An Art Club Guest, Rachel Dillon.

Through Endangered Eyes received the prestigious

Eric Hoffer Award - Honorable Mention

Some of you may remember an earlier post, when Rachel Dillon, the author and illustrator of the remarkable picture book, Through Endangered Eyes, wrote a guest post. A week ago, Rachel was a guest teacher for the Art Club. I've been waiting to write about it until I had parental permission to show kids and their art on this blog. (I already had parental permission for pictures I posted earlier.)

While Rachel's painting style can be called pointillistic, she said her real inspiration was Aboriginal Australian art. Concern for endangered species has been a continuing concern of hers, and the book shown here includes endangered animals from all over the world. Future books will include endangered species in specific biomes. Currently she is working on a book about endangered animals of the dessert.

Rachel showed students her notebooks with various phases of her illustrations -- sketches, thumbnails, drawings with color washes, and finally the pointillistic finishes that make these illustrations so arresting. She gave them templates made from some of the book's illustrations. Then she showed them how to use the ends of their paintbrushes as if they were tips of sticks, and to space the dots for the strongest effect. The students were completely immersed and did some splendid work.

Thanks, Rachel, for a wonderful lesson. This book is one of my favorites, and has me itching to go get a paintbrush and try my own hand at dot-painting. Meanwhile, for those of you who would like your own copy, you can go to:

http://www.finney-hobar.com/endangered_eyes.htm or

http://www.racheldillon.com/