'Dreaming Stories'

Strolled through the library at Orchard Gateway and stopped by its drawing installation titled 'Dreaming Stories'. Illustrators from the Organisation of Illustrators Council were on site in this partnership. What a brilliant idea!

M and I selected a story book, gave a random page number, have the uhh page cut out, then read through it to decide which lines we want to highlight for the illustrators to sketch out for us. They make a great display and talking point. Grinned when M and I looked at what each other randomly picked out. The pages and words respectively were so her, and so me.

M's had something to do with nature, heart, harmony, garlands and sun. She somehow picked a page of Percy Bysshe Shelley's 'The Invitation', choosing the last stanza. Mine was totally my kind of play. Didn't even see the title on the spine when I chose it. One that I'm quite fond of- Denis Johnston's 1931 play 'The Moon in the Yellow River'. Oof. It's a heavy play set in West Ireland in 1927 about the IRA's failed attempt to destroy a Free State Government power plant which accidentally blew up anyway.

Then we went to the booths set up to peek at the illustrators' styles. We could choose the style we liked most to interpret our lines. Now, I can't assume the illustrator know or have time to research the books. They would only have that two pages as background information before interpreting it through their pens. It was most interesting to see how and what came out on paper.

The illustrations are ours to keep. But right now, they're displayed at Orchard Library for the week. Returned to the library a couple of days later to check out how the illustrators interpreted our chosen lines from the book, and spent extra minutes reading other people's lines and checking out the illustrations. Very fun!

I wasn't sure if M liked hers. I thought she would want a garden-scape and all that. The illustrator interpreted it like a medallion. Like an ink and pen sketch. Quite intriguing. M said she wasn't quite expecting it that way, but she loved it.

My chosen lines in that scene on the random page weren't exactly conducive to illustrate, but I was sure it could be done. It was a conversation between Darrell Blake (head of the local anti-treaty faction who wanted to destroy power plant) and Blanaid (daughter of a retired Irish railway engineer Dobelle who blamed her for her mother's death in childbirth). The illustrator took the lines literally. LOL. It came out on paper rather funny! The droplets of saliva are hilarious. I like it. Kinda like ME. Well, not the part about demanding consideration shown for me. Don't care about that. But I do yell 'Monstrous! Insufferable!' quite a fair bit when I don't like something. HAHAHAHA.

Left: M's. Right: Mine.