Special Guest Illustrator Pamela Zagarenski

Last Sunday The Carle had a visit from Pamela Zagarenski , the brilliant illustrator of Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors, This is Just to Say, and many others. Her most recent book, Sleep Like a Tiger, is perhaps her best so far!

Lucky for us Pamela brought some of her original paintings to The Museum for the day, so we got a rare, up close look at her illustrations. She creates wonderfully whimsical worlds in each image, where whales float through the sky or a man and a fox share a pot of tea. To make her paintings Pamela uses acrylics like water colors, layering them sometimes 30 to 40 times to get just the right effect. She also often uses collage papers to add different textures and patterns.

During Pamela’s visit to The Carle she led an illustration activity in The Studio. Guests picked a word from a fishbowl, such as day, scary, crawl or love and then illustrated the word they had chosen.

Pamela encouraged everyone to use their own experiences to help generate ideas, what makes them scared, how do they feel about the day, what do they love?

Helping one girl who was having trouble with the word grumpy, Pamela started making her own illustration as an example and talking through the process. Drawing a man she asked “Why might he be grumpy?” adding lines under his eyes she said “maybe he had a bad night sleep?” then drawing spiky uneven hair she continued “and then got a bad haircut.” Finally Pamela asked the guest, “What makes you grumpy?”

Guests used larger pieces of folded paper, with the aim of eventually binding them together into a book using a three hole punch and string.

Moms, dads, children, the whole family, sketched, scribbled, and doodled crawling caterpillars, scary Frankensteins and sunny days.  After Pamela’s studio activity she read a couple of her books in the Library and signed books in the Great Hall.

Thank you for a fantastic and imaginative afternoon Pamela! For more information about her books, visit Pamela’s website.

This post was written and compiled by The Art Studio’s Summer Intern, Hannah Fiske. See our Internship page for more information about working at The Carle.