Savannah Canavan

I am currently a Studio Art major at University of Wisconsin-Stout, with a concentration in painting. I have painted a couple murals in my hometown, one was for the new public library that was built. I have created work for my family and friends, and I have also painted commissions for people that I have been paid for. My primary medium is oil paint, but I have lots of experience using acrylics as well. I enjoy painting portraits and landscapes the most.

I want to make a bench to honor Wanda Gag, who was a children’s book illustrator and author from New Ulm, Minnesota and studied art in the cities. I would like to pay homage to her illustrations and fun style.

The front of the bench would be a reference to her “ABC Bunny” book, and it would say “W for Wanda Gag” with an illustration of a rabbit to represent this book. The front would be colored in bold, primary colors, as most of her book covers have a limited color palette that uses bold color.

The inside would have a drawing of Wanda holding some cats. There would be cats all over these pages as a reference to her book “Millions of Cats”. I would also include other illustrations from her books, such as fairytale characters from “Stories from Grimm”, ”A Funny Thing” and others. These illustrations would be in black and white, as all of Wanda Gag’s drawings were black and white, and I would like to replicate her style of shading and illustrating to reference her work. Also, on the inside would be a quote by her, and I was thinking it would be “There is nothing for us to do than to take ourselves as we find ourselves and make the best of ourselves”.

Sample

Sample

Sample