Speaking of Turtles...

This is the spread I ended up doing in the Turtle book this month. Since we are focusing on techniques, I thought that a simple pull-out tab would work nicely with the turtle. I decided to do a spread illustrating a scene from the Aesop Fable about the Tortoise and the Hare. I have to say that it was the background (scrapbook) paper that bought this whole spread together. I was struggling with how to make the background. At first, I thought I would gather sand from the beach and glue it to the page for my background. However, when I dug up this particular sheet of scrapbook paper, not only did it look like sand, but there was a path going across the page! I immediately visualized the race course where the tortoise takes the finish line "by a neck."

When you pull the turtle's neck out, the moral of the fable is revealed: "Slow but steady wins the race." I reprinted the fable in the foreground on vellum. And just for fun, I added the silhouette of the rabbit's head and ears to show just how far behind the tortoise he was.