| Robert Sabuda's St. Valentine |
| Robert has always loved St. Valentine's Day (he got to make cards!) and, as an adult, found himself wondering who Saint Valentine actually was. He researched a variety of stories and legends regarding the Roman doctor and the end result is his glorious "St. Valentine." We asked Robert to take us behind-the-scenes for the creation of this very special holiday tale.
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| When working on an historical story, Robert does as much research as possible. He also spends time researching the type of artwork that the people of the time were used to seeing. In the case of St. Valentine, that art style was mosiac.
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Mosaics are created by using small pieces of glass, ceramic or stone and then placing them together like pieces of a puzzle. Different colors are used the same way a painter would use different color paints. Robert decided to use paper to make his mosaics.
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Large pieces of paper were painted with a variety of colors. Then Robert would cut thousands of tiny squares (each one about 1/4") out of the paper and stack them up in little piles to get them ready for gluing down to the background paper.
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| But before the mosaic can be made Robert needs to create a black and white drawing of what the picture will look like. This sketch of Valentine's young patient and her father is created using simple paper and pencil.
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The drawing is lightly sketched onto gray background paper and then Robert begins to add the cut pieces of paper, one at a time. He used tweezers to pick up the pieces because they were so small and dabbed just a little bit of glue onto the back of each one.
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The mosaic technique was also used to create colorful borders throughout the book. Each border was carefully designed based on the style of ancient Roman decorations.
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| The borders appear along side of the pages and Robert was sure to sketch them in when he was working out how the entire page would look. This drawing is of St. Valentine and his young patient picking Crocuses, the flower that would come to be associated with the Roman doctor.
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Each finished piece of artwork contains over 5000 pieces of cut paper. The actual pieces of artwork are larger than the pictures in the finished book because Robert would have need a magnifying glass if he worked any smaller!
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"St. Valentine" is Robert's first picture book created entirely with cut paper and we're happy to see that he still loves it!
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Buy Robert Sabuda's Saint Valentine right now! Enjoy Robert's first picture book created entirely with cut paper.
We are sure you will love it just as much as he does! Buy it now, click here! |
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