Apr. 28th, 2009 at 10:45 AM
south dakota, 1938
Of all the picture books on my shelves, this is probably the one I pull out most often, The Champion Pig. It's a collection of photos gathered by Barbara Norfleet from small American photography studios, taken between 1929 up to the '60s. They're full of odd details, with a feeling of strangeness throughout the book; I'm a bit obsessed with it. I found it about eight years ago in Halcyon Books in Greenwich and I think it's out of print now, although I managed to find my sister a used copy online awhile back. I took the book to a cafe this morning and copied one of the photos for my morning warm-up sketch.
It's actually one of the less bizarre photos, but there's something lovely and heartbreaking about this portrait: everything from the safety pin holding up the man's trousers and the half-smoked cigarette in his shirt pocket while he holds an unsmoked stogie in his mouth; I can't tell if the man is the woman's son or husband, but she looks both hard and kind at the same time, almost beautiful in a way. The guy has a real Boo Radley look to him and these are probably his best clothes, which are either too big for him because he's lost weight or they're second-hand. His ears stick out in such a Norman Rockwell kind of way, emphasised by the close sides of his haircut. ...So interesting.
The Bookseller Crow, which hosted part of this weekend's book party, has posted a video on its website. The caption reads:
There were some very cool cats in our shop today: Now that was a lot of fun! What a really great bunch of people! Here are some of them drawing and winding down at the end of a packed day of events at The Crystal Palace Children's Book Festival. Look out in particular towards the end of the film for Viviane Schwarz drawing some lovely cats.