The many hats of Theodor Seuss Geisel: illustrating

Introduction

The illustrator has the important job of helping the reader see the characters and what is happening to them in a story. Just as writers carefully craft their words, illustrators use their unique styles of drawing to help make the story clear and more interesting.

Ted Geisel believed "a child's idea of art (was) pen-and-ink outlines filled in with flat color, with no modulation or subtlety... that's the way kids see things." He felt his own style developed because he couldn't really draw. He said, "Kids exaggerate the same way I do. They overlook things they can't draw, their pencils slip, and they get funny effects. I've learned to incorporate my pencil slips into my style."

Drawing illustrations or creating fine art is more than just pencil slips on paper. There are emotions, observations, and ideas imbedded in the inks, paints, chalks, and charcoals. A discussion of the visual elements of composition (color, line, shape, texture, value, form) may be interesting and helpful, but students who have already come up with words to describe their own characters and actions are probably more than ready to get the pens rolling.

Below are some ways to help get them started or use their imagination to add new dimension to their work. If students are illustrating stories they've already written, it will be helpful for them to sketch illustrations on facing pages as they would appear in their book. Remind them to take advantage of their earlier notes about their characters' development, and to reread their story to help create illustrations that closely match the vision of their mind's eye.

Pre-K

The shadow of things to come. Young children are fascinated by shadows. The inner child of Ted Geisel was also struck by the contrasts of darkness and light, and in the early 1970s he became particularly captivated by some illustrations -- primitive stone-cut silhouettes -- created by northern Quebec Inuits. Dr. Seuss's The Shape of Me is illustrated in silhouette.

Discuss shadow and silhouette with your students. Take your students outside or use a light source such as an overhead projector to help them explore the different shadow shapes they can make with their bodies, and other classroom or brought-from-home objects. Hang a sheet in front of your light source and have students guess the objects in the silhouettes. Provide students with objects or paper shapes (ovals, squares, triangles, etc.) and have them devise the silhouette of a character in a story they have written or would like to tell from behind the sheet.

Grades 1-3

Funny things happen everywhere. Even on the most routine of days, kids can almost always find something to laugh at. Geisel lived along those same lines, taking very little of life at face value. He said, "I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living; it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities."

As students prepare to create their own illustrations, bring in photographs from magazines, posters, etc. and challenge them to turn their minds upside-down or sideways to think about how the image could be redrawn and made humorous or even just silly. Encourage them to apply this way of thinking to their own drawing -- even if they're not trying to be funny. It's the angle at which they approach their artwork that will make it uniquely their own.

Grades 4-6

Draw it to find out what it is. A blank page can be intimidating, especially if you over think what it is you want to draw. In a 1957 interview with the Saturday Evening Post, Mrs. Ted (Helen) Geisel said of her husband, "Elbows and knees always bothered him. Horton is the very best elephant he can draw, but if he stopped to figure out how the knees went, he couldn't draw him."

Concentration is important in any creative endeavor, including illustration. But it's what your students choose to focus on that will make the process frustrating or fun. They can be casual and relaxed. They can experiment with different styles and mediums. They can examine the work of other illustrators. Some research may be in order so that iguanas look like iguanas or to rule out a realistic style. As they draw, remind students to think about what's generally pleasing to the eye -- without worrying over every little detail. Every line they draw will have to have a consequence, but they don't have to know ahead of time what that is.

Grades 7-9

Back to the doodle board. Where's that doodle that got things started? Geisel once said, "Mine always start as a doodle. I may doodle a couple of animals and if they BITE each other it's going to be a good book. If you doodle enough, the characters begin to take over themselves -- after a year and a half or so... "

Since your students won't have a year and a half to lavish over their doodles for this project, encourage exercises that start with lines of action -- a gesture or expression that a particular character makes, for example. Or, based on their feeling about their characters, have students assign different shapes to each character -- ovals, pear-shapes, squiggles, etc. -- then flesh out each character. As students sketch out their entire story, the shapes can substitute for the full-fledged images until they're ready to fill in the details.

Grades 10-12

Capture a mood. Is it the words or the pictures that create the mood or tone of a story? In his college days, Geisel was beginning to ponder that very question. He said, "I began to get it through my skull that words and pictures were Yin and Yang... that married, might possibly produce a progeny more interesting than either parent. It took me almost a quarter of a century to find the proper way [to do it]. At Dartmouth I couldn't even get them engaged."

Once Geisel found the proper relationship for his words and drawings, he was prolific -- writing and illustrating some 44 books. He was also a perfectionist, down to the exact colors of every one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. But when he wrote My Many Colored Days in 1973, he set it aside to be illustrated by "a great color artist who will not be dominated by me." That didn't happen until 1996 when Mrs. Ted (Audrey) Geisel gave the illustrating project to Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher.

Share this information with your students and lead a discussion on how to assess the mood of a story, especially one of their own works. Have them think about how various media and techniques including painting, printmaking and photographic processes would affect mood. Don't let students get discouraged if their own skills and techniques can't match the vision created by their words, Instead, help them explore new mediums to find ways that make that perfect match.