Many of us this week have been thinking perhaps more than usual how precious our children are to us, and in that spirit, here’s to the children in our lives, and here are the children of our most generous backers and most special friends, children who brighten our days and inspire our work.
Robert Young
Hello everyone, I’d like to introduce you to Robert Young. Not only is he a fellow backer of our KinderBard Project, but as Director of Education at the Folger Shakespeare Library he oversaw and made invaluable contributions in the final stages of the making of our book. Finally, he honoured us with a very special foreword and we are so thrilled to make this announcement to you. We really feel that our small family project has gone legit!
Thank you to Robert, and thank you to all our backers for your feedback about our cover and the title of our book. Here’s what it’s going to look like – we have now sent everything to our publisher and you’ll all receive your copies as soon as it’s printed!
Our English Summer
Our family has been spending the summer in my wonderfully generous uncle and aunt’s house in the English countryside, working hard on our project, and we’re very much on schedule…
My wife has been extremely productive, creating illustrations for each of the sixteen songs that will comprise KinderBard Volume 1, and I just have a few final touches to go on the music production side back in Paris at the end of the month.
So I’ve been able to take a good break after the craziness that was the Kickstarter campaign, spending lots of time with the children, trying to leave their mother in peace to work in her little study with a lovely view of the back garden – very inspiring, as you can see from the photo!
I have also been contributing to the Englishness of our project in a unique culinary way, by taking on most of the cooking duties, and feeding my wife lots of roast, bangers and mash, baked beans, shepherd’s pie, Yorkshire pudding, apple pie, rhubarb crumble and custard, scones, and even kedgeree.
Anyway, just wanted to let you know how it’s going – we’re just quietly plugging away, and we promise to update you if anything really exciting happens!
Some Concept Art
These are just concepts, but I think they’re quite beautiful. They’re mixed media – fabric and paper, overpainted (is that a correct term? I’m not an artist, so I don’t really know these things) and then lyrics added in Photoshop. Great job, Sohyun!
So what you have to imagine is that in an interactive environment, you would touch Juliet and she would say,
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet…
Sweet!
Sohyun’s Paris Debut
What a crazy creative month it’s been! Apart from working on all the KinderBard songs, I’ve played cello in a concert, and today Sohyun set up a stall at Message‘s 2012 Spring Bring & Buy Sale to try her hand at selling some of her beautiful handmade bags and pouches (made with wonderful and rare imported fabrics). They’re also available on Etsy. At first Sohyun was afraid that she wouldn’t sell any, but by the end of the day, she was worried that she wouldn’t have any left! Here’s a before (above) and after (below).
Montmartre
Well we took a little trek to Montmartre, hoping to find inspiration at the Musée d’Art Naïf Max Fourny (naïve art gallery), only to find that it was shut! They’re between exhibitions, apparently. Really should have checked before we left the house. But the day was not a waste, as we not only had a great time mingling with street painters on the Place du Tertre, but also discovered a handmade-lovers’ paradise – several street blocks housing department stores specialising in fabrics etc. We have to incorporate some of our finds into our artwork!
