Fairy Dreams

Fairy Dreams

As fairies take the playthings of little Isobel, and then lose them, the reader is asked to find the objects in the illustrations. Gr 2-3-Only the most ardent admirers of fairy worlds will find pleasure in McLean-Carr's seek-and-find book. Computer-designed graphics, using elements like digital airbrush and scanned textures for illustrations, borders, and spot art, exhibit a prefab rather than mystic look. The challenge of the opening poem is to find the dozen endpaper fairies with their corresponding treasures among the following luminous and busy vignettes of pixies, elves, mermaids, and the like. The double-page spreads present two-line poems bearing little relation to the item at hand. Certain treasures are too obvious, others too elusive. The final page offers more "gifts" to hunt when revisiting the pages. This browsing book is uneven in quality and not entertaining beyond its unique appearance.-Gay Lynn Van Vleck, Henrico County Library, Glen Allen, VA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. ...a beautifully detailed, intricate blending of painted artwork ... which breathes life into the characters and `sets'. -- Design Graphics - Issue #51 Oct 1999 Fairy Dreams is unlike any other fairy book you have ever seen. It's pure magic...Her fairies are exquisite long-limbed creatures with transparent wings; her pixies have attitude; her dragons and unicorns and mermaids are tangibly real. Fairy dreams asks the reader to find a child's precious possessions, taken by mischievous fairies who swoop into her bedroom while she sleeps. Each double page spread contains one of the lost objects, and offers a dazzling invitation to enter a world of enchantment. With the advent of digital graphics many illustrators believed that "old skills" will be surplanted by automated computer art. I have spent the last 14 years trying to bring those hand skills and the ancient tradition of drawing to the computer, with the aim that, when printed the reader would not be able to tell whether the art was created on computer or by hand. With Fairy Dreams, I feel I have been able to achieve this. It is the mind and the hand behind the computer, and a lifetime's skill and experience, which made the pictures - the computer is but another drawing/painting tool in my studio. Follow a trail of fairy mischief to find twelve treasures taken at twilight from a child's bedroom. By morning the lost treasures have been replaced with new fairy gifts. Where have they come from? See if you can find them too! Carol McLean-Carr's intricately detailed illustrations create a glowing,jeweled fairyland that is both familiar and fantastic. Created almost entirely on an IBN computer, Carol has scanned hand drawings into the computer and used it as a rendering tool, bringing an age-old tradition into the 21st century. Born in London in April, 1948, I came to Australia in 1959. I was a short, dumpy child and my life was dominated by the thick glasses in front of my face. I didn't take to "sporty" activities, (except tree climbing) preferring to spend time in my own imaginary world of books and drawing. On leaving school I was bonded to the Education Department to do Secondary Art Teacher training, but three years short of graduating I left. Teaching was not the bed of learning and idealism I'd imagined it to be. I have held many jobs over the years from lab assistant and scientific illustrator at the SA Museum, through bar work and pre-press jobs to illustration, free-lancing and lecturing as an Advanced Skills Lecturer. My main areas of interest in art are drawing as a discipline itself, print-making, water colour, airbrushing and coloured pencil work. Lately, of course, the computer raises its boxy head. I have been able to combine an in education, natural history, literature, history, publishing and design in most of what I have done over the years, from a period involved in the print trade, formal study in the Bachelor of Design / Illustration, post-graduate studies in Education, Educational Management and Multimedia, stints as a freelancer, an Industry trainer and the pleasures of running a small Design studio. Whilst still producing illustrations for children's and adult's fantasy books, I am now an online New Media Producer for the Australian Broadcating Corporation.