Picturing Safety

What Does It Mean To Be Safe? Written by Rana DiOrio, Illustrated by Sandra Salsbury

Welcome! Welcome to the usual suspects, as well to those of you who are participating in Little Pickle Press’ blog tour for What Does It Mean To Be Safe? by Rana DiOrio.

Today we talk to illustrator Sandra Salsbury, whose lively illustrations bring D’Orio’s text to life. Salsbury studied illustration at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, CA. She received her BFA in December 2006 and her MFA in August 2009. She currently resides in Mountain View, CA with her two cats, Gypsy and Winston. “I am, however, not a crazy cat lady,” she adds. When she’s not illustrating or teaching art classes (she combines teaching and illustrating careers) she likes hiking and doing yoga.

Self portrait

She stops in for a quick conversation today. Enjoy the pictures, and feel free to weigh in with your comments and questions.

BodieP: A book like What Does It Mean To Be Safe has a serious message for kids. How is illustrating a book with a message like this different from illustrating a kids’ book primarily designed to entertain?
Sandra: As an illustrator, I don’t really feel like I should approach the two types that differently. Even though What Does It Mean To Be Safe? has a serious message, it still has to be entertaining in some regard so that children will want to read it. As the illustrator, it was really my job to bring that entertainment factor into the story. I need to create characters to follow and a narrative that goes along with the message.

BodieP: How do you think illustrations help to shape the reading experience?
Sandra: In the case of What Does It Mean To Be Safe?  the illustrations add a story element to the book. If you just read the manuscript, it’s a list of ways to be safe. I think the written aspect of the book has an extremely important message, but it’s not a story. The illustrations add a layer of meaning to the text. The book then doesn’t just tell you how to be safe, it also shows children following the message of the book.

BodieP: I notice on your website that you work in a variety of media. Which is your favorite?
Sandra: Definitely watercolor. I love the clean, crisp quality of the colors and the level of detail that one can achieve with it. I also find it much easier to mix the exact colors I want. It’s also an extremely portable media and very easy to clean up.

One of Sandra's illustrations. To see more visit her website.

BodieP: Illustration is one of those jobs that seem like they’d be a lot of fun (at least from the outside, looking in). it’s easy to think of it as a license to doodle all day. What’s it really like? Can you walk us through a typical project?
Once we officially started working on the What Does It Mean To Be Safe?  I had the manuscript, but we didn’t have an overall story for the book. I would say that this was the biggest challenge and probably the aspect that took the most time. Before I could even start working on the sketches, we had to decide what was going on in each page. Who would the characters be? What are they doing? Once that was decided, we moved on to rough sketches, and then more defined sketches, then final drawings, and then changes to the final drawings. From the very beginning scribbles to the final painting, pages may go through a dozen variations, each which had an approval process. Once the final paintings were done, I took them to a scanner and they were sent to the designer to create the layout of the book. The whole process took about 4.5 months.

BodieP: Are you a “pure” illustrator, or is that one of multiple hats you wear? Care to share what the others might be?
Sandra: Unfortunately, I am not able to work as an illustrator full time. I would like to make the transition one day, but I am not sure when that point will be. I have been working with children for about 10 years now. I teach art at a local community art school and I also work in the school districts in my area.

BodieP: How does technology affect the work you do? (For example, do you use a computer in your creative process? Does it factor into the editing of your images? Do you deliver mounted illustrations or scans?)
Sandra: The biggest role that technology plays in my work is communication. I am able to send scans of my sketches to my art director and hear back from her in the same day. Even the same hour, sometimes. I can’t imagine how long this process would have been if I had to mail things back and forth!  As for my actual work, the internet is great for reference images, but beyond that, I don’t use the computer in my work very much. I will occasionally touch up images in Photoshop, but nothing major.

BodieP: Do you think technology has improved or harmed the world for designers?
Sandra: Technology has definitely improved things for artists, if not for all the programs that are now available, then for the ease of communication. There was once a time when illustrators basically needed to live in New York. Now publishing companies can work with people anywhere in the world.

BodieP: You’re an illustrator. That’s something many people dream of doing. If you had to offer advice to those who would like to get into the field, what would you suggest?
Sandra: Learn how to market yourself. This is by far the biggest challenge for me, and one that I haven’t overcome yet. It doesn’t matter how beautiful your work is if no one ever sees it. Drawing and painting is only 50% of your job. You also need to manage your website, contact publishers, go to conferences, send mailers, negotiate contracts, and so on.

BodieP: I notice you have your work divided into illustrations, sketches, and fine art. How do you differentiate among them?
Sandra: My illustrations are finished pieces that have a narrative element to them. Most of them are based on a story or text or some sort. My sketches are basically my doodles. I don’t want to paint a full narrative piece every time I sit down to paint. Sometimes I just want to draw something silly, and that sort of falls in the sketches category. My fine art section contains figure, portrait, and landscape studies.

If you’d like to email Sandra about her work you can do so here. If you’d like to see more of her work, you can do that here. To order a copy of What Does It Mean to be Safe? visit Little Pickle Press online, or find them on Amazon. Note that there is a free shipping code (BBTSAFE) that you can use at checkout.That will also get you a free TerraSkin (tree-free paper) poster to go with the book.

Tomorrow the blog tour catches up with Pat Bean and Maggie. You won’t want to miss that. For the rest of the tour stops visit Little Pickle Press online.

My very favorite illustration in all of What Does It Mean To Be Safe?

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Being Present in the Field Beyond

“Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.”
Rumi

When I was growing up we talked a lot about “ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing”. Hell and the devil were ever-present realities, particularly after it turned out that I was not devout by nature. It took our particular brand of religion about four years to convince me that I was irredeemably wicked and bound for hell. I was five when I first realized that I was depressed, though I didn’t even know the word yet. It became a life-long condition.

When I had a son I knew that if I wanted to teach him ethical and moral principles without the baggage that so often accompanies them, somehow I had to move beyond toxic ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing to the field Rumi describes. What Does It Mean to Be Present?,  written by Rana DiOrio and illustrated by Eliza Wheeler, is a book about living peacefully, mindfully, gratefully, and joyfully in that field.

I don’t usually write about religion in this blog, but then I’m not usually reviewing a book like Present, either. The truth is, DiOrio and Wheeler have done something amazing  in this little book–they have provided a beautiful, inviting, and simple guide to living morally, ethically, and gently in the world–and they have done it in positive terms.

What does it mean to be present? asks the narrator. It means listening carefully to others, noticing when help is needed–and giving that help; focusing on what’s happening now, rather than what’s happening next; appreciating what you have; waiting your turn; treating each new day as an opportunity; understanding that mistakes are how we grow…”

I found myself comparing these simple, positive explanations with the religious directives of my youth: you shall have no other gods before me, you shall not take the Lord’s name in vain, you shall not steal, you shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not dance, you shall not wear jewelry, you shall not read fiction…

Every “you shall not” became a rail in the fence containing me into “rightdoing,” and safely out of the province of “wrongdoing.” But I couldn’t get into the field beyond, either. The very prohibitions designed to shape me into a good person prevented me from seeing beyond them to the simple principles that would shape me into the kind of person for whom the prohibitions were unnecessary.

I started this post with a quote from Rumi. I read it in a book and loved it, but I had no idea who Rumi was. Turns out he was born in 1207, in  what is now Afghanistan.

When I read that I asked myself, What if we could not discard the moral values our religions teach us, but move beyond them into the field, where twenty-first century small-town single mothers can meet joyfully, gratefully, and respectfully with thirteenth-century Muslim mystics? What about if we laid aside the restrictions that both limit us and create a society of exclusion and stepped freely, responsibly, and mindfully into that sunlit field? What might our world be like then?

Who knows? But I intend to find out.

To learn more about What Does It Mean To Be Present? or to purchase the book visit Little Pickle Press online.

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