The Artist at Work: Card Tables and Collage

A couple of years ago, Jane Botham, coordinator of children's services for the Milwaukee Public Library, asked me to be part of a program, a memorial lecture series in honor of Ellen Raskin. There was a panel of three or four people who were either writers or illustrators, and she wanted us each to talk about what caused us to be a writer or artist. When my time came to speak, I said I was going to talk about a card table.

When I was growing up, my mother and father did a lot of creative things. My mom was a seamstress, and my father built things out of wood. For some reason I think that they understood that I enjoyed drawing and constructing things. I remember trying to make a pair of moccasins, with the beading and everything, just to see if I could do it. I would get good supplies — cloth scraps from my mother and wood from my dad. Other children would have things like construction paper, with those wimpy colors. Fabric is always more joyous; the dyes they use for cloth are much better than those in construction paper.

I worked on an old card table that fit into a small room which was adjacent to our living room. Most people would have used it for a dining room, but we had a piano, so we called it the music room. There was a little spot between the closet and the piano into which this card table fit perfectly. So I was always able to be where the action was. My parents made a bargain with me. Although they were very fastidious people, I did not have to clean everything off the card table every night. If I was working on something, I could leave it out. It was so important to have that spot to work in.

In high school, I knew I had to get a scholarship to go to art school because my family didn't have a lot of money. I had to make some art samples, which I did on the card table, to send in with my application. I got the scholarship, so I moved to Milwaukee from Beaver Dam, a small town about seventy miles from Milwaukee. I took the card table with me. I lived in a dorm, where I got a job running the switchboard in the evenings. I had a room to myself, fortunately, and I converted the card table to a drawing table by placing a wooden bread board on top and putting a tin can underneath so the table top would be on a slant. I used the card table through four years of art school, got my first job in an art studio, got my first apartment — and the card table went with me. I still have it, with a new top on it which my father made out of wood. It's got holes drilled in it and ink slopped on it and cuts from razor blades, but I still use it.

Even as a child I knew I wanted to be an artist, but I didn't quite have a focus as to what kind of artist I wanted to be. By the time I got out of four years of art school, I knew I wanted to illustrate children's books, and indeed I did do a few in the sixties. But the way they were printed was so disappointing. I've always been sensitive to colors, and at that time I was also doing graphic design work where I would go to the printer and approve colors on a press run. With the books, I wasn't given that privilege. The printed book was so awful that I didn't want a child to have it. So I stopped doing picture books completely for a while, and I concentrated on graphic design projects, including some work for the Milwaukee Art Museum and for the libraries, where I felt I had more control of the product. A lot of my friends — including Jane Botham and Ginny Moore Kruse, director of the Cooperative Children's Book Center — kept saying, "Get back in there. You can do it." I'll always be grateful for their support. I wasn't very confident about getting back into children's books, but the creative urge was so strong that it just took over. I began to see an emphasis on graphics in picture books, and I thought the time might be right for my work. I could see that there was a lot more care being taken in the production of children's books.

I decided I would see what I could do by combining my writing with my art. I have a tendency to go back and forth: I'll work on one a little, then I’ll go to the other. If I say something with words, I don't need to describe it with the art, and vice versa. So in my spare time, because I was already working full-time as a free-lance graphic designer, I did Growing Vegetable Soup (Harcourt). By that time I had had enough experience in design that I thought I could work out the elements of text, typography, and art better than I might have twenty years before. That was the start of what I consider almost a second career in the children's book field — a twenty-five-year overnight success story!

I went back to the University of Wisconsin and learned how to make paper, to bind books — a lot of rudimentary things. I knew that I didn't have to sell what I would design in this class. I could create just for the sheer pleasure of it. I could do things that couldn't be done in multiples, just one of a kind. I started experimenting with positive and negative space and with apertures, and that experimentation led to Color Zoo (Harper). Later, with editor Antonia Markiet's help, that experiment did become a book, but the concept probably wouldn’t have occurred to me if I had not taken the class. I wouldn't have been so free; I would have been more concerned about earning a living. I wanted to figure out what a book was that made it different from anything else. Why was I attracted to the form of the picture book, and why would other people be? I didn't want to be gimmicky; I wanted to distill, to get the essence of what it was that was so exciting. I hope I'm still exploring that idea. I don't see any sense in creating books otherwise. I get a lot of joy out of it.

I try to maintain a feeling of spontaneity in my work. I usually sketch out the concept of what I want to do in pencil. Then I collect the objects that I want to paint; I do as much as I can from real models. This technique is very involved, almost impressionistic. I paint watercolor washes that set the mood of the colors in the objects. Then I lay these washes out on the floor of my studio until they dry. Sometimes, if it's humid, I help this along a little bit with a hair dryer. If I want texture, I might dab some material over the wet surface to absorb some of the moisture. If the paper's too wrinkled I iron it, and then mount it to a very lightweight bond paper. Then I put rubber cement on the back of all these pieces, and I start to look for little areas that might be expressive of a certain configuration or tonal value. I begin to cut out shapes, piecing together my illustrations, painting the edges as I go along.

In Eating the Alphabet (Harcourt), once I got the paintings done, I made color photocopies of all the paintings, because the art was so fragile. If I had had to put everything in place all at once and permanently, I would have tightened up. In that book, in particular, I remained very loose — because I would literally do it over and over and over and over again, almost with gay abandon, knowing that I wasn't using expensive watercolor paper. If I made a major error, I knew that I wouldn't have to choose between living with it or starting over again. That's the beauty of working with collage. When I talk to children in schools, I say, "What if you did a face and you painted it on one piece of paper and then once you got it all done you decided that you might like the smile an inch over to the left, would you do it all over again? If you had that smile on a little piece of paper that you'd glued on, you could take the glue off and move it around until you got it to the exact place you wanted. You'd have a lot more freedom." That's what I like about collage. I keep that freedom for myself up to the final moment. I build it into the process, because I know that once I invest that amount of time on something, it's very difficult to throw it in the wastebasket. I just know that I'm going to be tempted to say, "Well, it's not so bad." I just finished Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf (Harcourt); I did the whole book using a white background. But when I looked at it after a couple of weeks had passed, I decided that it didn't look right. So I got the art back, took it all apart, started with a painted background, and re-worked all the colors. That was tough for me to do, because I’d spent so much time on the book already. But I had to do it. I like to think, as a designer, that if you create a book properly you shouldn't see the hand of the designer in it. It should look easy, not designed.

I try not to censor myself, to limit myself because of preconceived ideas. If you start very abstractly, you can always put yourself in. It's much more difficult to start tight and loosen up. For instance, in Fish Eyes (Harcourt), I put in a secondary line of type, black type on dark blue. To me, that was just an experiment in perception. I purposely didn't want that design element to be dominant because I already had a dominant theme So I worked on my layout, and then I stood in front of a full-length mirror to see how close I had to come to the mirror before I could read that second line. I wanted the type to be a surprise to a child discovering it. I try to work on a lot of different levels in every book. Some things are more successful than others.

I don't go on press —the books are printed in Singapore — but the production director at Harcourt, Warren Wallerstein, goes. I do see two or three sets of proofs before they get to the folded and gathered sheets. I've been doing books enough years that I can spot what's wrong. When they were printing Fish Eyes — it was on the press in four color — the blue wasn't quite right. The blue has to have exactly the right value or it either makes the black type too dominant or not dominant enough. Warren pulled it off the press, and they ran it in five colors, the blue being an ink color. So I trust him. He really does take a lot of care. That's really a gift in itself, to find someone that you can work with, whose eye you trust, whose judgment you trust.

Getting ideas for books comes about in a variety of ways. I sometimes wish it would come about in a more regimented fashion. Sometimes I don't really know what I want until I do a little bit of it. Sometimes the beginning idea will come in the writing. Other times it starts with an art style or a subject matter. Also, I think a book is sometimes determined by the kind of information I want to give. If I simply want to express the joy of having a garden, I don't need to render the subject matter in as realistic fashion as I would in an alphabet book.

I got the idea for the title for Feathers for Lunch (Harcourt) first. I'd been thinking for a while that I wanted to do something with the most ordinary, common birds. I started to think about the art technique. I always liked Catesby's bird prints better than Audubon's. The sense of design on the page is better; the drawings are just a little more stylistic. I wanted to create a real reference book for younger children. First of all, I wanted to draw the birds lifesize. That presented the next problem: I had to use a book size that would house these lifesize birds. I had also thought about the idea of a cat who would be trying to catch them. I couldn't get the cat on one page unless I used a triptych. So I could only show a part of him. That led me to the point of realizing that some birds roost at a higher range than others — for instance, the mourning dove. It was unrealistic to think I could have a book that would be so tall that I could show the top of trees. I decided just to suggest the sounds. So I had the sound of the cat and the sound of the birds. That prompted me to print the sounds in red and the labels of the birds in black. I worked on a grid of the area I wanted the cat to be moving in, including the height of everything and the size of the birds — all in scale. So, for instance, I would know how much I could get on the page and whether the cat, up on his hind paws, could actually reach up to the bird bath. At first I thought that with all the other color it would be preferable to have a black cat. But it looked much too predatory and too wild, So then I tried a calico cat, because I think they often look clownlike. I thought it might soften the impact. But the cat still looked as if he could too easily catch a bird. Then, when I was visiting my sister, I looked at her cat — a middle-aged, overweight cat who still has that little spirit in him but just can't move that fast anymore. He had that innocent look — "who me, go out and catch a bird?" And when he got excited, his eyes opened up just like the eyes of the cat in Feathers for Lunch, really wide, and his tail would wiggle just a bit.

Then I also decided it would be interesting to set the book in a certain time of year so that I could introduce the landscape. I decided I would draw only things that I could see when I took a walk during the month of May in the area of Wisconsin where I live. I integrated that with the birds. I tried to pick birds that wouldn't only be found in Wisconsin. Not all of them are found in all parts of the country, but I would say three-quarters of them are. With the flowers, I picked some perennials that I hadn't done in Planting a Rainbow (Harcourt), ones that didn't quite fit in that book — again, just to broaden the range of information for a child. Then I worked on matching the birds up with the flowers. I always knew that the oriole would look the best in the lilacs; I knew that even before I began. But I didn't know what would look right with a red-winged blackbird. In Wisconsin the red-wing is one of the first spring birds; you know when you see one that spring is going to come. Then I obtained permission to use the bird lab at the Field Museum in Chicago, to compare my art with bird skins, making sure the feathers and details were correct. The editor, Allyn Johnston, is a bird-watcher, and we had already decided to include a glossary. Using the same art, I made color photocopies, reduced by fifty per cent, and made new legs for all the birds. I really like the shape of Feathers for Lunch; when you open it up, the book is almost square, but not quite.

I had the most problems with the page where the cat gets caught. I couldn't quite figure out how I was going to do that. I knew people in my building who owned cats, and I asked them if they would hold their cats for me. Then I had to find the right shirt color for the person holding the cat so that it wouldn't interfere with all the other colors on the page and all the feathers. I tried to get an indignant look on the cat's face. I did it over and over until I got the cat's expression the way I wanted it. I remember even debating what size the hands should be, for the child who owned the cat. I did a workshop out at the children's zoo in Milwaukee for Color Zoo. A brother and sister came up to talk to me, and I kept looking at their hands. I said, "I wonder if you would allow me to trace your hands." I told them all about the book and how I really appreciated the help because now I knew the hands were the right size. The were quite impressed.

In preparing this art, I did all the washes and then put them together, as I've explained earlier. The feathers and the bird were probably made of twenty or thirty pieces of paper. The paper is so thin that once I've finished painting it, it is saturated with color, very dense color.

Sometimes I don't want that to show through if I'm overlapping a feather with another feather. Then I have to mount the little section on another sheet of bond paper and paint the edge. I work on a three-ply Strathmore, a good acid-free paper. If had done the art on one sheet, for instance, as I did Planting a Rainbow or Color Zoo, there is not as much build-up; printers are able to take that paper and bend it around a drum and scan it. In Feathers for Lunch, they weren't able to do that because there were too many layers. The layers might come off. So the art had to be photographed first. With each step you generally lose a little color, but, in this case, I didn't find the loss too noticeable.

None of my books has been very easy, simple, or just fallen into place. If a book just falls into place, that will probably mean that I'm repeating myself. By the same token, there's no law that says you can't do something similar. I think of Color Farm (Harper) as a brother or sister to Color Zoo. But I still want each book to be different in what I am trying to convey to children. All the books have had their struggles. If you can get one thing right, though, it seems that things open up more easily from that point on. In Feathers, for instance, once I got the right kind of cat, with the right kind of personality, I was reassured that it was going to work.

The beginning process of creating a book is the most exciting. Corrections certainly aren't! It's also exciting to see a printed book for the first time, even as folded and gathered sheets —to see it in such a pristine form. I love the whole process. I remember getting my first copy of Planting a Rainbow. It arrived on a day in Milwaukee when there was a blizzard. I remember standing there at the window looking at it, watching the snowflakes outside.

I work with an editor at each publishing company and with their designers, at a later stage. But, generally, by the time they get something from me, I've already figured out precisely which typeface I want, what size it is, where it's going to be. I like the art and text to coexist, so I need to know the line length precisely. If the cat's tail is going to wind itself around the type or a page, I don't want to suddenly find that the line is one word too long. I want everything to have its place so it's balanced. I really use typography as just another design form, another element of the art.

I do think about children and their responses. I always try to be aware that I'm communicating with children. I often do programs for schools, not always just the younger children, but all the way up to high school as well. I get into different aspects of art, why I'm an artist, art as a vocation.

I don't think of myself as doing things in a particularly conventional way. Maybe it might be more difficult to work with children if you had to teach them to draw realistically. But if you're asking them to do things that make them think creatively, that's a whole different mentality. And sometimes if one of them sees someone else's work, they'll go back and they'll want to do better. It just sparkles; it's such fun. They excite one another.

I think of myself partly as an educator. But I don't want anyone to think I'm a full-time teacher, because I'm an artist. I'm trying to use my art to teach a little, making children a little more appreciative of the flowers they can see, or helping open up their eyes to the beautiful birds flying overhead. I'm pleased that the books are working. It's like being a grandmother in way — setting something down that might, if I'm lucky, be remembered after I'm gone. And also to communicate what I think is important. Look for those birds! Plant a garden or tree! They are very homely, ordinary subjects — yet spiritual.

Lois Ehlert has written and illustrated many acclaimed picture books, including Feathers for Lunch; Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf (both Harcourt); and Color Zoo (Harper), a Caldecott Honor Book. Her article is based on an interview conducted by Anita Silvey.