I created a mask and wondered why human beings love to dress up and play. I made a sad face on one side of the mask and a happy side on the other side, showing opposite feelings. I took care making it and afterwards realized that the sad face was just as beautiful as the happy face. I developed the idea that all emotions are beautiful because it is what makes the person’s character. I felt that having an understanding of why we have certain feelings allow children to have a positive self concept and be more in control of solving problems. This idea makes children feel accepted and accepting of others.

At dance class I noticed the children looking in the mirror and wondered why they were doing this. I wondered what they were thinking. Perhaps the children were playing with their emotions along with acting out the character of their dreams. They wanted to see what that looked like and it was why they were looking in the mirror. There were lots of balls everywhere and I noticed the pattern of movement. They threw the balls away from them and ran to catch them. The spontaneous choreography that occurred was delightful to watch.

At school I used a small tennis ball and passed it around the group. I asked children to choose a colour of their ball and imagine a character. One child said, “Colour my ball, colour my ball and makes a wish! Colour my ball blue. Blue is the colour of a wizard.” The next child wanted to be a princess. At a later lesson I used different coloured play dough. I demonstrated the idea of mixing colours that represented a particular emotion. This was a trial of another concept in the illustrations in the book. The first page is a mix of white and black. The second page is a mix of red and white. The third page mixes red with another colour. Read the book and see the rest of the colours. The colours mix and the friends come together at the end. Another interesting aspect of the choreography was how they played in parallel to each other. The dance instructor gave them ideas and comments, and encouraged certain children to pair up.  The children came together at the end to form a circle.

The children made a mask of their favourite character using the mix of colours to represent their feelings. They carefully designed the mask because when the feelings get too mixed up it is hard to see them. Feelings don’t stay the same all the time. They mix and turn, and it was a good way to experience this visually and in a hands on way. All feelings are beautiful, we are beautiful was the main message of the project. For the mask they chose 2 contrasting feelings to draw, and the colours were feelings that complimented them. Feelings weren’t as straight forward as sad and happy. They were “yellow makes me feel safe because it keeps me away from the dark.” Recently this was a comment one of my year 2 students made after reading the class novel, Komiko And The Dragon. It was insightful to her personal response of the characters in the book of which she could relate to.

Lena Truper and I are good friends. We met at tribal fusion dance class and began working with Gala Yakovleva, our dance teacher with the children’s classes. What interested me was that Gala had a philosophy of dance where the participants created the dance. Gala applied the same dances and philosophy with the children’s and adult classes. The characters relate to my personal life of which I wrote a novel that I probably will never publish because of how personal it is. I used the novel as a feeder of my ideas as I recollected events and emotions, and applied them into the present and future.

The wizard is my father. He told me stories and did creative projects with me as a child. Whenever I had a problem, he may not have had a solution but he knew what to say to make me feel better and think about life. The butterfly is the symbol of my mother. From a caterpillar I saw her life grow into a beautiful butterfly and a nurturer of her children. She is more beautiful as she grows. The ageless, timeless quality of a piece is what makes it unique and everyone, regardless of age can relate to the story. The princess is the character I always wanted to be but never thought it possible. The prince is the yellow shadow, and that’s another story. I have a story to share about all the characters in the book!

It was a pleasure to work with Lena. Lena is an excellent listener and observer, and picked up on the connection of the storyline and my personal life. When I saw Lena’s drawings I knew she was the right person to do them because she saw the world in a different way. I wanted Lena to take ownership of the drawings and create them in her own unique style. Lena played with my first sketches that I showed her and developed the ideas. Lena has an innate understanding of book illustration. She connected the pages by an animal that changed. She picked up on details such as the socks. Our friendship grew as we continued to inspire each other and it is why this book has personal value to me.

I created this video to show some aspects of how the book was created. Feel free to post comments and ask any questions. My next goal is to illustrate my own book. I have many other picture book ideas and have been working with video, creating music and dialogue, and photography. I love mixing mediums together and would like to look more into multimodal texts.

ENJOY AND Happy Holidays to Everyone!

Related articles

• Little monster’s colouring competition! (madiillustration.blogspot.com)
• Colours – part 04. Mix the colours! (mahesh0806.wordpress.com)
• How The Book Colour My Ball Was Created (poemsthatdance.com)