Monday, May 7, 2007

book sale

I went to a used book sale on Saturday, and picked up a lot of great stuff: three Madeline books (I now have the entire series, except, strangely, the original), a George and Martha compilation, Baba Yaga, illustrated by the extraordinary Blair Lent (whom I met in college, but sadly didn't appreciate at the time), Crictor, by Tomi Ungerer, and an assortment of others.

One of the "others" is called Joseph's Yard, and it includes some of the most hallucinatory imagery I've seen in any media, let alone a children's picture book. I'm not even sure I like it, but I certainly admire the technique (courtesy of author and illustrator Charles Keeping). Here are a few groovy samples:







Welcome back. The year is 2007. We missed you.

I also bought a book based solely on the cover, which is a poignant reminder of the dangers of relying too heavily on photo reference when creating an illustration, especially when that reference includes models of both genders:

5 comments:

Amy Torrey said...

man-hands. whoa.

Anonymous said...

Jeff! Are those your hands?

Anonymous said...

It's like someone from below is holding her head up. Creepy.

Anonymous said...

Joseph's Yard is a book which made a deep impression on me as a child, thank you for blogging about the book. What did you think of the story?

Anonymous said...

People should read this.