San Diego artist and illustrator Kadir Nelson stood onstage at the National Book Festival, Sharpie in hand, and demonstrated on a plain white easel board how to sketch Abraham Lincoln.
“Practice drawing faces, hands and feet. If you can draw those, you can draw anything,” Nelson said, turning a speech into an impromptu class on the National Mall.
Nelson was among 73 award-winning authors, poets and illustrators honored at the festival sponsored by first lady Laura Bush and the Library of Congress last month.
Nelson, 33, appeared at the festival in collaboration with children's author Doreen Rappaport. Nelson illustrated Rappaport's latest book, “Abe's Honest Words: The Life of Abraham Lincoln” (Hyperion, 2008). The book is scheduled for release in November.
Rappaport told the audience every writer needs an artist with the right kind of passion for the subject matter. She said Nelson pours that passion into every illustration.
“Kadir caused me to go back and add more words,” Rappaport said. “His art stimulated me.”
Holding up the book to an audience of children and adults, Nelson flipped through vibrantly colored pages and described visiting Lincoln's home and doing rough sketches from photographs in museums.
“It's like being an actor,” he said. “You have to immerse yourself in the life of your subject. I wanted to draw Abe in a real way, and capturing his likeness in each painting was absolutely necessary.”
“Abe's Honest Words” is the 20th children's book that Nelson has illustrated.
“I wanted to do something different,” he said. “I wanted to do a book about a great American icon. It was a challenge to try and humanize this iconic figure.”
Nelson credits his three children – daughters 8 and 11, and a 7-month old son – with inspiring his illustrations.
“I really like the form of children's books,” he said. “They're very accessible, and they serve as a great introduction to art for kids.”
Though Nelson is known as an artist, his reputation hasn't stopped him from taking a swing in another creative medium. He made his debut as an author with the release in February of “We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball” (Jump at the Sun/Hyperion, 2008).
The project took him eight years, and became a New York Times best seller. The story is narrated by an “Everyman” baseball player, and the book is illustrated with Nelson's vivid, luminous oil paintings.
The original paintings from the book were on display recently in “Separate and Unequaled: Black Baseball in the District of Columbia,” an exhibit at the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum in Washington, D.C.
Over the summer, Nelson placed third in the International Olympic Committee's 2008 art competition for his painting “Anatomy of Team Handball,” which was on display in Beijing during the Summer Games.
Nelson was born in Washington, D.C., and moved to San Diego at age 10. He began drawing at age 3, and won an art scholarship to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Nelson may be best known for his illustrations in Ntozake Shange's “Ellington Was Not a Street” and Carol Boston Weatherford's “Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom,” for which he won a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award, a Caldecott Honor and an NAACP Image Award.
His other achievements include creating storyboards for Steven Spielberg's “Amistad” and the animated “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron,” and receiving commissions from Sports Illustrated, Coca-Cola, Major League Baseball and the U.S. Postal Service.
Nelson has big plans for releasing his next illustrative work, “All God's Critters” by Bill Staines, in January.
“I'm trying to convince my editor to do a signing at the San Diego Zoo,” he said. “That's something I'd really love to do.”
Rose Creasman is an intern at the Union-Tribune Washington bureau.
