My behind-the-timesness really shows when I admit that until this week, I didn't know who Kadir Nelson is. By chance at the library I pulled two of his books at random from the shelves. His specialty is African Americans, and wow, the emotional ranges he can portray leaves me stunned.
Above is a scene from Please, Puppy, Please. Below is Moses, When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom. These two books could not possibly illustrate better Nelson's range. One of these stories is a warm fuzzy read. The other could easily move a reader to tears.
I don't know precisely what medium Nelson uses, but it appears to be oil paints on the top layer. Under that is pencil and transparent patches of color. I am immensely attracted to this technique as both a way to preserve the lines of a drawing, and as a way to reach a full-color finished painting without bogging down in unnecessary details. For example, in page after page in both books, Nelson includes trees as background elements. Trees represent a monumental problem for painters, because they are made up of millions of individual leaves and branches. A picture book illustrator can't hope to paint every leaf on a tree and still meet deadlines. Nelson's approach is to draw the shape of the tree in pencil, scribble in a curly texture that approximates leaves, put a wash of color over that, and then touch up the dark areas with another wash, and the light areas with opaque color.
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