{"id":3397,"date":"2014-05-06T00:00:24","date_gmt":"2014-05-06T06:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=3397"},"modified":"2014-05-06T06:39:51","modified_gmt":"2014-05-06T12:39:51","slug":"the-birds-and-the-bees-before-breakfast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=3397","title":{"rendered":"The Birds and the Bees Before Breakfast"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>
\n

(Click to enlarge)<\/em><\/center>
\n
 
<\/p>\n

The basics of reproduction before I’ve even had my coffee<\/em> yet? That’s a 7-Imp first. <\/p>\n

Over at BookPage<\/em>, my review of Sophie Blackall’s<\/a><\/strong> The Baby Tree<\/em> (Nancy Paulsen Books, May 2014) has been posted. If you wanna read all about it, head over to their always informative and entertaining site. The review is here<\/a><\/strong>. <\/p>\n

I follow up today with a visit from Sophie and some art from the book. <\/p>\n

Enjoy. <\/p>\n

* * *<\/font><\/strong><\/center><\/p>\n

Sophie<\/font><\/strong>: This is a page from my sketchbook where I first scribbled thumbnails for the layout of The Baby Tree<\/em>. I remember I was on the subway and it was crowded, and I was balancing the book on my lap with my elbows tucked right in. And for some reason I was able to get pretty much the whole thing down, something which had been eluding me in all the previous hours at my desk.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n

(Click to enlarge)<\/em><\/center>
\n
 

\nThis was the tiny squiggle …
\n
 

\n
\n
 

\n… which would grow into this sketch …
\n
 

\n<\/a>
\n
(Click to enlarge)<\/em><\/center>
\n
 

\n… which changed a bit in the final painting below. The ambulance was just too weird.
\n
 

\n<\/a>
\n
“So I ask Mrs. McClure if she knows where babies come from.
<\/em>From the hospital, she says, and then she says,
<\/em>Boys and girls, it’s time to wash our brushes.”
(Click to enlarge)<\/em><\/center>
\n
 

\nHere’s another sketch which changed a bit in the final:
\n
 

\n<\/a>
\n
(Click to enlarge)<\/em><\/center>
\n
 

\n<\/a>
\n
“Roberto, the mailman, thinks babies come from eggs.
But he doesn’t know where to get the eggs.”<\/em>
(Click to enlarge)<\/center>
\n
 

\nI knew I wanted to balance spots for the boy’s real world and full-bleed images for the scenes he imagined. I borrowed the white space from one of my favorite books, The Tiger Who Came To Tea<\/a><\/strong><\/em> by Judith Kerr<\/a><\/strong> …
\n
 

\n
\n
 

\n… and patterns and lines from Koganemaru the Dog<\/em> by the Japanese illustrator Shotaro Honda:
\n
 

\n<\/a>
\n
(Click to see larger version)<\/em><\/center>
\n
 

\nAnd I built my palette around the colors in this 18th century Indian painting I saw at the Met, possibly by Mir Kalan Khan. (I thought someone might ask me one day, so I wrote it down!)
\n
 

\n<\/a>
\n
(Click to see larger version of the painting)<\/em><\/center>
\n
 

\nI also snuck in an indulgent couple of cameos: The boy’s bedtime reading selections at the end are my studio mates’ books: Sergio Ruzzier’s<\/a><\/strong> Bear and Bee<\/a><\/strong><\/em> and Brian Floca’s<\/a><\/strong> Locomotive<\/a><\/strong><\/em>!
\n
 

\n<\/a>
\n
“And I ask them.<\/em>
Where do babies come from?<\/font> …”<\/em>
(Click to enlarge and read full text)<\/center>
\n
 

\n
\n
\n
 

\n
* * *<\/font><\/strong><\/center>
\n
 

\nThanks to Sophie for visiting. Here’s a bit more art from the book …
\n
 

\n<\/a>
\n
(Click to enlarge)<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n

“And Grandpa tells me, <\/em>A stork brings your baby
in the night and leaves it in a bundle on your doorstep.”<\/em>
(Click to enlarge)<\/center><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

* * * * * * *<\/center><\/p>\n

THE BABY TREE. Copyright \u00a9 2014 by Sophie Blackall. Published by Nancy Paulsen Books\/Penguin, New York. All images here used by permission of Sophie Blackall and the publisher.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Click to enlarge)   The basics of reproduction before I’ve even had my coffee yet? That’s a 7-Imp first. Over at BookPage, my review of Sophie Blackall’s The Baby Tree (Nancy Paulsen Books, May 2014) has been posted. If you wanna read all about it, head over to their always informative and entertaining site. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-picture-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}