More English reading lessons for Tofu

 As Tofu's Japanese reading gets better and better, it becomes harder and harder for him to put himself through the effort of reading English, in which the pronunciation of the words is not necessarily obvious, and the content is necessarily somewhat elementary, since his reading vocabulary is so much smaller than his speaking vocabulary, and smaller yet than his thinking processes.

And of course eventually he will learn to read English in school, since Japanese schoolchildren do learn.  But he will learn from someone whose English skill is far less than his own.

So I think that it is a challenge well worth our effort, Tofu's and mine, to keep working on English reading. My challenge is to make lessons that are fun, not too simplistic, that he will enjoy enough to look forward to--not dread--letters from Grandma.  His challenge is to read them.

This particular rule, about how an "e" on the end of a word makes the vowel say its name, is one that he actually already knows.  But occasionally he stumbles over it, and so I thought it was worthwhile to make a whole interesting lesson on the subject.  Besides it was quite fun to find words that worked for this exercise.                                                                      

Gloria in excelsis deo

Glory to God in the highest!
(It sounds more glorious in Latin though.)

This image was done in an effort to make the sort of small, iconic drawings that can be found in books of liturgy, drawings that are meant to symbolize, rather than explain, a text.
I love the drawings by Br. Martin Erspamer, OSB, which are often found in Catholic liturgical guides.
I am not sure my particular style is suited to such a use, but how can I know unless I put enough true effort into the making of them?
I've done a few more, but this small one is the only one related to Christmas.  

Abraham greets his heavenly visitors

Sometimes I draw the same story over and over.  This is the fourth version of this one, from Genesis chapter 18. 

Three men come to visit Abraham, who is a semi-nomadic shepherd, living with his wife and his servants in tents. The travelers who come his way are few, and those who arrive are treated with the respect and hospitality we might assume would be accorded kings.  Like the bedouins of the Arabian peninsula, for Abraham the law of hospitality is absolute.  When these men come, he bows before them, asks them to stay to refresh themselves, and has a feast prepared for them. 
It is not clear whether or not he recognizes at first that they are heavenly visitors.  Perhaps this is the welcome he gives to all visitors.  But indeed soon he finds that it is God himself along with two angels he has been entertaining, and they have great news for Abraham and his wife Sarah: next year Sarah will have a son.  Abraham and Sarah have been waiting 25 years for this son, since the first time God gave the promise to Abraham, and now it is finally the right time. 

Happy Eighth Birthday Tofu!

Moses and the Burning Bush

I suppose there are a lot of ways of depicting fire in a line drawing.  I looked at many photographs of fire, and of course not only is it evanescent, but it is ever-changing, and has a different appearance depending on the wind, on what is burning, and on circumstances that it would take someone more knowledgeable in physics than I to explain.  My aim was for the fire to be beautiful and flowing.  I looked for some inspiration to Aubrey Beardsley's gorgeous forms in black and white, those Art Nouveau shapes wherein Reality takes a back seat to pure line, but in the end Mood predominates.  I didn't want to make a moody image, but I did want the fire to have that elegance of line that is so much a part of Art Nouveau. 

Working things out

I have a series of stories to illustrate about a group of kids who live in Texas in the 1950's.  Nice, kind of slow moving stories, with conflicts, but not the kind of dire conflicts kids today face.  Their conflicts are more about simple getting along with one another.  One of these stories concerns the summer pleasures of floating down a stream on inner tubes.  After deciding on the general look of the picture, I started drawing it.
Here is the drawing:

I liked it pretty well, except that each of the people in it was as though they were in their own box--no overlapping, except for the two at the right, and the two of them were sort of in their own box.  Besides, the boy at the front, falling off his tube, looks not quite right.  And then, the deciding factor was that I reread the story and found that according to the words they are all supposed to be wearing shoes. 

It is always good training to be willing to do the drawing over and over again; it's something I learned from Seth.  Don't let it go out unless it is as good as you can do

So here is the second one:

Shoes on, some overlap, much better. 
Although the boy on the left, with the tube under his arm, has a left arm that is far too long...
And the boy splashing in the water still looks a bit disjointed.

Then I spoke with the author, who said that he had decided to give each of the drawings a full page in the book.  That means a vertical, rather than a horizontal layout. 
OK, no problem.  I'll draw it again. 


This time, for the vertical layout, I thought I'd better do a little more research on rivers, how they look, how water looks when it is flowing.  Doing it all from the imagination is fine, but it may be better to get some real feel for the landscape. 
Here is the third drawing:

OK.  I like the scenery much better.  It looks like a real place.  The little patch of reeds and grasses in the front right corner brings the viewer into the setting some more, all the kids have arms and legs in proportion. 
But there is a different problem: it's dull.  Nothing is happening.  Something is GOING to happen, as the boy with his back toward us is just about to hit the rapids, but everyone else is just floating.  Besides all the kids except one are in a vertical line.  Accuracy in drawing can NOT take the place of interest--either interesting composition, or interesting emotional action.  Accuracy is good, but for an illustration it has to take a back seat to emotion and vibrant composition.
Then I reread the story one more time, and found that there was some action in it that I had ignored.  In the girl in the plaid shirt teases the boy ahead of her by splashing him as they float along.




So below is what I think is the final:
It has action, accuracy, rhythm, and, I hope, interest.  I may find something else it needs, and if so, I'll change it again.  Or if anyone who sees this is bothered by something, I would be glad to hear about it.  I learn something every try. 

Moses and Pharoah's daughter

Continuing to illustrate the handouts for my sixth grade Sunday school classes.  The subject matter is always available, the kids like the drawings, and I have an ongoing, low-pressure commission.  If I decide later that my skills have increased so that I can depict the story better, I'll redo it for next year.     

Jacob the Trickster meets his match in Uncle Laban

Genesis 25 begins the story of Jacob and his twin brother Esau.  Though they are twins, Esau is older, and thus stands to inherit everything from his father Isaac, including the covenant with God.  Jacob tricks his father into giving him the inheritance instead and then runs for his life to his mother's brother Laban, a man whose ability and willingness to deceive are even greater than his own.  It's a colorful and fascinating story about a man who would do ANYTHING to be blessed.  He is wrong-headed, and God teaches him a hard lesson, but his goals are in the right place. 

This is the first drawing that I have for this story for my class.  Laban's sons are behind him, and his daughters are under Jacob's outstretched arm.

Abraham and Isaac

ABRAHAM AND ISAAC

My Sunday school class gets first crack at my pen and ink drawings, though I don't tell them I did them.  They don't need to know that.

In this story, Abraham has been called by God to offer his only son Isaac as a sacrifice.  Abraham sets off to do his grim duty, determined to follow the instructions of the God of the universe, no matter how counter it seems to everything that has passed before.
Of course, once he has proved that he was willing, God stops him and tells him to offer a ram instead. 

I won't go into the theology of this story here though, just the art.   Abraham is old and determined; Isaac is young and trusting, but puzzled. 

Bible illustrating

THE ANGELS URGE LOT AND HIS FAMILY TO FLEE SODOM

For my sixth grade Sunday school class in Old Testament, since we use only the bible as our textbook, I try to provide some visuals for the kids. 
I may not actually use this piece, because it's really rather a minor story, but I am trying to learn to do pictures with more action in them, and this scene was full of action.  Sodom is about to be destroyed, and the two angels (looking like regular travelers) are trying to convince Lot's family that it is urgent that they leave NOW.

Looking at the work of some of the great illustrators: Howard Pyle, N C Wyeth, Seth Fisher, and I see tension, bodies in movement, and then I looked at my pictures, and they were all quite still.  I realized I needed to learn to portray the tension that is at the heart of a story where there is high emotion and high stakes.

When I started doing watercolors, I thought I was pretty much putting pen and ink aside.  But I do really love line drawings.  And for this purpose, for handouts to my students, I can copy these on the school copier, so black and white works where color would not.