BIG KIDS Magazine:Rachel and Me
My artist friend Rachel is seventeen years old. It’s difficult to assign a chronological age to this young woman because she is both wise beyond her years and as uninhibited in her creativity as a pre-schooler. That’s how I knew she was the perfect candidate to collaborate with me on this illustration for BIG KIDS Magazine.
Tah Dah! Our collaboration is above. The prompt for the illustration is “Treasure Maps”. We’re mapping our creative journeys. Rachel created the left side, I worked on the right. On my side the journey relates to Rachel, as her friend and mentor. It helps to have an older artist friend, for encouragement and suggestions; that would be me. I’m in my skinny yellow house complete with family and cats and plants and that’s where Rachel comes to make art. Rachel’s is more comprehensive… the journey so far. Rachel wrote the beautiful poem. The entire work is about being an artist; from play scribbles through adulthood. Rachel, moves from scribbles scanned from an actual construction paper masterpiece she created as a very little girl, through growing pains, to near independence.
Rachel and I decided to keep the tone or feel of the illustration light and full of kid inspiration. After all, the inspiration was and is BIG KIDS Magazine-truly a work of collective art.
*The image accompanying the first post is a collaboration of Rachel’s work and mine. The second post, all Rachel and this post is our published collaboration in BIG KIDS Magazine.
