this Saturday, with “From Screen to Book” at the Cambridge Public Library, an afternoon’s discussion of picture books and digital media. The presenters include three illustrators, Candlewick art director Ann Stott, and agent Holly McGhee; the moderator is Jenny Brown from Shelf Awareness, who, incidentally, wrote a great account of the Horn Book at Simmons colloquium. I wonder if they’ll talk about the cyclical request for publishers to include in the book identification of the media used to make the pictures. I bet Lolly Robinson or K.T. Horning will know more, but this question first popped up (in my professional lifetime) in the 1980s, when the demand for picture books was high and an ancillary market in original picture book art developed and was celebrated, with Thomas Locker as our own “Painter of Light.” But in an era where “original medium” is hardly ever left digitally untouched before printing (beyond, I mean, the digital production of the book itself) what are you going to hang on the wall? And how are you going to describe it on the copyright page? “The pictures were created using PhotoShop” is about as helpful as saying “these pictures were made on pieces of paper.”
I hope you’re all taking a look at our contributions to Picture Book Month; this week we have Peter Sís’s 2012 Hans Christian Andersen Medal acceptance speech.
About Roger Sutton
