A fear of waste + last years cinnamon broom from Trader Joe's

= art?

Hi! I’m Kayla Stark, an illustrator working primarily in the children’s publishing world. I write about illustration, process, publishing, and my life in general. Join in! Everyone’s welcome! All posts are free for everyone—upgrading to a paid subscription helps me continue writing these and supports all readers. Thank you!

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I’m a paper packrat…

I save every little scrap—every card I receive. And you know, now that I take a closer look at this junk mail, the pattern on the inside of the envelope could really BE SOMETHING. I should probably save that too.

This is also bolstered by the fact that I carried a sheet of handmade paper around for 10+ years—dorms to apartments to townhomes to my current house. All the while hearing comments like “ugh why do you still have that, you’re never going to use it!”

Well…
In your face BRAD because I DID use it. I used it real good! I needed a very specific texture that looked like dirt/underground on an island made of newspapers and I had THIS…

I made this paper in college back in probably 2009/2010.

Here’s that junk mail envelope interior pattern I was talking about—used it too. :)

I will point to this moment every time I save a piece of paper.

This habit has turned into a little bit of a problem—A fear of wasting things… Or maybe the fear of waste came first…it’s hard to tell. Anyway…

My saved paper collection is on the edge of getting out of hand. I keep telling myself, “Oh I’ll cut up these cards/scraps and a make new illustration.” A year passes, another year passes—and I still haven’t made anything; I just keep adding to the pile.

LET’S CHANGE THAT RIGHT NOW.

Please help enable and justify this personality defect and watch me make art from scrap.

But WHAT am I going to illustrate with all this stuff?

Last week I saw Nosferatu with my friend Vivien. Afterward she gave us the challenge of making a “no stakes” drawing based on the movie. (we talk a lot about art/motivation/staying true to our way of illustrating, etc. PLUS the movie was GORGEOUS, so I agreed to the challenge)

With a subject and image in mind, I took stock of my stock. What all was I working with? What could I use?

I knew rats would feature heavily the final illustration so I went for the brown craft paper envelope. I also spotted some useful textures in a card featuring the characters from Jon Klassen’s “I Want my Hat Back”.

I’ve been saving these old dried up palette sheets for a while. I love how they look, just unplanned splotches that reflect a moment in time. A couple of them had sections that looked perfectly macabre and ratty. 😅

I prepped a piece of scrap paper with a dark background of watercolor/water soluble crayons—leaving one small area open for the moon.

Then I started cutting. (scissors + an Xacto knife) I didn’t sketch on the paper or anything before I made cuts. I just looked at a tiny thumbnail I had made in the beginning as rough guide and went for it. (NO STAKES!)

I arranged all of my cut pieces to see how they would line up. Then I made any little snips necessary to make a nicer silhouette, or help things fit together a little better. Then I glued the pieces down with a glue stick.

After I got the main character’s shapes down, I used a couple of colored pencils to add detail in the face and on the coat.

Time for the fiddly part that I knew was going to take FOREVER—the plague¹ of rats. I just started cutting vague rat shapes out different papers (craft paper envelope, old palette, and the “I Want my Hat Back” card).

I figured out how to arrange them later. :)

tiny rat shape and ear cut from an old, dry paint palette

After getting my rat arrangement roughed out, I saw a few gaps that needed filling and cut some more specific rat shapes for those.

If you remember, the title of this post mention’s last year’s cinnamon broom² from Trader Joe’s. Yep, I was afraid of wasting that too. So I saved it. I thought it would be useful for SOMETHING eventually.

I cut a few sprigs from it. This broom will serve me for decades at this rate.

And that something was…rat tails.

I used liquid Elmer’s glue to stick them down. Not every rat got a broom bristle tail, but most did. This really helped add to the “mad tangle” look I was going for.

Lastly I used a colored pencil to add some eye/nose detail on the rats.

and BING BANG BOOM! Donezo! I present to you:

Nosferatu Surrounded by a Plague of Rats

A “no stakes” drawing that only took a little longer than I originally anticipated (on account of the rats). AND I used some of the stuff I’ve been hoarding saving.

Here’s the finished piece!

Bonus: I heard that in the film, after shooting, they lowered the saturation and took out the reds. I wanted to give my piece that look so here’s a version where I did the same.

I don’t know if doing this helped me feel better about saving all the paper scraps and bits that I save, but I definitely don’t feel worse. And I made some art that I wouldn’t have made otherwise!

Signing off with

Where all my fellow paper hoarders at?!

I know I’m not alone.

Talk to ya’ll soon!

Kayla

1. I just learned that a group of rats is called a “mischief”! But for the purpose of this illustration and this movie, I’m sticking with “plague”. :)

2. A cinnamon broom is just a seasonal bunch of sticks, scented with cinnamon, tied into a broom shape that you hang in your house during the fall.