How To Get There

Ssshh, don't tell anyone, but here are a few "test images" I've been preparing for a kids-book project. It's about a very, very small dad (Flanagan Spruce) taking his even smaller little child (Selby) on an overnight journey… down the length of a beach.

I've been wanting to draw little civilizations and characters on top of small-scale photography for a long time. Like, years. The photograph for that seagull image was taken in 2017. But I am also a very project-oriented person; if I can't think of a good "project" to tie anything into, I don't typically explore it. So for years and years I've just been assuming it would look fun to draw these little characters into the photos, without giving it a shot.

Then I took our toddler for a walk on the beach, and he was all questions. I say we're going to walk to a certain point, he asks "how will we get there?" There's a log blocking our path, he asks, "how do we get over it?" He doesn't want to walk through the wet parts, he asks, "can you carry me," and so on. Like Connect Four, a few ideas fell into place and I wondered what it would be like to take all his questions, take the beach, take this photography project I wanted to explore, and what would it be?

I like the idea of revisiting his questions, except the impassible obstacles are logs the size of great hills, and Canadian Geese bigger than elephants, and our characters scale cliff-like shelves of sand. I like how a young reader might see that, too: Selby is bewildered by the scale of these challenges, but any kid who's been to the beach might say, "but that's just a log, I can just step over that." How does that influence the way they think about obstacles? What does that do to the way they view impossible journeys? Wouldn't that make a fun book for a tiny mind?

[ ^ What the drawing looks like before I goose it with all sorts of photoshop jiggery-pokery. ]

[ ^ What it looks like after I add camera blur, masking, and various combinations of highlights and shadows. ]

To see whether this visual approach would work, I made a handful of "test images." I needed to answer a lot of questions, but they all boil down to, "will this look stupid or not?" Finally! I got to make the images I'd been thinking about for years and years. And I think they are generally successful.

The biggest surprise was discovering that most of the photos I had taken were not well-suited to this project, for one simple reason…

The test above works okay, but there's a fundamental problem: the mushroom is the focus of the photograph, and everything around it looks like it was added in after the fact. Of course, that is exactly the case. Flipping through all my old photos of mushrooms and lichen and mosses, it was hard to find the few that were actually well-suited to this project, because they were all already photos of something. Trying to draw on top was like trying to wash a rusty car: you can make it clean, but it's always going to be rusty. What I really needed was photos that fully accounted for these new characters I was going to draw in.

So I got up early, drove to the beach, and made some new photos, using a little stand-in guy to plan my shots.

This let me set up my camera and compose my photo fully accounting for the presence of a little guy who would be drawn in later. That's how I made the photo at the top of this post. It's the most successful, I think, because I planned it using a little cardboard dude to compose the image.

There's one more reason I'm pursuing this project, and that is because (and I'm just going to lay this all out there) I have this bone-deep reverence for the landscape of the Pacific Northwest, and it's past time for me to show it the love it deserves.

I've touched on it a little bit in the past, with one-off illustrations here and there, but it's just not enough. This place feels like a family member who I've neglected to keep in touch with.

[ ^ I do not sell prints of this image, because I've been informed that it shares a striking resemblance to an existing intellectual property whose owners are litigious. Weird coincidence! ]

I like drawing this landscape, but for this project I think photography suits it better. I like how the scale comes across in the photography — the lens blur is a familiar visual trick for communicating "this thing is small." I also like the way the texture of the rock and sand and wood come across in the photography — photos are better at capturing that than I might be  illustrating it, and I think it helps a reader more quickly and easily understand a familiar thing from an unfamiliar perspective.

BUT HOW WILL THIS CUT INTO MY DELILAH DIRK TIME

Great question! For now, it won't.

I'm done with the test images. I've already put a pitch package together. I just need to tighten the story. It's not as elegant as it feels like it can be, not yet, but it'll get there. I'm working hard make it true to a childlike experience without being moral-y or preachy; these have been my favourite to read to our little ding-dong (e.g., Julie Fogliano and Jillian Tamaki's MY BEST FRIEND). I've made a little mockup of the book which I read to him, make changes, and then read again. He seems to like it, even though the imagery is basically scribbles.

I'm pushing ahead with Chapter Four of PDAP, which will be done by the time this project pops up again. I'm looking forward to getting grant applications finished so that for the rest of the year I have literally nothing to do except work on Chapter Four.

(Thank you to everyone who shared good Grant Wishes after last week's post!)

- - - - -

That is my kids-book side-project for now! I hope you have enjoyed this scenic detour. Back to our regularly scheduled PRACTICAL DEFENCE nonsense next week. :)

Until then,
I remain,
bewildered by the scale of these challenges,

TC ;)