Illustrating Be Who You Are

by Ben Rumback

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The Be Who You Are project is, to date, the largest illustration job I have undertaken.

... I was thinking a lot about these children, who have no media written or crafted just for them.

My artistic career (maybe artistic endeavour would be more accurate) began when I was five years old and won a 'Draw Mom' contest at a department store in a small town in Kansas, where I did the majority of my growing up. That was the first time I understood that an artist could be paid for doing what they love. My reward was a gift certificate, which I promptly traded in for a Batman Nintendo game. This is a very telling introduction. A good portion of the money I make from my art still goes on video games and comic books.

The Be Who You Are project is, to date, the largest illustration job I have undertaken. I have created murals, which are technically bigger, but the book took a lot more thought, planning and post-production. The children's literary world is a well-known hard nut to crack, and I know personally that getting your book or portfolio into the right hands can often seem impossible.

Jen and I ended up meeting after a happenstance series of events put her in conversation with a close fried of mine, and the subject just happened to be about her hunt for an illustrator. A few e-mails later, we met for coffee, and I did my best to seem seasoned and professional.

Hearing Jen's real-life story, and reading the final version of the manuscript (relived through the characters of Hope, Will and Dr. Bee) affected me deeply, as I imagine it strikes anyone of a certain political disposition, and an inclination toward empathy. It's a harrowing proposition, calling for a great deal of bravery and faith in your family and friends, to act in support of a child questioning what is arguably the most defining characteristic of self.

I was immediately taken with the project, and excited at the prospect of my first published work being of such an avant-garde, helpful and important subject matter.

The first hurdle to overcome was the weight of gender on our identity. As the youngest of three boys, I had very little insight into even the slightest variety of gender. Because we were raised in a small town in Kansas, sexuality came in one flavour, when it came at all and gender identity was a given. I was exposed to the ever growing presence of the L.G.B.T. community through movies and books, but in such a hetero, traditional environment, these ideas were almost never presented to me on an even keel, but in very choppy, often hostile or satirical waters.

It wasn't until late high school that the concept of being an ally was a thing in my world. College, I guess, would be the first place I ever really saw things straight (no pun intended) and understood sexuality as a spectrum instead of a two-toned thing consisting of two boxes, check one, pink or blue.

These days I am happy to count among my nearest and dearest, a broad array of life-styles and love-styles, and I think gratefully of the ways they have allowed me to broaden my understanding of the world and the wonderful variety of people in it.

Along came this book, then, presenting an idea that I hadn't devoted any thought to, even in my self-congratulating 'new-mind'. Transgender and gender identity were clear concepts to me, but the idea of carrying such a burden before adulthood, before teenage, heck, before third grade, had never crossed my mind. After meeting Jen and having read a few times through the copy she left me, I was thinking a lot about these children, who have no media written or crafted just for them.

There weren't any helpful books on the subject, and that, as much as any desire for work or to get my name out there, got me involved in, and devoted to, the project. When I am not working as an illustrator, I teach preschool and give art lessons to kids the same age as Hope, the main character in the book. This gave me an advantage when it came time to get inside the characters, the parents and the kids, and convey visually the characters' varying moments of despair, loneliness, family, triumph.

Character design starts in a very raw place. We are refined, not defined, by our clothes, haircuts, and all of the other oh-so-important parts of our surface identity. The process of developing Hope began with the face. I had to get it to a place that didn't instinctively read girl or boy. And while the look of the book would be stylised, I didn't want to go too far into the cartoon-zone. I started with a series of nine heads and shoulders, youthful and bald, in varying degrees of rotation. Next, I took some root emotions from the working copy of the text, and marked each head with one of four labels: neutral, happy, sad or worried. Looking at it now, after working so much feeling into the faces in the finished book, it seems like a pretty short list.

When I had finished the chart for Hope, I did a smaller set for each of the characters that surround her in the story. For her mother, dad and little brother, I took an idyllic approach - they were beautiful, healthy parents and a loving brother, who would go forward in this very idyllic story, to help and protect Hope, a person who doesn't quite fit into her surroundings.

Layout and planning of the book went fairly smoothly. The brunt of my efforts were spent on trying to not show the same set of people facing the audience in a limited variety of poses. This is something non-artist-types may never think of, specifically in kids' books and comic books. We are given a limited supply of characters and settings, and have to mix up the staging to keep it interesting. If we neglect this, you end up with ten or twenty very similar pictures with the facial features changing ever so slightly. It doesn't do much for me.

Another thing I worked at was keeping the movement of the characters at the same pace as the writing. These characters were going places, be it to the park, library or the office of the great Dr. Bee (the character I most enjoyed drawing, because of her hair and fashion sense). There are three major postures for the characters in this book, particularly Hope. Shoulders forward, shoulders back, or prone. The only time we find Hope lying down is on page three of the book, where she, ( still identified as Nick), is being lovingly carried off to bed by her parents. When Hope is feeling oppressed or less confident, her shoulders slump forward in a defensive, defeated pose, matching the downturned eyes and frown of the mouth. In the twenty-four illustrations featuring Hope, she is shown in this pose only three times.

These things happen consciously and subconsciously, and I often don't realise I am doing them until they become a trend within the body of work. After the realisation hits, I keep them going, and sometimes go back through and give them a little more resonance.

When I flip through my copy of Be Who You Are, I feel a great wash of pride, with some overtones of disbelief. The process wasn't without its bumps and, at times, the project seemed altogether too large and daunting. But, it turned out a series of paintings that Jen thought matched her words beautifully, and I have no doubt that it has already helped many people get a better understanding of what they, their son or daughter, nephew, grand-daughter or sibling is feeling.

Anyone dealing with that sort of struggle needs a hand, especially the very young. Jen and other advocates hold their hands out to them. I am happy knowing that her hands, at least, have a few smears of my paint on them.

Polare is published in Australia by The Gender Centre Inc. which is funded by the Department of Community Services under the S.A.A.P. Program and supported by the N.S.W. Health Department through the AIDS and Infectious Diseases Branch. Polare provides a forum for discussion and debate on gender issues. Advertisers are advised that all advertising is their responsibility under the Trade Practices Act. Unsolicited contributions are welcome, though no guarantee is made by the Editor that they will be published, nor any discussion entered into. The editor reserves the right to edit such contributions without notification. Any submission which appears in Polare may be published on our internet site. Opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the Editor, The Gender Centre Inc.I, the Department of Community Services or the N.S.W. Department of Health.