Manitoulin Expositor sponsors colouring contest
MANITOULIN—The work of Little Current artist Duncan Pheasant is seeing a steady growth in popularity, following the Eastern Woodland style and set at a price range that lies within reach of most, and that popularity is only likely to grow further now that Toro Publishing has produced a colouring book, ‘Woodland Animals of Manitoulin Island,’ based on his work.
“I have been selling art to Pat (Hess, who operates Concept Air in Kagawong) on and off for a while now,” said Mr. Pheasant. “We were bouncing ideas around for a book when we came up with the idea of a colouring book.”
Mr. Hess and his partner Rachel Ball formed Toro Publishing and Ms. Ball, being an accomplished trained graphic artist, processed the collection of 25 images the trio chose for the project. “She took the colour out of the paintings and designed the book itself,” noted Mr. Pheasant. “I chose artworks that I had already completed (and in some cases already sold, those images appear courtesy of their current owners). It took Rachel about two months to pull the colour.”
The book is much more than simply a colouring book, however, and many people had a hand in its content. The colouring book features animals that are native to Manitoulin Island and includes both their English and Anishinaabemowin names.
“I had a lot of help from Alan Corbiere and Lorraine Debassige in M’Chigeeng,” said Mr. Pheasant. “They helped with the proper names in Ojibwe for the animals.”
Part of the project was easy, but some of the work involved a fair bit of effort, noted Mr. Hess. “Stripping out the colour was the easy part, but the images needed to be smoothed out and simplified a bit to work in the colouring book.”
In addition to the black and white images, an image of the artwork with its original colours are included in the book for reference for the aspiring colourists along with the importance of the animals’ roles in Ojibwe culture.
Mr. Pheasant has been creating art since high school. “But I really got serious about it around the year 2000,” he said, noting that he prices his art to make it accessible for people in the community.
“I was trying to help him expand his market,” said Mr. Hess. He became convinced that there was a market for Mr. Pheasant’s work in Sudbury and began posting in online marketing sites.
It was a CBC program about the top 10 books in Canada that sparked the idea of creating a colouring book. “Four of those books were colouring books,” he said. “There was one artist in Alberta that had sold 2,000 books in just 14 days.” Colouring books, it seems, have become all the rage.
Mr. Hess pitched the idea to Mr. Pheasant and received a very positive response. “He was totally for it,” recalled Mr. Hess. The publisher’s original idea had been to publish a book of stories created by Mr. Pheasant. “He is an awesome storyteller,” he said, but the colouring book really captured the imagination. “It really took off from there.”
Took off is right, the book sold out of its first run of 250 copies and is now available in Coles bookstore outlets across Ontario. Over 640 books have shipped to date and orders are pouring in.
Asked if he had a favourite image in the book, Mr. Pheasant didn’t pause for long. “The deer is my favourite,” he said, “but I really like the hawk we put on the back cover as well.”
For its part, The Expositor is sponsoring a colouring contest featuring one of the images from the colouring book (see page 19). The contest will be judged by the fine folks at 4elements Living Arts and the prize includes one of the books and a set of colouring pencils.
