It's the 5-day Art Challenge! Yesterday, Gary Fabbri nominated me to start this challenge, where each participant shares 3 drawings/paintings each day for 5 days and also nominates a fellow artist each day to do the same. I met Gary at the New York SCBWI Winter Conference last year and his infectious optimism and talents won me over. We were inseparable all weekend, even after my country beat his country for GOLD in Mens Olympic Hockey.
Today, I would like to invite our good friend and talented artist Jason Hart to share his work. Jason's illustrations are thoughtful, meticulous, and full of humour, just like him.
Day 1:
Seems apropos to share 3 portraits of people that inspired me to become a picture book artist: Maurice Sendak, Mark Twain, and My Parents.
I love Sendak's Max and Twain's Tom Sawyer characters, because at that age I too was quite the troublemaker. I wasn't as sneaky per se, but let's just say trouble always found me.
Just like Max, I was always sent to my bedroom where I'd spend hours staring at the faux wood closet doors and drifting away on imaginary adventures.
Tom Sawyer's adventures are inspiring and I can envision Mark Twain's delight as he penned this iconic fence-painting scene. Hopefully you can envision this too (hint: look at the tree branches).
Last but not least, I owe everything to my parents. They worked really hard at multiple jobs to support my brothers and I. As a result, we didn't really see them until the end of the day. This made bedtime the best time of the day. Because bedtime meant story time and story time meant listening to my parents read us wonderful books. They shared so many fantastic western fairy tales and ancient Chinese fables. It warms my heart just thinking about this - those were truly special times.
