Shaun Tan

I didn't like the book expedition much, I thought it was pretty basic and amateur. Not to say there wasn't some good artwork there, just stuff that I found hard to appreciate. There were some things that David mentioned that were well worth noting but I noticed that even he found it hard to talk about the art pieces. I was annoyed about that, I was expecting him to fill me in on the parts of the art that I failed to see. Whether he didn't know much about them or there wasn't much to say about them, I was on the same page.

On a lighter note, I went to the Shaun Tan expedition on the 10th of Oct down at South Melbourne. He's a fantastic artist, unfortunately I couldn't go last week when he was personally at the expo signing and selling books.
Shaun Tan wrote and illustrated beautiful books such as 'The Rabbits', 'The Arrival' and 'The Lost Thing' which was also a film and the exhibition title. He illustrates by using real textures in his works, e.g. thickened paint and cracking paint, his imagination is astounding. My favorite book it 'The Rabbits', if you haven't read it, visit the library. It's a story about the invasion of the Europeans onto the Aboriginals using rabbits and banquettes, told in a way that children could understand it. The book 'The Arrival' is also fascinating, I find that he forces you understand how the character is feeling and witness things from his point of view. It was interesting the amount of hard work, the amount of drawings put in to produce a short, animated film. All the different media used to show different thing; as in soft pastels to show the animators how he wanted the light to look and gray led pencil to depict the characters, they had such personality. Defiantly worth going.