The tutorial Blanking Page at www. Yellapalooza.com is meant to encourage picture book writers and illustrators to take the WHOLE page as well as the WHOLE book into consideration. It talks about the impact of color, composition, story, legibility, etc., which is a huge topic. The second part is about what it takes to lead the eye through the book, and keeping the reader interested. How color impacts the illustration is a huge thing, if a book reads ALL the same or if it's too choppy and doesn't follow logic, I believe makes a less successful book than one that piques and maintains the interest and even better is how to get the reader to want to read the book many times... a lovely feature for children. The idea of helping with language, social and literacy skills, I can't think of anything more satisfying, fun or important. Because best of all, kids LOVE the ridiculous, the sublime, the important, the heartfelt.

So these two were the original drawings (there were to be four) showing the impact and differences between triadic and complement, and oppositional complement and analogous palettes. This is done in grisaille again (the paper for all of these btw is Paper for Pens, my favorite quick paper for brush work and calligraphy that doesn't have to be on colored or heavier paper-- very small tooth to it, it's very SMOOTH so there's not a lot of flecking). 3b seems to my favorite, and Prismas. I occasionally like Derwent, but it's easy to take the wax buildup down. I haven't decided when I REDO this what palette to use, and whether to paint it (acrylics, more than likely, though I do work in water color and want to master guoache)or stick with the grisaille and play with turpentine to see if it makes it more "painterly". Perhaps I'll try it all ways and choose the strongest. Depends on my ambition level. One thing I am looking forward to again at one point is working from real models again. Most of my drawings are constructed from imagination and memory, and I think they're weak because of it. But with NO budget it's hard to justify hiring models.