When it comes to nursery rhymes, Doug Hansen prefers to think
globally and act locally. Maybe you grew up thinking of your favorite
rhymes as universal — of Humpty Dumpty tumbling from some
indeterminate, vaguely medieval wall and Jack jumping over any old
candlestick any-old-where. But Hansen, a prolific illustrator and
associate professor of art at Cal State Fresno, imagines those classic
characters performing their quirky pratfalls above the Golden Gate
Bridge, at Hearst Castle, in Klamath National Forest, and amid other
unmistakably Golden State locales. The characters are locals, too:
Hansen’s Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe is a quail, his Jack and Jill
are bighorn sheep. New from Berkeley’s Heyday Books, Hansen’s lively
Mother Goose in California helps young readers learn the
alphabet and ecology via those beloved rhymes. For instance, B
is for blackbird, as in four and twenty of them baked in a pie.
Hansen’s lush illustration shows the pastry steaming away in
pussy-willow-studded wetlands. Gazing down at it, wearing chefs’ hats
and holding baking implements, are two red-winged blackbirds: a common
sight, sans hats, at California creeks and lakes. (Apparently this pair
has just baked two dozen of their pals.)
Among many previous projects, Hansen was commissioned by a
historical association to spend nine years illustrating some of
Fresno’s loveliest old homes. That experience helped him celebrate his
hometown — and his creative process for the project reveals that
being a professional artist requires much more than just impromptu
sketching.
“Prepared with a list of homes from all parts of the neighborhood, I
would start with a guided walking tour of the neighborhood,” he
recounts. These walks helped him to determine “which vantage point
would give the best view of each home. The goal was to reveal and
highlight the architectural features that made each home distinctive. I
would take reference photos and use them as the starting point for my
drawings. A table-mounted overhead projector was used to speed up the
initial blocking out of each drawing,” Hansen remembers. “Then I used a
T-square and triangle to correct distortions. The next step was to
return to the street with the pencil drawings and fill in all the fine
detail that wasn’t visible in the photos. Sometimes I’d prune a tree to
see a hidden chimney, gate or porch or I’d fill in with flowers”
— exercising a bit of artistic license — “if the
blooms had faded.”
Having thrived in the late-1970s/early-1980s underground-comics
scene, Hansen has drawn for the Fresno Bee for nearly 25 years.
Among other Bee work, he illustrates a monthly column by local
farmer David “Mas” Masumoto, author of the landmark 1995 book
Epitaph for a Peach. Hansen presents Mother Goose in
California at the Lawrence Hall of Science (Centennial
Drive, Berkeley) on April 6. 1 p.m. LHS.Berkeley.edu
