Have I said that I like the shorter posts you get with a blog, just because I can think of titles for paragraphs more easily than for whole daily entries? No, I know perfectly well that I haven’t said that, but now I have.
We stopped at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, on the Hampshire College campus in Amherst, yesterday on our way back from the birthday party. We got there at just about 4:30, half an hour before closing, and got in for half price because it was so late. It was wonderful. There were only three (but big) galleries; one with Eric Carle’s stuff, including a detailed display of how he made illustrations like The Very Hungry Caterpiller; one with paintings and drawings Beatrix Potter did in the US — just about as small as the pictures in her books, and as sharp and detailed (as they would have to be, after all, to be reproduced); the third with work by Ashley Bryan, and African-American (or West Indian, maybe, by birth) artist who does gorgeous black-and-white tempera paintings that look as sharp and graphically complex as linocuts, as well as brightly colored watercolors. I could be inspired to do more eraser carving after looking at his linocut of a crocodile and hen.
I picked up a copy of Will Eisner’s book Comics and Sequential Art in the gift shop, thinking that it looked like something I could learn from. When I paid for it, the clerk opened the front cover and pointed out to me that it was signed by the author! I think the proper reaction is WOOT!