PWC/261/1/15A: Notes on the yellow tram, by Robyn Wells, March 2018

Summary

The fireworks and geometric decorations hanging overhead in the carnival scenes were based on a 1970s carnival image from the Time-Life book Great cities of the world/Rio de Janeiro (p. 162)The illustrations for the Jazz Club required many stencils to create crisp edges for each section of the building. The style of architecture is taken from images of old colonial buildings in Rio de Janeiro built during the Portuguese colonial era.The palm trees were drawn from real palm trees in Broome. Joshua and Robyn first did pencil sketches and made notes to achieve accurate shapes and details. To make the final illustration, they dipped plastic hair rollers into black ink to create the texture of the trunks.The textures were an essential part of creating backgrounds for different settings within the story. The famous black and white wave-like street mosaics of Rio de Janeiro are inspired by similar mosaics in the Portuguese city of Lisbon, which were laid to commemorate an earthquake and tidal wave that damaged the city in 1755.The illustrations for the yellow tram were inspired by an image in the Time-Life book Great cities of the world/Rio de Janeiro (p. 45) The tram driver who picks up Steve from outside the zoo is a cameo appearance by Pat Dodson. Joshua did a separate black ink illustration of Mr Dodson, which was then photo-shopped into the yellow tram.