Episode #129: What do you hate drawing? -with Dan Santat
Welcome back! on today’s Kids Ask Authors episode, Dan Santat gets asked “What do you hate drawing?” by a kid friend named Hugo!
TRANSCRIPTS:
Grace Lin: Hello, I'm Grace Lin, children's book author and illustrator of many books, including the middle grade novel When the Sea Turned to Silver, and the picture book A Big Mooncake for Little Star. Today, I'm here with Dan Santat, the author and illustrator of many pictures books such as Beekle and After the Fall, as well as the illustrator of picture books such as the Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper and Drawn Together, written by Minh Le. The art from Drawn Together is also featured in the picture book exhibit Asians, Everyday, which you can now see online. Hi, Dan.
Dan Santat: Hi, how are you?
Grace Lin: Good, I'm so glad you're here today.
Dan Santat: Thanks for having me, it's a pleasure.
Grace Lin: Awesome. Okay, are you ready for today's kid question?
Dan Santat: I am absolutely ready for the kid's question.
Grace Lin: All right. Today's question is from a kid named Hugo, and Hugo asks, "What do you hate drawing?"
Dan Santat: First of all, hello, Hugo. I have three things that I hate to draw, my least favorite thing to draw of all things are human hands. I'm terrible with hands. The second thing I really hate to draw are horses, and the third thing I hate to draw are cars. So if you were to ask me to draw a horse with human hands driving a car, I promise you it would be the worst drawing ever made. But I absolutely hate hands. When I draw hands, they look like sausages, they just look like they're like these big gloves. I don't know, they're just like they've been stung by bees a thousand times.
Grace Lin: That's so interesting, because I feel like you've done many books with cars in them, like race cars and things like that, because that's actually my Achilles heel too is the cars. I have such a hard time with cars. I remember looking at many of your illustrations and going, "Oh, that's how you draw a car."
Dan Santat: You know what it is about cars is that they have smooth rounded corners and so it's really hard to discern a front and a side, and then on top of that they're highly reflective and so you have to figure out where to put the highlights and how to turn the form of a metal object that has very complicated shapes. I did a great book with Tom Angleberger called Princess and the Pit Stop.
Grace Lin: Yeah, that's the one I was thinking of.
Dan Santat: Tom actually went out of his way, he actually told me, he's like, "I want to see how many cars you can put on a page." I remember asking Tom, I said, "Do you want to maintain a friendship?" So the great thing about a book like that is that if you put in enough practice into something, you can actually get pretty good at it. So by the time I was done with Princess and the Pit Stop, I was actually pretty good at drawing cars. But I think like anything else, you have to keep it up or your hands forget.
Grace Lin: So after you drew so many cars, but you still dislike drawing them, even though you can do it now?
Dan Santat: There's just so many little details, the hardest part about the car are the tires, and so you have the little details where it's like the tire, then the rim, and then you have to ask yourself, "Do I have to put the little grooves in the tire, like the whatever?" Then there's the side mirror and the tail lights and then ... Especially an interior or a car, you're like, "Oh, I have to put air conditioning ducts in there or radio, steering wheel." It's just so much work just to draw one car.
Grace Lin: What makes it hard too is everybody knows what a car looks like, so if you have something wrong then it's so glaringly wrong.
Dan Santat: Absolutely. That's definitely the thing. I think that goes with anything, if everyone's very familiar with the thing that you're trying to draw and it looks slightly off, they say, "That's a weird looking hand." It's so bad. I've done drawings where I have to consciously think to myself like, "Okay, if I'm doing this hand gesture, which side is the thumb supposed to be on?" I'll do a drawing and I'll say, "Oh, I put the left hand on the right hand." So it's totally inverted.
Grace Lin: Yeah. Especially when you're using yourself in the mirror.
Dan Santat: That's the worst. But I've been working on this memoir and I think I've done over 1000 hands at this point, so I'm actually getting pretty good at drawing hands, but I'm sure if I take some time off and I do a book about bears or something like that, I'm totally going to forget afterwards.
Grace Lin: I know that for, one question a child asked me, he's like, "Oh, why are all your characters left-handed?" I was like, "They are?" Then I realized it's because I use myself in the mirror.
Dan Santat: Yeah, yeah. No, I have to be very aware of that as well. But I think I am pretty well aware if a character is left or right-handed, I don't often get art notes like that. There are, so I'm doing a memoir right now and so I'm drawing myself a lot, and there are pages where I'll have a duffle bag slung over my shoulder and I'm asking myself like, "Oh, would I have slung that duffle bag over my left shoulder because I'm left-handed? Or would I put it over my right shoulder?" There's some of the pages I have it over my right shoulder and I say, "You know what? That's fine, I just threw it on my right shoulder." Things like that. I get lazy.
Grace Lin: Before I let you go, tell me about horses though.
Dan Santat: So when I draw horses, I end up making their heads really narrow, and the thing about horses is that I guess they're really big and beefy and their heads are, they're almost shaped like, I think they're blockier than I think they are. But when I draw them, I make them almost like pizza slice shaped, they're like triangles. So they look like these real, they almost look like deer I guess. Then I'll draw their legs and then they have really knobby knees and joints. Then especially when they're running, you can't stand in front of a mirror and try to imitate how a horse runs, and so you're just drawing a horse and thinking like, "Okay, when they gallop, in what position are their legs when they're galloping?"
Dan Santat: So if you don't do it correctly, then it looks like a horse that's falling out of the air and their legs are just flailing randomly. There has to be a rhythm to the way that they run. But yeah, I find that oftentimes I make my horses too skinny, I make their manes really, I don't know, wispy. I should think bigger, I should think thicker and beefier, and oftentimes when I'm drawing horses they're really thin, frail things that look like sticks and they just don't look like horses. They look more like, I don't know, like some urban myth that you would find about some horrible demon creature from Stranger Things or something.
Grace Lin: It's so funny, because one of the things I loved to draw when I was a kid was unicorns, so I was always drawing horses and unicorns, well, really horses with horns. But even though I drew them all the time, I don't think they were that well done.
Dan Santat: You would never have been well employed as people for Trapper Keeper folders. I've got the waterfall, I've got the rainbow, but the unicorn is going to take ...
Grace Lin: But it's funny, because the question was what do you hate drawing, and the thing was like, I love drawing unicorns, I just don't do them well.
Dan Santat: Right.
Grace Lin: All right. Well, thank you so much, Dan, for answering Hugo's question, and thank you, Hugo, for sending it in.
Dan Santat: Thanks, Hugo.
Grace Lin: Bye.
Dan Santat: Bye, take care.
Today’s KID BOOK REVIEW comes from Vivianna! Viviana is reviewing, Harold and Hog Pretend for Real by Dan Santat.
Hello, my name is Vivianna. The book I would like to talk about is Harold and Hog Pretend for Real, by Dan Santat. Harold and Hog are going to pretend to be Elephant and Piggy, but...Harold is too carefree to be Gerald, and Hog is too careful to be Piggy! At first, Hog thinks Harold is lucky and Harold thinks Hog is lucky. Hog would get to dance, smile, and fly all at the same time, but that doesn’t sound like fun to Hog! Eventually they decide to switch characters and things are a lot more fun that way! I recommend this book to people who are silly!
Thank you so much Viviana!
More about today’s authors:
Dan Santat is a #1 New York Times Best Selling Author author/illustrator of over one hundred titles which include “The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend” which won the prestigious Randolph Caldecott Medal in 2015. Other titles include, Are We There Yet? and After the Fall (How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again) He is also the creator of the Disney animated hit, The Replacements. Dan lives in Southern California with his wife, two kids, and various pets.
Grace Lin, a NY Times bestselling author/ illustrator, won the Newbery Honor for Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and her picture book, A Big Mooncake for Little Star, was awarded the Caldecott Honor. Grace is an occasional commentator for New England Public Radio , a video essayist for PBS NewsHour (here & here), and the speaker of the popular TEDx talk, The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child’s Bookshelf. She is the co-host of the podcast Book Friends Forever, a kidlit podcast about friendship and publishing (geared for adults). Find her facebook, instagram , twitter ( @pacylin) or sign up for her author newsletter HERE.
Please visit the Asians, Everyday exhibit found online at the Carle Museum featuring Dan Santat!
“Award-winning children’s book author and illustrator Grace Lin curated this online exhibition, launched May 2021 in honor of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Asians, Everyday showcases positive Asian American representation. The selected artworks and books, featuring contemporary characters and stories, celebrate our common humanity by depicting Asian Americans living their everyday lives.”
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