Grandpa Dropped His Glasses

Grandpa dropped his glasses once in a pot of dye,
And when he put them on again he saw a purple sky.
Purple birds were rising up from a purple hill,
Men were grinding purple cider at a purple mill.
Purple Adeline was playing with a purple doll,
Little purple dragonflies were crawling up the wall.
And at the supper table he got crazy as a loon,
From eating purple apple dumplings with a purple spoon.

I love poetry and finding inspiration in them for new illustrations. Recently before going to sleep I was reading one of my favorite poetry books, The Random House Book of Poetry for Children, when I came across this one by Leroy F. Jackson. I thought how much fun it would be to illustrate and grabbed a pencil and paper to sketch out my ideas before shutting off the light. It reminded me of my favorite book, The Wizard of Oz, when the characters arrive at the Emerald City and are required to wear green glasses. Everyone in the city has to wear the glasses- the Wizard's way of fooling them into thinking that the city really is all made of emeralds. I liked the challenge of illustrating a piece using variations of only one color and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out!

The Wood Between the Worlds

A few months ago I was listening to The Magician's Nephew on audiobook as I worked on another piece, a book that I really enjoyed reading as a child. As I listened to the chapter called The Wood Between the Worlds, my head was filled with wonderful visuals of this strange place. It is described as a place where it is so quiet and peaceful you can hear the trees growing, a place where it is easy to forget who you are and where you may feel content to lay down in the grass forever. Digory and his friend Polly have been sent there by his wicked uncle using magic rings and they are to report back to him on what they find. What they find (once they remember who they are and why they are there)is the guinea pig who was the original experiment, eating the grass with one of the magic rings tied round him. They also find that nothing ever happens there, but that by jumping in the pools they can be transported to other lands. I won't give anymore away- but it is a wonderful story. I remembered why I enjoyed reading it so much as a child and why it was my favorite of the Narnia books. It also gives the origins of how things in Narnia came to be, so it helps if you have read the other books first- or at least The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Chronologically the book comes first, but it was the last of the seven Narnia books that C.S. Lewis wrote.

The image stayed in my head as I packed up my studio to move to a new location. I was so glad once it was set up again so that I could finally get my vision of this hazy and mysterious place out of my head and onto paper!