Tag Archives: color theory

Freight Train Trip!

18 July 2012

11 Comments

Susanna Leonard Hill crafted this little romp of a book, illustrated by Ana Martin Larrañaga. Susanna is a kind, giving, and hilarious part of my online writing community, and her books are just as sweet. I’m a bunch of months late for Phyllis’ World Tour, but Freight Train Trip! caught my eye…

…For two big reasons:

 

Without being an outright concept book for either color or shape, Freight Train Trip! manages to explore both while spilling a thunderous story along its tracks.   This is a sturdy, bigger board book, and it’s cut in the shape of a train. Already cool. When you open it, it’s a long skinny rectangle, also mimicking the snaking lengths of a train. It’s not such an extreme design that little ones won’t be able to maneuver the book, but the subtle nod to its content is smart.

I’m a grown woman, getting older by the nanosecond, but I went through each page and lifted the flaps. I hope this type of interactivity outlasts the iThings. The flaps reveal reactions, animations, or just fun surprises. Each one is a really nice use of shape to add physical dimension to the pages.

And the colors in Freight Train Trip! are buzzing and alive with saturation. I love how Ana Martin Larrañaga sparingly uses texture to allow the full, solid colors to stand alone.

The pages remind me of that fresh, smelly, brand new 8-pack of sharp Crayolas on the first day of school…before the paper rips and the nubs wear down and they break in two from coloring too much.

Pure hues and punchy flaps breathe vibrancy into this book. Know a little one? Know a little one who loves trains? Or colors? Or has little fingers to play with shapes? Freight Train Trip! is a fine tour.

And! If you are a writer or just love words, check out this post on Susanna’s blog revealing some edits she made in creating this book. It’s a master class in revision, pace, and pulse. And plus, her blog is just plain fun to poke.

The Curious Garden

15 September 2011

Leave a comment

The Peter Brown Studio

A while back, I tweeted this:

It’s true.  This book immediately jumped off the shelf at me because of the colors on the cover.  I LOVE the desaturated tones and vintage feel of the art.  But before I get ahead of myself, let’s talk about that story that buttonhooked me.

Little Liam lives in a dingy and dreary city that is made up of not much but cement and walls.  On a walk one day, he sees some old, abandoned train tracks leading to a tiny struggling garden.  Liam decides to give it some love and care, and ultimately the garden blooms.

Color

Now.  Color is complicated.  A bunch of disciplines have perspectives on it to explain what is most relevant to them.  The physiology of color tells us how light is shot into the eyeball, processed, and interpreted.  Cones and rods and the optic nerve!  There’s the science of color which refers to how color is quantified and coded and spaced on a color wheel.  The psychology of color is always fun…who decided red means love and green means envy?  Or that a yellow room makes you anxious?

Let’s not bother with that yet.  Let’s definitely not bother with ROY G. BIV or complementary colors or tertiary colors or triads or additive mixing or Sir Isaac Newton…

Let’s just talk about the pretty colors.  Liam’s story drives the palette throughout, and it slightly changes from desaturated tones to more vibrant ones as the city becomes greener.  How beautiful is that?  I’m crazy about the blues in the sky.  Even though Liam’s city is a gloomy place, the world itself is not!  It’s a bright and calming blue, and such a lovely backdrop for the fresh greens sprouting.  And how adorable is Liam’s mop of red hair…the reds and oranges complement the blues and punch Liam out of the page as the leader to watch.  This is not an accident!  Peter Brown masterfully used his color palette to tell Liam’s story.

      

     

You can buy prints of Peter Brown’s art here.  {The bear screaming among the flamingos just kills me.  If your work can make me laugh and break my heart at the same time, I think I love you.}