Spring has Sprung! (not really)

It's been sooo frigid lately, but since it is early March, the sun has been shining brightly and I swear spring wants to spring! When I wake up in the mornings, I can hear a family of birds in the alleyway from my bathroom window, and they make me think that warm weather is not far away! If only the air temperature could just catch up with the bright sun and things started sprouting, everything would be on track!

To try and usher in (or welcome) the spring into my life earlier this week, I bought some pretty pink flowers to spruce up my living room.

Ranunculus, tulips and lisianthus (maybe?) add some cheer to my little bookcase.

(oh, and that is a random picture of my brother and me on his high school graduation)

Sometimes I really miss my days working in a flower shop in New York. I started off working in the flower kiosk in Bryant Park, then moved to the shop in the West Village. 

Good times. 

Working in Bryant Park in itself was eventful! But I'll get to that some other time.

I had plenty of time to observe (spy on, really), photograph, and draw the people in the park and the flowers I was tending to:

Every Thursday at the West Village shop, we would get shipments of flowers from the Netherlands, and it was like Christmas morning every week! We would unwrap boxes and boxes of Dutch tulips, roses, tropical flowers from Australia and South Africa, anything and everything you could imagine. It was amazing! And the shop smelled soooooo good!

Roses! Lilies of the Valley! Peonies! Hyacinths! Pineapple flowers! Jasmine! Orchids!

Ahh, the bounty!!!

That seems like another life ago. After I moved back home, I worked in another flower shop locally- it was the best! Someday I'll turn my flower notes and drawings into a book- and also do a series of flower paintings/collages!!! That's been on the back burner for years.. I've gotta resuscitate that this spring... stay tuned! For now, taking a short walk to the flower shop around the corner from me does the trick. 

Come on, Spring! I need you!!!

-P.S: here's a freaky nature fact -  tulips keep growing even after you cut them and put them in a vase. Weird!!!

Blog Q&A with Deborah Kalb

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Deborah Kalb, co-author (with her father Marvin Kalb) of the book Haunting Legacy: Vietnam and the American Presidency from Ford to Obama for her blog: Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb.

The interview is copied below. You can visit Deborah's blog at http://deborahkalbbooks.blogspot.com/

Friday, March 7, 2014

Q&A with illustrator Elizabeth Zunon

Elizabeth Zunon is an artist who has illustrated a number of books for children, including The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, a 2013 Children's Africana Book Awardwinner; My Hands Sing the Blues: Romare Bearden's Childhood Journey; and A President from Hawaii. She grew up in the Ivory Coast and is based in Albany, N.Y.

Q: On your website, you mention the influence on your artwork of your childhood in the Ivory Coast. How is that reflected?

A: Mostly in the bright colors I use. The everyday clothing of people in the Ivory Coast and all over Africa has bright patterning—you don’t see that here in Upstate New York! I love collecting patterned papers and fabrics.

Q: How did you end up illustrating The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, and how closely did you work with the authors?

A: I was the last piece of the puzzle for that book—it was originally going to be illustrated by somebody else who had to drop out.

I did not work extremely closely with the authors. I received reference images from Bryan Mealer, William Kamkwamba’s co-author; he had a lot of photographs of William with his family, in the village. I didn’t speak to William at all really until the project was done. William was off at school.

Q: Do you envision your work differently depending on the age the picture book is designed for?

A: I don’t really change my approach depending on the age of the child. I want to portray realistic figures, realistic landscapes and backgrounds.

Q: How was it to illustrate a picture book about Romare Bearden—illustrating a picture book about an artist?

A: That was a great project for me. It was my very first picture book. I was a couple of years out of college. It fell into my lap; I had lost my job at a flower shop. I had a total of nine months to work on it. That allowed me to delve into the research part; I was not very familiar with Romare Bearden’s work. I wanted to emulate the collage aspect of his work.

I learned not only about the artist but his process. It helped me identify with him as an artist. The story was about him as an adult reflecting on his childhood somewhere else, and I was trying to hold onto my childhood images of the Ivory Coast; I could relate.

Q: What about the book about President Obama?

A: That was different than the other picture books I’ve done. I only painted landscapes; they used actual Obama family photographs. It was about discovering Hawaii. I was transported back to my childhood in the Ivory Coast; [many of the flowers] are similar, and since I used to work in a flower shop, that was great.

Q: Are you interested in writing a picture book to go along with your illustrations?

A: I am, absolutely. I have a couple of stories in my mind. That’s my ultimate goal.

Q: What do you work on with kids during your visits to schools?

A: Sometimes the school asks me to visit because the students have read one of my books—The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, or My Hands Sing the Blues. The kids are already familiar with it. I have a Power Point presentation about how I worked on the book. I use myself as a model, set up my camera on a timer, and work from photos of myself posing. Sometimes I’ll come into a class and we’ll work on a collage project.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Two picture books. It’s a first for me to work on two at the same time! I’m trying to juggle both projects. One is a true story about a person in Africa, an environmental leader. The other is a fictionalized story—a girl finds poems in her grandmother’s attic written by her mother when she was growing up on Air Force bases.

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Paintin' Babies

Ahhh, well it has been a busy couple of weeks. I've shifted from working on illustrations for one book to another, doing local school visits, and planning the next couple of months. Not to mention, my ceiling started leaking again and I've had to move my computer, printer and office stuff out of my office and onto my drawing desk, so that's thrown a wrench in my working in an organized space... but I'm dealing with it.

Anyways...

This illustration I'm working on now reminds me of how many babies I've painted over the years!

... baby from upcoming book out Spring 2015 ...

... Babies from Blue Boy series in high school ...

... Baby-carrier series from college ...

... Babies from egg-tempera & gold leaf series from college ...

... Baby from Icon series in college ...

... Baby from "Lala Salama" book ...

Mother and child subject matter has always appealed to me for some reason... and it's been a re-occurring theme in my work for over ten years! Maybe it has something to do with a baby's innocence and wide-eyed curiosity about and observation of the world. I always wonder: "What are babies thinking?"

Catch-up Day

Ehh the snow is back again and I'm just not feeling as productive as I anticipated I would be today: lots of painting to do!
I might as well do something productive and prepare for a school visit coming up next week. Ooh, I can also transfer some drawings that will need to get painted this weekend...

Here are some inspiring videos I came across recently. Maybe they will wake up the inspiration!

on being in a creative slump:

THE GAP by Ira Glass on Vimeo

on cool charcoal drawings:

My aching bones

I'm no athlete or anything, but it seems to me that I should start warming up and stretching my arms, shoulders, hands and back before and after drawing and painting sessions.

I hit 29 years old and things that never hurt me before are bothering me now; like my lower back... what the heck? Sitting hunched over in a a chair for hours at my desk can't be taken lightly anymore! And I guess that the bitter cold we've had this winter affects the body too. Geez- who knew? I'm learning something new every day.

This reminds me of my very first day at RISD. My very first class at art school was a drawing class, where the teacher made us stand and stretch our arms; doing big circles in the air for what seemed like a good half hour (I'm probably exaggerating). We then sat in a big circle, each in front of our drawing pads with blindfolds on (yes, really), feeling the paper with our hands for what seemed like way too long once again, before we were even allowed to pick up a piece of charcoal to draw with. Needless to say, I was asking myself what in the world I had gotten myself into by choosing to go to an art school- But it all worked out in the end! I will forever be grateful to Professor Tom Mills for teaching us that we need to protect and be in tune with our bodies when drawing. It sounds dramatic, but it's really true!

Ah, now I'm missing those art school days...

OK- time to get up, stretch and get back to work! (should my shoulders be cracking every time I swing my arms around in a big circle? Somebody should make a jazzercize video for painters...)

P.S. Tom Mills is a genius- he woke up at 4 or 5 every morning to write in his dream journal... and I only ever saw him ingest Diet Dr. Pepper and cigarettes: all the fuel he needed.

New Picture Book!

I am working on final illustrations for a new book to be out Spring 2015!
It takes place in western Africa, and I am so thrilled to be illustrating it. It has been a while since I've painted sequential images for a picture book, and I'm getting back into the swing of things and working methodically.

I loooove painting- but there is so much to do before putting paint to paper:
- transferring the drawings that I've done into the computer (by scanning)
- editing and printing out drawings (to scale of the final book- easy to do if not for various forms of technology sabotage! Don't get me started)
- preparing the paper (measure, cut, tape to drawing board)
- gesso-ing the paper (gesso is thick acrylic white paint)

squeezing a scribble of gesso onto the watercolor paper

spreading it out to cover the entire page with a thick brush

paint it smooth and leave to dry!

- painting a base coat of pinkish-orange acrylic onto the papers (it shows through in skin tones and makes them look warm)

- transferring the drawings onto the final paper to paint on (thank you, tracing paper and light box- you light up my life)
- making sure paintbrushes are clean and dry and happy (if I've been good, I've washed them the night before and they are dry a as a bone with soft bristles)

(these brushes are not happy)

- mixing oil paint colors! (dark, medium and light skin tones)

and FINALLY I jump in! 

Oh, and I cannot paint without music- right now it's "Tartit" and "Mamadou Kelly", whom I saw in concert this summer--- having good music makes all the difference when trying not to worry about deadlines and things, and every book ends up having kind of its own soundtrack!

Happy New Year!

2014 is here!

Although we did not have a white Christmas, the new year has kicked off with loads of snow on the ground, and freeeeezing temperatures... So cold that my heat stopped working on Friday! What a cruel joke (especially for an African) to wake up in a freezing house on the coldest day of the year! The heat was fixed by the afternoon (thank God) and I got organized to get back to work on my projects this coming week, and that involves painting, painting, painting!

More on that tomorrow.

Happy New Year!