Joining the team at the 2018 Tunbridge World’s Fair

Teamwork is everything in my business of creating picture books. The author/illustrator team, the author/editor team, the illustrator/art director team, all of the above, plus the marketing team, bookstores, librarians, teachers, parents, grandparents–ALL of us are on the same team–to get good books into the hands of children.

So imagine my pleasure when I was asked by Robert Howe, Tunbridge Fair’s postermeister, to join his team and design the official poster for 2018. The theme is Celebrating Working Teams.

Of course the word Team can mean something different at the fair, but I still took it as a good omen.

The 1st time I went to the Tunbridge World’s Fair was with my parents, back in the early 1970s. We camped at a friend’s farm in nearby Chelsea and drove over to the fair, always held the 1st weekend after Labor Day. In those days there were still girlie shows at this and other Vermont Country fairs.

fair

The Tunbridge World’s Fair was, and still is, a genuine agricultural experience, set in a lovely, narrow river valley.

Tunbridge2015 copy

There are horses, cattle and sheep, pigs, chickens, goats and rabbits proudly on display.  There is a midway with rides and game booths, and all the greasy, sweet fair food you could want.

Nowadays, I go to draw the animals and the people.

Gabby and the Girls

So it was no surprise that the poster I chose to design featured both.

sketch_1

I was lucky to be given excellent reference photos by two fair photographers: Nancy Cassidy and Mark Dixon. Drawing from elements of these and my own research material, I created a rough sketch.

cass.boykissox

Photo by Nancy Cassidy

cass.oxen.parade

photo by Nancy Cassidy

dix,2ox.heads

photo by Mark Dixon

B&Wprint

Once I had a B&W linoleum print,  I painted it with gouache, layered a little painted carousel onto the girl’s tee, and added text in Photoshop.MGRTYPEgaptooth_1

I began by trying to match this old-timey font, found in the background of a photo, as my poster display type, but it didn’t enhance the finished artwork so I switched to Linolschrift for the finish.

photo 2

The last adjustment was to eliminate the “gap tooth” on the little girl. The consensus was that it made her look a little too young.

gaptooth_1

I’m pleased with the finished product. I hope 2018 fair goers are too!

poster2018

 

 

Hay Season

That smell is in the air.

hillfarmweb

Hill farm hayfields,gouache

Especially at dawn and dusk I smell fresh cut grass. Along the highways and back roads the fields are striped with swaths of it, lying in fluffed, pillowed rows.

haying

In my Champlain Valley neighborhood the flat bottom land allows for long, easy to mow hayfields.

hayfield

hayfield

Cornwall Farm/watercolor

Freshly cut, the alfalfa, trefoil and grasses lie flat, but before this grass become hay it is handled many times. It is wuffled by the tedder, raked into windrows, and finally baled or rolled or stacked for storage.

HayRolls

Hay rolls/watercolor

Full Circle with Baby Bear Counts One: Crunch, Crunch, Crunch

Every September, the cow corn is harvested. This is not sweet “People Corn.” It is pure carbohydrate and is usually chopped and made into silage to feed to the dairy cows throughout the winter.

tulacorn:web

Occasionally the harvester leaves a patch, meant to represent the quality of the whole harvest for insurance purposes, and a few stalks are left standing to feed the wildlife instead of the cows.

corn:webThe ears of corn looks pretty tough.

We aren’t going to eat them with butter anytime soon.

But the crows, and the deer, and the bears love them.

cowcorn:web

The crisp edges and black lines of the linocut really lend themselves to cornfields and crows.

deerblock

And watercolor adds the autumnal burnish.

BBCO16-17:small