ILLUSTRATION
"At first, I see pictures of a story in my mind.
Then creating the story comes from asking questions of myself.
I guess you might call it the 'what if - what then' approach to writing and illustration."
- Chris Van Allsberg
My love of drawing started at a tender age.
In my earliest memory, mom used to keep the crayons in an old tin.
The tin had absorbed the smell of the old collected crayons.
I enjoyed lining up the broken nubs of colored wax around the lid,
between meticulously picking out the colors needed
to complete my two dimensional masterpieces.
Fast forward to a few hundred worn out, broken crayon stumps later...
I remember the books.
I vividly recall the books that my parents would present to me.
Endless stacks of children's books.
Some old, some new.
All of them bursting at the seams with beautiful detailed drawings, etchings, and prints.
They spoke to me.
Deeply.
I would go to bed after filling my eyeballs with those fantastical pages...
I'd close my eyes and the images would remain, dancing on my eyelids
like a slideshow.
I would lay there in the dark, reviewing the shapes.
My brain would show me how to recreate those pictures.
How they would turn out
with my small fingers, scratching the paper with a pencil.
The moment my lids lifted in the morning, I would spring to my desk,
hyperactive with the desperate NEED to put those dreams to paper.
Illustration is how I express myself.
It's how I process my feelings.
As I've grown older,
I've learned to lock and dam those flowing rivers of creativity, allowing each idea to systematically flow through.
...Mostly.
Then creating the story comes from asking questions of myself.
I guess you might call it the 'what if - what then' approach to writing and illustration."
- Chris Van Allsberg
My love of drawing started at a tender age.
In my earliest memory, mom used to keep the crayons in an old tin.
The tin had absorbed the smell of the old collected crayons.
I enjoyed lining up the broken nubs of colored wax around the lid,
between meticulously picking out the colors needed
to complete my two dimensional masterpieces.
Fast forward to a few hundred worn out, broken crayon stumps later...
I remember the books.
I vividly recall the books that my parents would present to me.
Endless stacks of children's books.
Some old, some new.
All of them bursting at the seams with beautiful detailed drawings, etchings, and prints.
They spoke to me.
Deeply.
I would go to bed after filling my eyeballs with those fantastical pages...
I'd close my eyes and the images would remain, dancing on my eyelids
like a slideshow.
I would lay there in the dark, reviewing the shapes.
My brain would show me how to recreate those pictures.
How they would turn out
with my small fingers, scratching the paper with a pencil.
The moment my lids lifted in the morning, I would spring to my desk,
hyperactive with the desperate NEED to put those dreams to paper.
Illustration is how I express myself.
It's how I process my feelings.
As I've grown older,
I've learned to lock and dam those flowing rivers of creativity, allowing each idea to systematically flow through.
...Mostly.
