Kite

Here’s the second in the series of Christmas prints for Suzanne. When I was working on ideas this was the first concept I sketched out and oddly enough it proved to be the most difficult to execute. I had a really hard time getting the levels and colors right. I like the final result though.

Another big inspiration for these drawings was a favorite childhood book that I now read to my kids: The Big Golden Book of Poetry. The illustrator was a woman named Gertrude Elliott (Espenscheid) who appears to have illustrated a number of children’s books in the 40s and 50s. There’s something about her illustrations that I find very appealing and unique. Maybe it’s the simplicity without being cartoonish. I also love her choices of colors. I found some scans of her work on flickr but dedicated collections of her work and biographical information about her are not to be found. It’s a shame, I would like see more of her illustrations. She had a special eye.

I’ll post the final Christmas print tomorrow.