde is the basis of her philosophy about book design: that you don’t notice the text but are moved by the content.

At Charlesbridge, when searching for the right illustrator for a manuscript, a team forms to determine the VTA,  or visual trait analysis, a list of adjectives that are then matched with an illustrator’s style, from piles of illustrators’ samples. Once chosen, the illustrator receives a package of layouts, with art direction and references included.

Annie and Susan recently worked together on Annie’s I Am New Here, and she brought in a mountain of book dummies, a volume of refinement over the course of five years.

Susan advised, “Be a bug in a curtain.” She emphasized composition’s importance in telling a story by moving the eye from page to page, and the significance of finding a window for a child into the illustrated world.

Students returned to their studio spaces where Annie circulated to offer feedback on their works in progress, talking here with Emily.

Susan met with seniors aiming for the children’s book market, here with Rachel.

Everyone came away with new ideas and goals. Thanks to Annie and Susan!

If another snow storm doesn’t foil the plan, we will watch a documentary, I Know A Man, about Maine illustrator Ashley Bryan this week before I check on their book dummy progress. Then it’s off to Spring Break!