Barbara Cooney in Black and White

In a career that spanned six decades, artist Barbara Cooney (1917-2000) illustrated over one hundred children's books. She twice received the Caldecott award for best picture book, in 1957 for "Chanticleer and the Fox," and in 1979 for "Ox-Cart Man," by Donald Hall.  I first became aware of her books while I was working in a bookstore in Washington state. I think the first one that I read was "Miss Rumphius," her 1982 American Book Award winning story of a woman who sets out to make the world a more beautiful place by planting lupines everywhere. Cooney considered this book to be a part of what she called her trilogy, which also contained "Island Boy" (1988) and "Hattie and the Wild Waves" (1990).  In the book "Children's Books and Their Creators," edited by Anita Silvey,  Cooney is quoted as saying that the books in this trilogy "come as close to any autobiography as I will ever get."

Miss Rumphius and her later books were created in color using acrylic paint and Prismacolor pencils, but some of her earlier works were done in black and white.  On a recent trip to our public library's children's classics section, I discovered one of her earlier books, a 1949 compilation of stories and poems compiled by the Child Association of America, called "Read Me Another Story." This book is filled with charming scratchboard illustrations that give us a glimpse into Cooney's style from the first decade of her illustration career.

Here is how Cooney described the beginnings of her career: "In the beginning I worked in black and white, that being the most economical for the publisher. I yearned for color. 'But,' said my editor, 'you have no color sense.' Still yearning for color, I accepted the discouraging pronouncement. Eventually a little color was allowed - sometimes two colors, sometimes three. But each color had to be painted on a separate sheet of paper. These were called 'overlays.' One art director hoped to convince me that working with these separations was 'the purest form of illustration.' But I found it tedious."

Looking at these beautiful black and white illustrations from "Read Me Another Story," I don't think that the addition of color would add anything to their charm.

Illustration Friday - Boundaries

This week's word challenge was 'Boundaries,' and I put off working on it all week. Originally I thought I would do something showing a boundary between light and dark or night and day, but I didn't have a clear enough vision in my head of what it would look like. So, instead I came up with something else entirely. My new idea was inspired by a sweet illustration I saw by Barbara Cooney in the 1949 book, "Read Me Another Story." It shows a little hen standing in the middle of a pen. Her world definitely has boundaries.  In my image, a fence is a boundary that is keeping a little rabbit out of the lettuce patch (You can click on the illustration to see it larger).

I experimented with a technique I don't usually work in - a digital scratchboard technique. My original digital sketch was done in Painter 11. A few days ago I finally succumbed to an email from Corel with details on a special upgrade deal for Painter 12. I bit the bullet and purchased it and it arrived today. I could have finished this image in version 11, but I was anxious to get my feet wet with the upgrade so I finished the image in version 12 (more about it in a future blog).

On the right, you can see my original sketch. You'll notice that originally, I showed much more of the garden. As I worked, I decided to zoom in a bit and bring the viewer closer to the rabbit.

Below is the Barbara Cooney illustration that was my inspiration.