Friday, March 27, 2015

Red Kicks


Still more Love of Reading! There are eight in the series. This is the fifth; three more to go.

This drawing was inspired by:

1. My daughter's plastic green swivel chair, which she keeps in her room, at her enormous work table. This is not an exact replica -- primarily because I do most of my drawing while my daughter is asleep. She sleeps very lightly, and so my study of her furniture would be most disturbing. I kinda winged it. The green here, with the white background, also calls up the official colors of my daughter's elementary school, which reminds me that I almost forgot to fill out her field day t-shirt order. The field day organizers will put half the kids in green, the other half white. Which color will they assign to my daughter? We'll find out on field day.

2. Speaking of the background... you may faintly see a scan of an end paper from an old book. I really like that extra bit of texture from the paper image. (But the texture of the boy's hair is heaps and heaps and heaps of squiggles from my stylus, which was delightful to do. I'm down with squiggles.)

3. The pathway in the background, curving beyond the arched doorway, symbolizes the way in which a really good book can sometimes transport the reader out of his or her everyday life for a little while. In this picture, the book I imagined is jaw-dropping and funny and full of surprises; the boy reading the book is definitely going places.

4. Some friends who got an early preview of this picture asked what the title of the book is here -- it is The Red Sneakers, and the boy's fingers are covering it up, but if you were to peel that layer away in Photoshop, you'd see the full title. I had no idea there is a movie by the same name! The plot synopsis from IMDB starts out like this: "A kid named Reggie Reynolds is a high school student who is good in the classroom but not so good on the basketball court." I can relate. However, the red sneakers in this picture don't actually have some deeper meaning and they weren't particularly inspired by anything. I just wanted to draw some cute, knock-off Chuck Taylors. (By the way, does anybody still wear those?)


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