Henry Cole

Teaching science with art

"I really loved teaching. I taught for about 16 or 17 years in Virginia. When I graduated from college, I had a degree in forestry, which of course has tons of science background. I did all the 'ologies' – ornithology and ichthyology and entomology and dendrology. So, I had a big background in science, and I had spent my summers working with kids at summer camp. So, I loved teaching, loved kids, and had a science degree. I ended up teaching science to elementary students, grades one through five."

"And I really enjoyed using my artwork in the classroom as well. I found that being able to draw something quickly on the board to demonstrate an idea or a concept in science was really terrific, and the kids seemed to like that, too."

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Growing up on the farm

"I had the great, good fortune of growing up on a dairy farm, and also the great, good fortune of being the youngest of five children. And having four older siblings was wonderful, because they were these very unusual, terrific people; and we spent most of our time in the woods, or down at the pond, or at the creek, or exploring the fields with jars. And we'd collect things and had the whole tadpole farm and the insect collection and tree houses in the woods. And I think I developed such a great fondness for being outside and for exploring nature and for identifying things – which was wonderful. Knowing what kind of tree that was, or what kind of bird, or what kind of wildflower, or what form of this or that was wonderful."

"And I like to think that a lot of that respect and love for nature comes out in some of my books. Having animals as characters in my books and having woodland settings for some of my books has been really deeply satisfying to me."

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A page from Clara Caterpillar

"Typically, I think it takes several days to do one illustration for a typical illustrated book. For one thing, I've got to come up with characters for the book. The main characters have to look a certain way, and everybody's got to be happy with them. I've got to be happy with them. The author should like what the characters look like. The art director, the editor, the publisher – they should all like these characters that I come up with."

"So, my first stage is to read the story a bunch of times and then develop pictures in my head about what the characters should look like. And then I take pencils and paper and sketch a lot, coming up with drawings of the characters."

"For example, here's a sketch for a page from Clara Caterpillar. I had arranged the characters on the page, making sure there was plenty of space for the text to go. And then I would send this picture to the editor and to the art director, to see what they think – and also maybe to the author, to see what the author thinks of this. And if everybody approves of it, then I can go on to the final art."

"Here's the final art from that same picture, and I did this with acrylic paints and colored pencil. And I'd say between starting out with sketches and ending up with a final picture, it was probably three or four days on one spread of one book."

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