Description
“MoTown” is the 3rd background layout I ever created for my children’s book, Wackadoodle the Poodle. Just like the first one, I was experimenting with adding a piece of my own hair directly onto the canvas to shape the lines. I placed a piece near the bottom to rough out the form of Wackadoodle, positioning him down low so he wouldn’t take your eye away from the soaring view of the buildings.
This canvas stands as my first structural homage to 9/11 and the Twin Towers. It is a very minimalist painting built on a lot of energetic black graphic linework and raw experimentation. I used strands of my hair to construct the wires and parts of the ladder, and I left random scratch marks directly into the wet paint layers. I intentionally wanted the cityscape to feel abstract and loose so it wouldn’t clutter or clash with the black-and-white character illustrations that were supposed to be superimposed on top.
In the end, neither of my first 3 attempts at the book layouts actually made it into the final version. It brings a quiet laugh, seeing exactly what I was trying to figure out back then. It is all about trial, error, and pure experimentation.