This book is a gift not only to fans of Shaun Tan's work but also to anyone interested in the creative process. "Staring at a blank piece of paper, I can't think of anything original," he writes in his introduction. But anyone who's seen his work can't imagine this to be the case. His characters look at once completely alien and utterly familiar.
Thumbnail sketches in his "Notebooks" section demonstrate how Tan thinks sequentially. Notes in the margins of other sketches record possible story ideas for characters. He plays with color combinations in the section "Drawings from Life": an image of the haunches of a bull seems to be rendered in pastels, while a pair of studies of a stony, almost lunar landscape, in neutral colors with splashes of red, appear side by side in oils and, next, in pastels. Studies of rabbits chronicle his process for arriving at the characters he illustrated in John Marsden's The Rabbits. Sketches of objects from a pre-Columbian exhibit in Mexico City could be the seeds for The Lost Thing. These attest to the artist's grounding in reality, along with a pastel rendering of Mexico City in all its gritty beauty.
Themes emerge from among these seemingly disparate sketches. "The boy with a sewn-on cat head" and "The troubles of horse-girl" portray the outcasts of society, a theme central to many of his works. He can't resist designing the presentation of even these seemingly random drawings. The pastel-and-pencil "Heart-bell," depicting a woman pale in her vulnerability, dangling her bell-shaped heart by a string among birds, appears opposite a vulture with preying eyes, rendered in pastel and charcoal, dressed in finery and sipping a wine glass filled with blood ("Never lost a case"). Tan juxtaposes prey and predator.
It is a gift of generosity Shaun Tan gives his readers. He talks about breaking through the equivalent of writer's block by just drawing, and quotes Paul Klee's description of "taking a line for a walk." He then opens his sketchbooks to bear this out. This raw material could be the artist at his most vulnerable, the dangling of the bell heart, but Tan offers it as a strength, to fortify others with a creative impulse. For his fans, we see that these raw elements and a dedication to craft can yield superior storytelling. --Jennifer M. Brown
Shelf Talker: A gifted artist opens his notebooks and allows his fans and anyone with a creative impulse to witness the journey on the way to completing a work of art.