Kadir Nelson: Words & Paintings...


I caught the tail end of the session featuring illustrator Kadir Nelson who has created beautiful, rich paintings for 17 pictures books, including Moses: When Harriet Nelson Led Her People to Freedom, Henry's Freedom Box, and We are the Ship: The Story of the Negro Baseball League (which he both wrote and illustrated).

Previous to working as a picture book artist Nelson worked as a conceptual artist for Dreamworks on such projects for Amistad and the animated feature Spirit: Stallion of the Cimerron.

Nelson said as he reads a new manuscript he's illustrating, he begins to make sketches right on the manuscript. He doesn't create a dummy when he's working on a project. And he loves to do research--for example, he spent some time driving around the South looking at old slave plantations as he worked one project. He does have an agent, he says, not so much to help find him work, but to help plan his career and to deal with contracts.

I'm sorry I didn't get to see this entire session, because viewing Nelson's painting on the big screen in the auditorium was pretty spectacular. I can imagine how amazing they would be in person--some of them are as large as six feet wide.