Evelyn Evelyn Creative Process - By Cynthia Von Buhler

Photograph of Cynthia by Seth Kushner

I believe that every single image should be a perfect work of art in and of itself. When you draw in sequence boxes you will invariably have a great deal of repetitive, boring images. Man moves leg, man moves other leg, man waves goodbye. Yawn. My readers are smart. They can fill in those blanks. This is why I love making children’s picture books. One page = one perfect image. I used the vintage circus framing devices to aid me if I needed to tell more than one image could reveal.

I had to draw hundreds of pencil drawings for the Evelyn Evelyn book in a very short period of time. Because of my deadline I needed help darkening and coloring the images. I did a call for interns on Twitter and I gave the prospective interns the Evelyns' skeletons page to work on. It was hard to choose because they all did a good job, but I found two extremely talented and hardworking people, Meghann Pardee and Fin Cramb. Their level of workmanship stood out from the crowd. Hire them—you will not be disappointed. I would scan my drawing and Meghann would darken it and fill in black areas for me. When she was done I would indicate which colors should go where and send them to Fin in Scotland. 

There’s a good deal of blood in this book. I had used real smudgy-finger dirt, so I decided to spray and drip blood onto the paper too rather than paint it in using Photoshop. I’m a purist. I always prefer to do the real thing instead of fake it. I can always tell when an artist uses computerized blood and I bet my readers can too. When I accidentally cut myself with an X-acto blade (which happens frequently in my line of work), I don’t waste the blood. I add it to the pages.  

 

I really love making paper cutouts. I recently made a beautiful one for Amanda and Neil’s tour. Did you know that Hans Christian Andersen liked to make paper cutouts too? His are amazing. He cut them without even drawing them out first. He took scissor right to folded paper. I cheat. I draw them out first on the black paper with pencil and then I cut them out. I did four different versions of the twins: baby, girl, teen, and adult. I was at the Mark Twain museum in Hartford, Connecticut, last year and I saw an etching on the wall in the children’s playroom. Dark, moody shadows surrounded a little boy and girl. These shadows subtly suggested a skull. The children’s heads were the eyes. Is it a skull or two children?