Here’s another spread from my personal project.

Every time I’m in the bookstore I look through children’s picture books.  I try to compare them with books I would have enjoyed as a kid.  The books that receive popular acclaim are clever and well designed and perhaps funnier than books used to be.  However, I feel like the books even ten years ago had more atmosphere than the ones that are popular today.  Is this the case?  My favorite book to leaf through as a kid was the beautifully illustrated adaptation of Pilgrim’s Progress, A Dangerous Journey.  At any rate, it may be ill-advised or an affront to the collective wisdom of children’s literature, but I wanted to do a picture book for my younger self, who is a great deal like my present self.  Here’s a sneak peak.

Chugging away (get it?) on a personal project.  Here’s a peek at part of it.

I found this charming poem in a 1950s poetry compilation for children.  I did this drawing to accompany it.

Last week my wife purchased three boxes of books at an auction.  In the boxes were four of a five volume set of children’s literature called The Children’s Hour.  It occurs to me that children were treated with greater respect back then than in much of the literature meant for them today.  Authors in the 1950s tried to “connect” with the reader as much as authors today, but the effort has an entirely different attitude.  Whereas the common ground today amongst author and child is immaturity, the authors of yesterday found maturity to be the common ground.  The above poem describes a very simple and profound moment in a way that doesn’t look down on children.  It assumes that they are human beings with a cache of relate-able profound experiences.  It doesn’t assume that they need jokes about yellow snow or exposed underpants or romanticized adolescent sex to capture their attention.  To me the subtext is, “I am a human being and I had this sharply realized experience.  Maybe you would enjoy hearing it since you too are a human being.”

It is said that folks in the Dark Ages looked at the ruins of the Roman Empire and had no idea how such things were constructed.  While it isn’t fair to say that we are in the Dark Ages of children’s literature, it may be fair to say its Golden Age was the 1950s.

This year’s Christmas Postcard owes much to my wife.  During the latter half of November we watched numerous (it felt like numerous) romantic comedies.  All the “follow your heart,” “believe in the power of your dreams,” “thinking is bad” moralism engulfed me, and I felt the need to combat the growing pressure of 90′s romantic comedies lest I should implode.  In order to press against the crushing embrace of women’s fantasy, I watched episodes of Surviving the Cut and Special Ops.  I actually completed this card while re-listening to Jack Coughlin’s excellent sniper memoir Shooter.  Not surprisingly, Santa ended up with a knife in his teeth.

The face of an officer and a relation

Who fought long ago for the great English nation.

Despite having led men with great admiration,

His face bore the marks of persistent deflation.

Fall is my favorite time of year, and though the northern states are probably feeling the season more acutely, the south is now starting to experience the trickle down.  Just as stories of becoming are typically more interesting than stories of being, I think the transitional seasons are more pleasant than Summer and Winter.

C.S. Lewis writes of perceiving the idea of Autumn as a child through Beatrix Potter’s book Squirrel Nutkin.

“It sounds fantastic to say that one can be enamored of a season, but that is something like what happened; and, as before, the experience was one of intense desire.  And one went back to the book, not to gratify the desire (that was impossible–how can one possess Autumn?) but to reawake it.”

There does seem to be a thought in Lewis’ writings that the beauty inspires longing because there is a tension between man’s spiritual aspirations, and his fallen (no pun) condition.  Because beauty speaks most directly to the spirit, it makes sense that beauty has fallen out of fashion in academic pursuits of art–especially since the narrative of modernity tends to run along the rails of scientific materialism which denies the spirit altogether.

At any rate, I have done an illustration in a fall setting in honor of the coming season.

Pencil Rough

Excerpt from Thomas Forsythe’s, The Ballads of the Fourteenth Regiment: sung during various campaigns in India, Denmark, Portugal, Spain, The Low Countries, and France from 1799 to 1818 with notices of variant constructions.  Volume 1.

The Ballad of Colonel Sly

Good Colonel Sly often was widely perceived

As the fanciest dandy that could be conceived.

He rode on the furry red back of a fox

And ladies did gaze at his golden forelocks.

O dum de de dum de de dum de de day

de dum de de dum de de dum de hurray!

The Colonel was fine and he stood six feet two

But poor as a church mouse he was, yes it’s true

So the wealthiest daughters were all locked away

Which caused the poor Colonel to protest foul play.

O dum de de dum etc.

But one soft grey morn Colonel Sly said “good day”

To a wealthy young widow who happened his way

And in no time at all they were married. Some say

They rode off on his fox with a fine rose bouquet.

O dum de de dum etc.

Photo of the ink version sans photoshop.