Here’s how the story began. I doodled, I made a doodle of a rabbit holding a paper airplane. Then I asked myself questions. I mean, simple questions, what would a rabbit do with a paper airplane? Well, throw it, probably. What happens? What does a paper airplane do that other things that you throw don’t do? Well, they go in a lot of places you don’t expect them to go.
There was a series of drawings where they landed in a woman with big hair and in the wool of a sheep that was angry about it. From there you start finding your way to a story. Eventually the plane ends up in a tree. Well, the problem with that of course is now you’ve got a rabbit and a plane in a tree and you have a problem, which is something you always need in a good story, a way for your main character to grow, a way for your main character to solve something, to move on to the next step.
But he was by himself. I came up with another character, a mouse and then the paper airplane got my idea that well, maybe the mouse can fly the paper airplane. This is how it finds its way. Eventually I made little models, clay models, I did paper cut outs, I did paper cutouts, I painted, I did watercolor. Eventually when I got down to a woodcut, that black active line. Think about how you make a woodcut. You draw like this, you paint like this, you make a woodcut by pushing.
Because it’s resistant, the line tends to reproduce the force of the making of the line, and so it is active and chunky and energetic. That seemed perfect for the book. I knew it was going to be brightly colored. The black line also settles it a little bit; it gives it that bright play school color, a skeleton to sit with.
Once I made that, I didn’t have to make other stuff because I knew that was going to be the right one. Here’s another thing about woodcuts. If I were to draw you a horse with a pencil it’s always going to look like an Eric Rohmann horse, that’s the way my eye and my hand and my mind work. But if I go to a graphic, a different media, if I draw it and then put it on a plate and then use that pushing it’s going to look different than an Eric Roman horse.
It allows me in some ways to be a different artist each time, to try other media. One other thing about trying the other media is it just keeps you fresh. What did Ray Bradbury say that writing is like jumping off a cliff and making wings on the way down? I think that’s the only way to write good stuff, draw good stuff, you know, panic a little. Anxiety’s a good thing, even for a children’s book illustrator.
