Starting at a young age I not only found my love for drawing and painting, but I also loved to read stories and write them. I was a huge fan of fairy tales and anything Disney and my favorite books were probably my Disney Storybooks. I had a storybook with regular Disney Stories and then another one with all the Disney Princesses. Today I still have them at home on my book shelf and I still look at them every now and then. After discovering my love for art and books, I knew I wanted to illustrate children books when I was older and today this is still a dream of mine. I’ve always took inspiration from other children’s book illustrators and there are a couple whose work I really admire.
One of my favorite American children’s book illustrators is Trina Schart Hyman. Trina was born on April 8, 1939 and passed away on November 19,2004. Throughout her life she illustrated over 150 children’s books and many of them included fairy tales and medieval legends. Some popular fairy tales Trina illustrated into books are Snow White, Rapunzel and Little Red Riding Hood.
I think I love Trina’s illustrations so much because she took classic stories and made them her own. She also liked to take stories and rewrite them into her own words. The amount of detail in her books is also amazing and beautiful. As an illustrator Trina worked mostly in pen and ink and watercolor gouche which are some of my favorite mediums as well. From my own experience I know water color can be difficult to work with and control because just the right amount of water needs to be added to the paint to get it to look how you want. It’s definitely clear that Trina spent a great amount of time on all of her illustrations and put a lot of love into them and it’s even more impressive that she did them in watercolor and pen and ink. Pen and ink can also be hard to work with and control for the same reasons as watercolor.
Besides Trina’s style I also admire her for her accomplishments as a female illustrator. She won different awards including the Caldecott Medal from the American Library Association in 1984 for Saint George and the Dragon which she illustrated, and the Boston Globe Horn Book Awards in recognition of King Stork which is another book she illustrated. Besides this she was a runner up for the Caldecott Medal three other times and this included her retelling of The Little Red Riding Hood in 1984. She was also a Boston Globe runner up twice. Knowing that Trina accomplished so much in her life definitely motivates me to become a better artist and successful illustrator. With hard work and determination I know I can achieve my goals just like Trina did.
Here are some illustrations that can be found in some of Trina’s works.
