Beastly Verse by Joohee Yoon

http://jooheeyoon.com

Joohee Yoon has printed her beautiful book in three colours, as they overlap they create a kaleidoscope of hues.

Using vivd red,teal and yellow, they overlap to create pinks, greens, purples. By using limited colour, it makes the other colours that are achieved out of them a wonder, a grift and fresh. 

Her clever use of white space also contributes to the image composition.

She illustrates popular poems, some short some long but all full of visual excellency. 

Here, a short poem about (clearly) a hyena...

The Happy Hyena

There once was a happy hyena,

Who played on an old concertina.

He dressed very well,

And in his lapel

He carelessly stuck a verbena.

-Carolyn Wells

He is shown in a town, a great reference point for my buildings for my play mat. The hyena is for focus, much larger and dancing across the page as though his music is though out the town and heard from every window.

She has used different textures here, a powdery dot texture like the effects left over from printing ink, thick lines that could have been made by a brush or thick marker, And the speckled dots on the shaker and eel. The shape of the leaves contrast with the lines of the background, and the white of the plate brings the image to unity.

The Eel

I don’t mind eels

Except as meals.

And the way they feels

- Ogden Nash


She says that many poetry books swuish too much text together, she wanted to create something where text and image were equal. She found it a challenge to provide only a page for each poem, and over cmd this by having fold out pages and flip pages where the story was continued in a change to the illustration. (1)

1.http://blog.picturebookmakers.com/post/116379961701/joohee-yoon