Tahlia: What it Takes to be the Future: Inspired by Kate DiCamillo and Chiaroscuro
Graphite, watercolor, gouache on paper
Thanks to Tahlia, I got to revisit one of my favorite authors. Kate DiCamillo‘s stories infuse themselves into you. Her name whisks me to the far-off afternoons of childhood, listening to my mother read aloud. DiCamillo’s books affixed us, we would bask in their warmth and melancholy.
My sister and I would beg our mom to keep reading, and she too was swept up into lives of such noble characters. We read The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane in a single afternoon, gulping tea and eating graham crackers, wondering how a story could make us equally sad and euphoric.
But it was Despereaux, the brave little mouse, who seemed to leap off the pages, taking a firm root in our lives. To this day, the illustrations on The Tale of Despereaux transport me to a time when all I could decode were the pictures. The voice of a reader opening up the dank illustrations, connecting them to this chivalrous creature’s story.
It is from The Tale of Despereaux that I pulled today’s inspiration. I was introduced to the concept of Chiaroscuro, through the character Chiaroscuro. But to learn more about him, you should read the book.
The dictionary describes Chiaroscuro as,
“the arrangement or treatment of light and dark parts in a pictorial work of art”
DiCamillo more artfully articulates the term (so well that my small self could both comprehend and adore it),
“Reader, do you know the definition of the word “chiaroscuro”? If you look in your dictionary, you will find that it means the arrangement of light and dark, darkness and light together.”
NadiaCDM 