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- Excellence Award 2009
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- I'd Rather Be (picture book) 2008
- The Learning Circles 2008
- Toddler Totem Trails 2007
- From Dreamtime to Sorrytime 2008
- River of Reflections 2007
- Nativity Scene 2006
- Sun Canticle II 2006
- Primordial Garden II 2006
- Paradise Garden II 2006
- Parkland Petals 2006
- Foyer Piece - Woodlands Van Park 2006
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- Well Travelled Trunks 2004
- Mosaic Tables JCU Campus 2002
- McCoral Reef Mural 2002
- McCoral Reef Play Area 2002
- Sample Ashton 2D works
- Ashton art works 3D
- Comments welcome
I'd Rather Be - A Story About Change
Little rainbow is not happy with her life. She thinks she is boring because she only has curves for shapes.
She decides to leave the sky and try out some different body types. Little rainbow has never really appreciated her other feature …. beautiful colours. These never fade as she explores the world. Will she leave the sun and clouds forever or can she find a way to be a rainbow with a difference?
The vibrant illustrations in this book were made with acrylic paint using just primary colours to mix the secondary colours. Plastic squares (bread clips) were used to blend small dobs of pure colour in experimental abstract patterns on large sheets of paper. When these dried they were cut up into small pieces and carefully pasted onto the drawn animal outlines as a collage. About 70 education students each contributed colourful pieces to the collage which was completed over a few weeks.
Dr Linda Ashton taught the students how to make the pictures. She also took digital photos of each page and photo-shopped the words in to fit around the animal outlines. The story is in poem form and was created collaboratively through brainstorming. Sometimes the words blend in with the pictures rather than appearing in standard left to right rows as in conventional books. This encourages children to search for camouflaged words - an important skill when reading print on a computer screen. Once familiar with the rhythm of the poem children can use predictive decoding strategies to go back and find any words they may have missed in a reading.
We hope you enjoy reading the story as much as we enjoyed creating it. Maybe you would like to draw some of our pictures. Maybe you could make some of your own bread clip art and cut it up for another animal collage. Our story has poems for many kinds of animals …. a mammal, reptile, amphibian, marsupial, crustacean, bird, fish, echinoderm … but we have left lots out.
ISBN 9780980468731[email protected]
Limited edition print $70 Aus.