My Shadow

A beautifully illustrated version of Robert Louis Stevenson's poem, My Shadow by Glenna Lang. The pictures show a young girl's travels through a dream night scape with her shadow companion. I like this book obviously because of the poem but also because the illustrations, even though they are acrylic paintings, look so much like the effect you get with silk screen printing. Flat areas of colour with no shading. The illustrations also have been criticized because of their flatness and muddling of the concept of shadow casting. I have used it to help show what silkscreen prints can look like and also as a starting point for collage, using coloured papers. I don't know of any picture books illustrations that employ silkscreen as a medium so if you know of one I'd appreciate hearing about it.
Activities:
1. Share the book. Discuss the pictures in terms of media and style. Can you identify shadows? What causes shadows?
2. Identify the features of the pictures in that they are flat areas of colour that fit together. There is no shading to suggest form. Most children will probably determine they were painted.
3. Offer the coloured paper as collage to create images or introduce the silkscreen process to create images that have flat areas of colour and shapes that fit together.
4. Children obviously need prior experience with the silk screen technique and have experimented with it beforehand. A good way of doing this is to use torn paper stencils with the silkscreen and repeated printing with different colours.

The Mysteries Of The Harris Burdick

This is my all time favourite picture book! In fact anything by Chris van Allsburg automatically goes into my library - I love everything he does. There is lots of stuff about using this stunning book as a stimulus for writing activities. But the drawings will open a whole new world of exploration for using black and white drawing media.
You can Google the title to find out more but if you don't know this book you need to get out of the cave you have been living in!
Activities:
1. Give children a whole range of graphite pencils to play with. You could challenge them to create as many tones as they can with them from pure white paper to the blackest black they can make.
2. Share the illustrations and talk about them extensively - there are lots of options here.
For example you could discuss what media has been used. How has Chris Van Allsburg shown things in three dimensions? Discuss the pictures in terms of whether they are realistic or not? Talk about how he has made them slightly surreal. Discuss the dreamlike/enigmatic/mysterious quality of them. This list is endless.
3. Challenge students to create a black and white image that tells a story like the images in this book. Can you make an image that uses all the tones you discovered?
Can you make an image that is like a dream? Can you make your image enigmatic/mysterious? Encourage students to use the media all over the surface like the illustrations. This could be part of the discussion. For example: Tell me about how much pencil has been used on the paper. What white spaces are left and what are they for?
4. I have a black and white pencil drawing I have done that I sometimes use with students. While it's not in the same class as Chris Van Allsburg's work, it does give students an idea about making a drawing that fills the space with media and making an image that appears realistic but incorporates the impossible.