An Interview with Claudia McGehee: Part 2

What was challenging about creating an alphabet book?
Primer books—counting books, alphabet books, color books, etc.—allow a strong and simple structure, and for my first illustrated picture book this was perfect. I loved the puzzle of finding just the right animal for each letter. We also wanted to move the book through the seasons chronologically, which added another layer for the reader and another piece to the puzzle. Was the animal that we wanted to illustrate active in the season it would be shown? When did this certain plant flower? Would it be blooming at the same time that this one would be blooming? There were many questions to answer before I knew exactly what the illustrations would look like.

What did you enjoy most about the creation of the tallgrass book?
Seeing and holding the book for the first time. Karen Copp (Production Manager at the University of Iowa Press) had laid out all the artwork with incredible color sense and design. It is a good moment when you see that your art “children” (for an art piece really does feel like part of me!) have been so thoughtfully taken care of in the final product.

 What was challenging about A Woodland Counting Book?
I went into the woodland book more confident about the content than I was with the prairie book. Even though our oak-hickory forests are not what I grew up with, there is something very comforting about the leafy stillness of the woodland. I was thrilled to explore it illustratively. The challenges were getting some of the larger numbers to work well compositionally and not look too forced or out of synch with real nature. For example, I didn’t want to show fourteen bobcats all in one illustration; that’s just not how they live. They are secretive and relatively solo. But fourteen wild turkeys? Of course! That’s how I observe them in the woods, all together in a big family group.

What is one of your favorite memories about working on the woodland book?
For my favorite page in the book—the cedar waxwings eating thirteen serviceberries—I worked outdoors on the final scratchboard to get a break from my studio. A ladybug—let’s say it was the native kind!—landed on my board, and I just decided to draw a ladybug into the picture. Whenever I see that piece and the one small ladybug in the corner, I am reminded of that sunny day out in my yard and what life brings unexpectedly to art, even in the smallest of details.

Blue spotted salamander, Ambystoma laternale
Blue spotted salamanders like to hang out in moist woodland areas near ponds. When these little amphibians sense danger, they freeze, raise their tails straight up, and get ready to squirt an unpleasant-tasting liquid at any predator that comes too close. If an enemy grabs it, the salamander releases this defense liquid, detaches its tail--it can grow a new one--and slips away.

Claudia McGehee, A Woodland Counting Book


Claudia McGehee, author and illustrator of Where Do Birds Live?, A Woodland Counting Book and A Tallgrass Prairie Alphabet and illustrator of The Iowa Nature Calendar

This week in Iowa Nature + Children's Event!

Harvested fields highlight the crests of rolling hills across southern Iowa; nearly always even in elevation, they indicate the position of an old glacial plain.

The Iowa Nature Calendar, by Jean Prior and James Sandrock
illustrations by Claudia McGehee




Come out and see Claudia at the Iowa City Public Library!
Date: Friday, November 12
Time: 10:30 AM
Location: Iowa City Public Library in the Storytime Room

Plant of the Week

Spiked lobelia
Lobelia spicata Lam.
other common names: palespike lobelia, highbelia
Lobelia: named for a 16th-century Flemish herbalist, Matthias von Lobel
Spicata: from Latin, meaning “with a spike”
Bluebell or bellflower family: Campanulaceae

Photograph by Thomas Rosburg, Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie: The Upper Midwest, Second Edition

An Interview with Claudia McGehee: Part 1

You’re a scratchboard artist. Tell us about working in this medium.
Scratchboard is a thin board (about 1/8” thick), coated with an under layer of white clay, topped with a final layer of black india ink.

First, I make a pencil line drawing that I transfer onto the black scratchboard with chalk.

Then I make an outline of the chalk guides with a sharp tool, like an exact-o blade.

Next, I scrape off what I want to be white and leave what I want to be black.

I take this black and white image to the computer, scan it onto watercolor paper, and then go back to my drawing board to watercolor the image traditionally. It’s a drawing method, not a printing one, even though it looks like a print when it’s done. It’s drawing by subtraction, more or less. I have more in common with a sculptor than with a print maker or a painter.

With this sturdy, somewhat nostalgic-looking medium, I tend to get hired for commercial jobs by people looking for organic, earthy illustrations. Now that I work in picture books, the same holds true. A publisher, for instance, probably wouldn’t pick me to illustrate a book on modern architecture. But I might get picked to illustrate a book on national parks or a biography of Audubon.

From start to finish, how long does it take you to finish an illustration?
Not counting the time it takes me to research and sketch (which accounts for many months of work on a book project), I can transfer, scratch, scan onto watercolor paper, and then finally watercolor the average 8-by-10-inch piece (I work small—scratchboard lets you) in about eight hours. When doing a book, I tend to work on illustrations in batches, so I am scratching three, scanning three, then watercoloring three. I can save my hands (and my brain) from too much wear and tear from just one part of the process this way.

What was particularly challenging about creating the illustrations for A Tallgrass Prairie Alphabet?
The challenge and the thrill came from the fact that I was a newcomer to this landscape. I was not born a grasslander; tallgrass flora and fauna are so completely different from the plant and animal forms I know from the Pacific Northwest. So the initial research was very exciting. But the frustrations would come when some animals or insects I thought were natives and wanted to include would turn out, after research, to be introduced species. Or maybe they were too much of a “generalist” species for a book highlighting specifically prairie wildlife. We wanted to keep true to a real tallgrass environment. Eventually, things fell into place. I started to “know” that fox snake, that badger, butterfly weed, and gentian somehow. I did find out after we moved here that a bunch of my ancestors had stopped in Iowa for a couple of generations before moving further west. Some are buried in the lowlands surrounding the magnificent Loess Hills near Little Sioux, Iowa. So maybe my affinity to the prairie comes atavistically!

Aromatic aster, Aster oblongifolius
In the fall, after most plants have finished blooming, aromatic aster opens its flowers across the prairie. Each bushy plant has hundreds of bright purple flowers with yellow centers.

Claudia McGehee, A Tallgrass Prairie Alphabet

Claudia McGehee, author and illustrator of Where Do Birds Live?, A Woodland Counting Book and A Tallgrass Prairie Alphabet and illustrator of The Iowa Nature Calendar

Come See the Scarths Today!

Don't miss Robert and Linda Scarth's presentation on Deep Nature: Photographs from Iowa today Wednesday, November 3 at the Lime Creek Nature Center in Mason City at 10 a.m.

3501 Lime Creek Road
Mason City IA 50401

Plant of the Week

Skeleton weed

Lygodesmia juncea (Pursh) D. Don ex Hook.

other common names: rush skeleton plant, skeleton plant, prairie pink

Lygodesmia: from Greek lygos, meaning “a pliant twig,” and desme, meaning “a bundle,” from the fascicled twiglike appearance of the plant

Juncea: meaning stiff, like a rush

Daisy family: Asteraceae (Compositae)

Photograph by Thomas Rosburg, Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie: The Upper Midwest, Second Edition

An Interview with George Olson: Part 2

What advice would you give to younger nature artists? What are the particular challenges of being a botanical artist?
My advice to a younger nature artist (or any young artist) is to draw constantly and do your own work. That means working from a real specimen instead of someone else’s photograph or painting. Given the difficulty of finding and identifying real prairie plants (not to mention setting them up in your studio), it is always tempting to settle for secondary sources such as photos and reproductions that can be accessed more easily. The challenges of being a plant artist are similar to the challenges facing all artists, but with a few small variations: the challenge of working with live plants, which keep changing during long periods in the studio—blossoms close and re-open, leaves wilt or lose color, stamens and pistils go through their life cycle even as parts of cut flowers, etc.; finding good specimens in areas where road banks, cemeteries, and railroad beds are disappearing or are subject to mowing and spraying; sorting out the plant species that are native to the tallgrass prairie as opposed to those that are introduced or invasive; drawing a 10-foot plant on 30 inches of paper. This problem is shared by writers who try to express the vastness of the prairie.

What are your favorite natural areas in Iowa and the Midwest?
In Iowa: Rochester Cemetery Prairie on Interstate 80 just east of Iowa City and Hayden Prairie State Preserve, 240 acres just off Highway 63 in northern Iowa. In Illinois: Johnson Prairie in Woodhull, a small restored prairie established by Kenneth Johnson and myself in 1982—the Johnson Prairie has been a prime source of prairie subjects (and the site of much hard work) since that time; McCune Sand Prairie Reserve, 200 acres near Mineral; Munson Township Cemetery, 5 acres near Cambridge; and the Nachusa Grasslands, 1,000 acres near Dixon. In Wisconsin:  the University of Wisconsin Arboretum, 1,260 acres (including a 50-acre prairie restoration) near Madison. In Missouri: Shaw Nature Reserve, part of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 22 miles west of St. Louis.

PLATE 16. TALL GOLDENROD, Solidago canadensis
Source of specimen: Johnson Prairie
Tall goldenrod is so widespread in the American landscape that Americans take it for granted. John Bartram, the eighteenth-century naturalist, was reluctant to ship goldenrod to European customers because it was such a common “weed” in the U.S. Many botanists have tried to explain how goldenrod galls develop. David Klein, the Amish naturalist/author, describes his search for goldenrod galls in the winter landscape in Great Possessions. He uses the larvae encased in the gall as bait for winter fishing.


PLATE 36. SPOTTED HORSEMINT, Monarda punctata
Source of specimen: McCune Sand Prairie Reserve
The genus Monarda honors Dr. Nicolas Monardes (1493–1588), who lived in Spain and wrote the first herbal that dealt with plants from America. Its English edition (ca. 1570) was called Joyful News out of the Newfound World. John Banister, the seventeenth-century English explorer, refers to horsemint and leaves us a record of the sweet fragrance of unspoiled Virginia: “In our way home ye rich low ground abounded with a kind of wild baulm, which being trampled on by our horses as we rode thro it mightily refreshed us with its fragrant scents.” Gardeners who have cleaned up a patch of bee balm in spring or fall will know how its spicy aroma can fill the entire yard.

PLATE 37. CULVER’S ROOT, Veronicastrum virginicum
Source of specimen: Johnson Prairie
The common name honors a Dr. Culver, an early American physician who prescribed the root for a wide range or ailments. Veronicastrum honors St. Veronica. Virginicum honors Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen. Culver’s root is a tall handsome plant with a spike of white flowers and whorls of bright green leaves with sharp teeth. Culver’s root can be a rather challenging subject for the artist because of the tiny white blossoms that have to be shown ascending rhythmically up the tall stems. The white blossoms on a white background can also be a problem.

PLATE 51. QUEEN OF THE PRAIRIE, Filipendula rubra
Source of specimen: Johnson Prairie
Because of its height, queen of the prairie is one of those subjects that demands some adjustments on a 30-inch piece of watercolor paper. This plate shows the top of two stems plus a detail of one leaf. Queen of the prairie well deserves its name because of its commanding height as well as its spectacular pink blossoms. Sylvan Runkel and Dean Roosa wrote that since queen of the prairie was used both for heart trouble and as a love potion, it is difficult for students of the prairie reading historical references to separate the emotional from the physical aspects of these uses.

—George Olson, The Elemental Prairie: Sixty Tallgrass Plants