some final pics with text

Where's Tiny...the book

I was able to get together with the photographer yesterday, Thursday, instead of waiting till tonight...which was a relief because of the snow storm. I could just imagine trying to get to his place in the middle of the storm, dragging all my illustrations inside and having his power go out or something.

The photos look great! It was so cool to see them photographed nicely. He used polarizing filters to flatten out the light so the paper wasn't as reflective as it has been when I'd try to photograph it with my digital camera. I started to go through them last night and resizing them, adding text, etc. Blurb makes you put them all in as jpegs, so even if I did design it in InDesign...I'd still have to go through and export it into a PDF, then save them as jpegs...it's just easier to do it all in Photoshop.

I barely had enough room on my hard drive to work with these photos. I spent the morning copying files onto Wayne's removable hard drive, and then deleting them from my computer so I'd have more operating memory. I bought my iMac back in 2002, and while it's served me well...it's probably time for an upgrade.

Before it started to snow, I took the three pieces from "Where's Tiny" that I want in the exhibition to get framed. They garunteed they'd all be ready by January 6th.

Needless to say I am psyched to be this close to finishing. I was telling Wayne last night that this is a pretty different experience for me, because usually when I finish a project this big I just look back on all the things I did wrong and feel I could have done better...and while there is a certain amount of that with this project, the majority of what I'm feeling is happy pride. Or is it relief? 26 illustrations in six months...good lord.

At some point I want to go through and count how many indivdual pieces of paper were used in the book. It'd be a fun fact to include in my presentation I think.

Illustrations...DONE!

I was up till 2am last night finishing the cover. I am DONE with the illustrations, unless I decide to do the entire map in collage instead of on the computer...which I may yet do. Will try to get in touch with the photographer to see if he's available some evening this week to take these photos...that is, if he has power back on.

Here's hoping!

In this illustration, I updated the girl on the right in purple. She was too small before...

illustration update

Below are some crappy photos of the finished illustrations from "Where's Tiny?" I've tried to post them in order of appearance, but obviously there are some missing ones that I have already posted, or aren't finished yet, or I haven't photographed yet. I have six illustrations left to finish, and will be meeting with the photographer on Sunday to photograph them all. I'm not sure which of these I will have framed yet for the exhibition.

This is a detail of one of the glued together characters...


And this is the back of the same character...I've been using the back of the museum's old posters as a paper source. (It seemed like such a waste to throw out these posters which were printed on Epson enhanced matte paper...) That's why some of the backs of these characters have fragments of words and images.
































This detail shows the scale of some of the character pieces. These are actually collages, not just painted from one piece of paper. I think the smallest one is three pieces of paper.

final artist statement

Good lord this was quite the process...but it was helpful to go through all those drafts of artist statements. Certainly gave me a lot to think about. I asked a lot of people for their opinions and everyone's input was helpful (sometimes confusing and conflicting opinions lead you to the best results...even if I did kick and scream along the way), but in the end I think this is what it needs to be, at least for the AIB exhibition catalog.

"When I was a junior at Syracuse University, I spent a semester studying in Florence, Italy. I was excited to be there and see all the incredible artwork and experience everything I’d been dreaming about for years. Something I didn’t count on though was how lonely I’d feel, being so far from home, friends, family, and everything familiar. What made me feel the loneliest though, was not being able to communicate with the people around me. I didn’t speak Italian very well, and when I would go out into the city I was filled with anxiety about what would happen if I had to speak to someone. Every encounter was a potentially embarrassing miscommunication. I’d never considered that language could fail me so completely. It was a scary feeling. However, the beautiful art that surrounded me in Florence forcibly reminded me that art can transcend language, and communicate across language barriers.

Communication is such a big part of all of our lives, and yet most of us struggle to say what we think, regardless of what language we speak. As a children’s picturebook illustrator I can communicate with children through pictures. In this way my art can offer a reprieve from that struggle. My time spent in Italy, and the helpless loneliness I experienced was the impetus that led my art to where it is today. I use the experiences of my life to shape my stories and illustrations. My style and medium are the tools I use to communicate those stories, but my work is the development of visual narrative through the expression of my characters, and the emotion of the words."

illustration update

I've still been working on gluing together the characters for the illustrations. I've been going through the book and doing one character at a time (that is, I'm going through all the illustrations and picking out the same character in each of the illustrations and gluing them together. That way I don't have to keep digging through my piles of paper for each and every illustration.) If that makes any kind of sense. It makes sense to me, so I guess that's all that matters. It's making my life easier, but at the moment I have a pile of pieces waiting to be assembled into finished illustrations.

Here's some pics to hopefully give you an idea:




So yes I do realize that none of my characters have eyes yet, because I'm waiting till I have them all assembled. Once they're all assembled I'll go through and do the details. The one on the steps, those characters are just taped down.

artist statement...another version

So, after talking it over with people, I guess I have to admit that the ABC artist statement isn't "appropriate" or whatever for the exhibition catalog. So here's one compromise.

“Pulled along by his dog Tiny, Sam wistfully looks over his shoulder at a small group of kids along the path. The kids are laughing and talking in a language Sam doesn’t understand. He feels so alone here in this strange place, with only Tiny to keep him company. He wishes he could just go home. At least at home he could talk to kids in his own language. Here he just can’t figure out a way to make friends. He spends his days playing with Tiny, exploring the strange city, and drawing in his sketchbook. He’s getting pretty good at drawing Tiny; Tiny, with his little bright red collar and matching leash and his silly happy face. Sam is sure that without Tiny, all this would be much more unbearable. But still, it’d be nice to have a friend. He sighs as he and Tiny turn the corner, moving away from the group of kids, their laughter chasing his lonely path. It’s an odd feeling to have your words suddenly be meaningless. It made Sam a little sad to think that something that was always there for him and had served him well, now meant nothing.”

I’m Neva Austrew and I am a children’s picturebook illustrator. My work is about communicating with pictures all that is said in words.