colour | The Belugas are Watching

This bouquet of colour is all from one source – a streetcar in Brooklyn which has definitely reached the end of the line. As the paint peels and rust blooms its surface has become a beautiful abstract of grey-blues, pinks, mauves, with splashes of wine-stain red. If ever I want to paint poignancy, these will be the colours I reach for.

In one picture you’ll find a message, a declaration of love part scratched, part written into the paint. Is it the work of two hands? If so, which bit was written first – the half-hearted or the effusive? The resulting equivocation seems at one with the colours of this vehicle which once traversed the city and now sits decaying into an accidental art piece .

Ah, love…it reads: I love you more, more, more than JUST A LITTLE BIT!

A click will give you a large version of each photo – including the one with the message.

On Friday, a stone bouquet

The first of four colour ‘bouquets’.

When we start illustrating a new book we need to chose a palette. We go looking through favourite picturebooks and art books but we also hunt through our photo files. We are always on the look out for colour combinations – harmonious, vibrant, brash, soft – and we often take photos purely for colour. Nature is a great source – obviously – but cities yield great colour combos too.

Here is a bouquet from Brooklyn.