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| It takes me so long to illustrate a book that I choose a story very carefully. I knew that I’d be living closely with these Root Children for a few years. I didn’t just sit down, tip my hat to them, and start to draw their first picture. I had to think of the illustrations as creating a whole, so I began by dreaming, by lying in bed in the morning and imagining what all these children were up to all the way through to the end. In a way it was like making a movie. |
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Some pictures I imagined as wide shots with a host of characters and lots of action, while others I saw as quiet and as a close-up of one or two. The reader will see some of the scenes straight on, some from the side, and some even from above. My job was to make each scene flow seamlessly into the next carrying the reader along Audrey’s story to a satisfying end while adding my own flavor along the way.
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| At one time I thought I’d bitten off more than I could chew. The scenes called for so many children sleeping, dancing, running, jumping, practically flying. Students at Hollymead Elementary School in Virginia were kind enough to pose for hundreds of pictures as reference, but it's impossible to get live children animated enough short of throwing them in the air. I figured their parents would object, so I had to draw many of the characters from my imagination |
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Not always, though: I made a clay head of Old Man Winter to draw from in the last illustration and used myself as a cheap model for Uncle Fall. After struggling through 2 or 3 sets of drawings my editor Dianne Hess and I were finally satisfied. Only then did I put brush to canvas painting the final illustrations in oil on primed linen.
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Despite all the challenges, though, I was sad to see those children fall asleep to their mother’s music for another long winter thus bringing my labor to an end.
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