My other book, and it’s one that was a really, a great experience and a favorite of mine was Our California, another collaboration with Pam Munoz Ryan. And this is actually a redo of something she had already done before. And the first thing that I thought was, okay, I don’t wanna do another tour guide of California. And I don’t wanna physically or visually repeat what other people have done very successfully.
I decided that it needed to be more of my representation of how I feel about certain places. And of course, I tried to make my approach more personal, where I do more primitive paintings, versus trying to literally describe what’s on every one of these cities or states, or parts of the state. And
once I make that decision, that it was not gonna be a repeat of another tour guide, then everything was just great.
So one of my favorite scenes that I painted was the Channel Islands. I really love../I think that in this piece a lot of things came together, the way I’m thinking is the textures were there, inspired by the town where I live in Mexico. I wanted the main character, the whale, to be very primitive, very childlike. And in a way, I wanted the whole book to be perceived as someone that was
like children drew this thing. This is children’s memories and remembrance of a trip to California. I didn’t want this to be perceived as being painted by an adult. Mostly like, we were children that went to the state, and these are our memories.
The swallows when we cover San Juan Capistrano were fun to do, because I mean, my swallows don’t really look like swallows. They actually have eyes that are very human. So I wanted to have this, kind of a combination of a human/swallow thing, and of course you can see Mexican and Latino influences with all the decorations and the wings. And you know, kids are so sophisticated. They don’t need to see a real swallow. They understand that we’re interpreting this bird that comes back, year after year, to the same place. So I think once you understand that, you have
there’s no limitations to what you can do and create. So I like my swallows. They’re pretty interesting.
