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Mister of the scratchboard... Brian Pinkney's illustrations are wellknown in the world of children's books. His first venture into children's book illustration was Robert D. San Soucis The Boy and the Ghost published in 1989 (Simon & Schuster). Over the past fifteen years, Brian has received much acclaim for his beautiful, highly detailed, and richly colored artwork. Reviews of his books often comment at length on the vibrancy of his work.
Brian Pinkney has been awarded two Caldecott Honors. The first was in 1996 for his illustrations in The Faithful Friend by Robert D. San Souci (Simon & Schuster). The second Caldecott Honor Book in 1999 was Duke Ellington written by Brian's wife, Andrea Davis Pinkney (Hyperion). Pinkney received the Coretta Scott King Illustration Award in 2000 for In the Time of the Drums by Kim L. Siegelson (Jump at the Sun/Hyperion). He has received three additional Coretta Scott King Honors for illustration. The Coretta Scott King Awards are presented annually by the Coretta Scott King Task Force of the Ethnic Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table of the American Library Association (ALA).
Brian's father is award-winning children's book illustrator and writer Jerry Pinkney, and his mother is children's writer Gloria Jean Pinkney. As a child, Brian was inspired by watching his father work. Brian s mother set up a small art studio just for him inside a small closet that was complete with lots of leftover art supplies from his father's work. Brian formally honed his illustration skills through a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Philadelphia College of Art and then a Master of Arts degree in illustration from the School of Visual Arts in New York. It was while attending the School of Visual Arts that one of his instructors suggested scratchboard as a technique that might be artistically stimulating for Brian.
Scratchboard is defined by The Children's Literature Dictionary as using "a drawing board that is first covered with white clay (or another colored substance) then with a layer of black ink coating, which is scratched away to produce an illustration. The board may come in other combinations of two colors... A steel scratch knife or other sharp art instrument is used to scratch off the top coating so that the...