Key Characteristic #5: Illustrating Between the Lines

Leo and Diane Dillon are not literal illustrators.

Leo and Diane Dillon were quoted (on ourwhitehouse.org) as saying: “Our challenge as illustrators is to decide how best to graphically portray words and attack the viewer. We don’t illustrate words literally. It is our job to expand on the words—to illustrate between the lines."



When the Dillons write in "Jazz on a Saturday Night" that the music of John Coltrane talking to Charlie Parker is like "a river of melody sketched in dim light," they do not illustrate even their own words literally. There is no actual river, nor any sign of dim light. There are not any music notes. What exists on the pages are several illustrations: Coltrane and Parker wailing on their saxes, and then on the next page, a bunch of happy people clappng hands. This is their river of melody, and it is lovely to see, with faces of passion and delight and pure enjoyment in music, heads tilted up to rejoice in the church of jazz.

In "The Secret River," author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings does not actually say that a panther crouching before protagonist Calpurnia is frightful-looking, but the Dillons illustrate the panther with huge, fearsome fangs, pointy lower teeth, huge, bright, fearful eyes and a large mouth.

Also in "The Secret River," Calpurnia's dog Buggy-horse is described merely as having an "enormously fat stomach, just like a little old buggy horse." Buggy-horse is lazy and sleeps a lot. It is up to the Dillons to decide what Buggy-horse will look like exactly, and they chose a cute little plump beagle. It was not what I expected from the text, but I thought it lended a sweet rather than lazy, old look to the dog.

In another part of the book, Calpurnia wonders, "Now if I was a fish, what would I like to bite? If I was a fish, I would only bite something unusual and something pretty."

It is unexpected, but Calpurnia as a fish is illustrated as herself being "something unusual and something pretty!" This was something that the Dillons had to interpret and illustrate in their own way. These kinds of chosen interpretations add so much to children's literature. Because they are so creative and imaginative, they encourage children to be creative and imaginative as well. If the Dillons can see Calpurnia's head as being part of a fish, so can a child! And a child can go on to imagine her swimming around in a pond as a fish, eating little minnows, or playing with other fish. License to create and be imaginative helps open up children's minds, and illustration often begins to open that door.

Likewise, when Calpurnia writes a poem about bees, she does not imagine a headdress full of bees, and yet that is what the Dillons wonderfully illustrate with great creativity, color and wonder.

"Everybody's bees is my friends,/Everybody's flowers is my flowers./Everybody's happy hours/is my happy hours./All this goes on/and there is no ends," Calpurnia writes. Her mother responds, "You are really a smart child. But you should say 'are no ends.'" From the illustration the Dillons drew, the reader may believe that Calpurnia was too busy dreaming about her beautiful headdress of flowers with bees pollinating them to use proper grammar, but her mother didn't forget! 

By using such dreamy, thoughtful illustrations, the Dillons let us see inside Calpurnia's imaginative head, which helps balance out the superrealistic grammar lesson that her mother gives her, preventing the story from becoming overly weighed down with heavy seriousness.

In "Mama Says: A Book of Love for Mothers and Sons," the Dillons do other fun and creative interpretations to illustrate between the lines. The author Rob D. Walker merely writes, "Mama says/Have courage/Although I may be scared/Mama says/To walk with care/And I will be prepared" with no discussion of tightrope walkers. But that is what the Dillons have illustrated, with great perspective of space, distance, tension and color.

These contributions of the Dillons to the nature of children's literature truly do read between the lines and expand our understanding of the words before us.

Key Characteristic #4: Collaboration

The Dillons have a very interesting view on collaboration.

"For us to be able to collaborate is somewhat of an amazing thing," Leo Dillon said in an interview with Locus Online.

They use the concept of the "Third Artist" -- a person who is neither Diane, nor Leo, but a separate entity. The Dillons explain more of this fascinating concept below, also excerpted from the Locus interview. This quote is from Diane.

At the point we hit the 'Third Artist' concept, it helped us a lot, because we could look at ourselves as one artist rather than two individuals, and that third artist was doing something neither one of us would do. That lifted the work away from reflecting either one's personal viewpoint. We let it flow the way it flows when an artist is working by themselves and a color goes down that they didn't quite expect and that affects the next colors they use, and it seems to have a life of its own.

The same as writers who talk about how these characters take over their work. In a sense that happens in the creative process with us, too. We're able to accept that flow. If a piece takes on a certain look when I'm doing it, and I hand it to Leo, it flows into something else, and he goes right along with it. Then when it comes back to me I pick it up from that point and carry it on.

This fascinating view of the flow and the otherness that art can sometimes take on is often pervasive in a single person's art, but to be able to put aside ego and make compromises when doing one piece of art between two people is rare.

"Collaborative art is, by nature, a series of compromises," website BPIB wrote. "Somehow the Dillons have managed to compromise themselves into an on-going series of masterworks."

The couple originally met at Parsons in 1953, and were rivals! Art brought them together, and they were married in 1957. They have spent almost 60 years collaborating together, illustrating more than 50 books together and winning a whole host of awards, from the Caldecott to the Hugo to the Coretta Scott King award.

Listen to an NPR piece on the Dillons' fascinating life here.

Key Characteristic #3: Love for Folktales, Fantastical Elements and Whimsy

The Dillons have a great affection for illustrating folktales full of whimsy and fantastical elements. It is almost as if their illustrations do not want to stay on the page, but instead want to float and fly off of the page, so fantastical are they.

From "The Girl Who Spun Gold," an African variation of Rumpelstiltskin, to their famous "Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears," the Dillons have illustrated many folktales.

The Girl Who Spun Gold

Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears

Here is a reading at the White House Easter Egg Roll of "Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears."

This video is a reading of "The Goblin and The Empty Chair" with the Dillons' illustrations. This reading is particularly magical and transporting. While watching it, the viewer feels caught up in the book trailer-like illustrations and transported to a fantastical, whimsical world of folktales. The goblin is reinterpreted from a frightening character to a do-gooder character that helps a family.

The Dillons' folktale illustrations have truly added to the diversity of children's literature. Thanks to them, many African-American children can identify with and see themselves as Rapunzel, Moses, kings and queens, where they could not before.

Key Characteristic #2: Sociopolitical and Historical Currents

Leo and Diane Dillon do not shy away from big sociopolitical and historical issues. They consciously choose to illustrate books that fit in with their politics. "Earth Mother" is an allegory; though Earth Mother is the character in the book, she also represents Gaia (in other words, all of Nature and our Earth that we live on).

As Earth Mother wanders, she finds that everyone has complaints. Man complains about mosquitoes, saying the world would be perfect if she had made it with more delicious frogs and less pesky mosquitoes. Frog complains about Man catching him and eating him. Mosquito complains about Frog eating him. But Earth Mother walks on, smiles, sighs. "The world, in its own way, was perfect."

The respect in this book for nature as it is and women is evident in the illustrations. Earth Mother is gorgeous, graceful, intelligent, natural, wise, patient, and even humorously droll when listening to their concerns. She rejoices on one page, with her arms in the air celebrating the "sage covered deserts." She is musical, playing a mandolin-type instrument on one page.

The Dillons also wrote one of the most moving children's picture books I have ever seen, "The People Could Fly." This book combines fantastical elements about how it was said that long ago, the African people could fly, with realistic elements about slavery. For a photo of the most moving painting in the book and a description of the heart-wrenching scene, please click here.

In "Many Thousand Gone," the companion to "The People Could Fly," the Dillons illustrate for Virginia Hamilton again, illustrating various moments in slave history from the beginning of slavery to the end. Illustrious historical figures like Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth are shown in vivid color, which may be much more exciting for students than black and white realistic photos.

Key Characteristic #1: Versatility

The first thing that struck me about Leo and Diane Dillon's work is their versatility. When I first started looking at the Dillons' work, I saw not only so many different kinds of illustrations, but also quite a few different themes in terms of literature, including African-American issues, nature, fables and animals, classical art, and children's nursery rhymes. They are very versatile illustrators and writers who can cover a wide range of topics, so it's no wonder that they're so in demand with publishers.

Let's take a look at a few different ways in which they are versatile.

Observe the photo above, which contains a screenshot of many of their works from JVJPublishing. What do you see in terms of versatility? How are the various illustrations different?

METHODS OF ILLUSTRATION

1. The Dillons use so many different methods of illustration. Their work includes stark graphic designs, soft painted illustrations, ethereal watercolors, folklorish, ancient-looking woodcuts and many other techniques. Believe it or not, the Dillons have used all of the following techniques: woodcut, inlaid wood, stencil and frisket, collage, watercolor, gouache, acrylics, oils, alkyds, pastels, pochoir, crewelwork, simulated mosaic, stained glass, and painted silk.

Here is an example of their crewel work from "The Member of the Wedding" by Carson McCullers. Crewel is embroidery using wool. Aren't they versatile and creative? How many book illustrators use embroidery?

The Dillons' most famous illustrative work is "Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears," for which they won a Caldecott medal. The illustrations are truly unique-looking. The Dillons used watercolor airbrush, pastels, and India ink to do the colorful, entertaining animals that pop off of the page with their white outlines.

TONE

2. The tone of the Dillons' work, both illustrative and literary, is very versatile. They can write and illustrate stories very playfully, such as "Mother Goose: Numbers on the Loose," or very serious stories, such as "The People Could Fly," about slavery.

In the former, characters and numbers bounce and jump and play. The Dillons use clear outlines, relatively simple illustrations, and large, easy-to-understand forms to illustrate counting and numbers. The words are playful and as rhythmic as the illustrations. "The maid was in the garden/Hanging out the clothes,/When there came a little blackbird/And snapped off her nose."

In "The People Could Fly," a different story is portrayed by the Dillons' illustrations. A somber classic story by now-deceased Virginia Hamilton is updated with illustrations so powerfully sad that they bring tears to the eyes.

In one painting, the Slave Driver cracks a whip across a baby on the back of the mother, with a vivid orange background that feels like pain. The perspective of the painting is such that the mother and babe are in the foreground against the ground, directly in your face, and you can see and feel the painful expressions on their faces. The Slave Driver looms above, in the background, the whip curling like an evil snake into a dark cloud. I cannot imagine how much time must have been dedicated to painting each of these paintings. The emotion is so poignantly painted that I could not help but wonder if the paintings were very difficult to make as an emotional process. Below is the painting.

BACKGROUNDS

3. Pay close attention to their backgrounds, which can look as old as the mountains, such as in "The People Could Fly," or as new as Art Deco geometric patterns, such as in "Jazz on a Saturday Night." The backgrounds really set the basis for the story and are subtle yet important signifiers, like the rhythm of an aria to ground their literary libretto.

AGE SPAN

4. The age span of their books is also diverse. The Dillons illustrate for adult books as well as a whole range of children's books.