©DON TATE
ILLUSTRATION
Research: Portraying an accurate time period
My research almost always begins on the internet. How did I ever get by before the days of Yahoo and Google? Keywords Bruh rabbit led me to Brer rabbit; Uncle Remus; Joel Chandlier Harris; Songs of the South;
Tar baby; Julius Lester and Jerry Pinkney. Pinkney was the magic word which sent me off to the library. Illustrator Jerry Pinkney had illustrated several Brer Rabbit anthologies, so off to the bookstore I went. I picked out a couple of his books and flipped through the first few pages. His stuff is great! A little too great. I thought maybe I better not look any longer, might his work influence my creativity. I put the books back. This will be completely my interpretation of the stories based on Alice's wonderful writing and my research of animals and costume. I also avoided images from books and movies from the movie SONGS OF THE SOUTH. I didn't want to be influenced by Disney either.For costume reference, I searched out books with images of African Americans people during the second half of the last century. The costumes worn by the animals of SURE AS SUNSHINE need to reflect the people who originated these stories, American slaves. These types of images are rare and most sit in peoples private collections or widely dispersed in local historical societies. These are the types of images that I need to seek out during down time so that I have them on hand for projects such as this. In the meantime, I found many helpful digital photo archives on the internet. Here are a few of those links.
Digital Schomburg Images of the 19th Century African Americans
American Memory: Historical Collections for the National Digital Library The Library of Congress
The New York Public Library Digital Collection