Vashti Harrison Lets the Light In

Vashti Harrison is the writer and illustrator behind bestselling children’s books such as “Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History.” The picture book she made with the Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o, “Sulwe,” is out this week, telling the story of a little girl who learns to love her “skin the color of midnight.” Earlier this year, Harrison worked with writer and filmmaker Matthew A. Cherry on “Hair Love,” a picture book that grew out of a short film about an African American girl whose father does her hair while her mother is in the hospital.

Harrison, 31, invited us to her studio in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood to talk about her creative process, blending traditional and digital media, and how she pushes against stereotypes in her work. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Q: What made you choose this space?

A: I moved into this apartment specifically so that I could have a large, light-filled space. I work digitally, and light isn’t actually the best thing for that! But it’s good for my well-being.

Q: How long have you been living and working here?

A: I moved to this apartment in May of 2017, but I’ve been in New York since 2016. When I first got here from Virginia, where I grew up and went to college, it was sort of a temporary period to see if I liked being in New York. And I did, so I looked for an apartment I could really settle down in, since I have to be in here all day long when I’m working. This is the first time I’ve had a dedicated space just for art.

Q: The room you work in looks so bright and lovely.

A: I was attracted to that room right away because the window was so interesting. I thought, “Look at all those neighbors.” I remembered watching the movie “Rear Window” and being struck by the scenes of Grace Kelly on a daybed in front of a window, looking out. So I got this daybed.

When I was working on “Sulwe,” I did have to put up light-blocking curtains to make sure I was getting all the colors correct. But often I do a lot of emails and busywork during the day and then I get into the drawing late at night, so it ends up working out.

There’s not one part of me that wanted to live in a dark little box. The work of an illustrator can be so isolating. To me it feels friendly and happy in here.

Q: You also keep a lot of brushes and pencils around. How often do you use them?

A: I call that my traditional media corner. I do work with paints and pencils all the time, but I don’t think anybody has seen it in my published work. I haven’t had the opportunity yet to incorporate it. I do tend to be faster digitally. I’m working on a book now and trying to figure out ways to blend traditional media into my digital work. But I work on stuff all the time that nobody gets to see.

Q: What are those little painted figures?

A: I picked up peg dolls from the dollar store and painted on them. I was going for something in between Japanese kokeshi dolls and Euro-American peg dolls. I give them as gifts.

Q: How did you choose which children’s books to keep on your shelves? Not all of them are picture books.

A: I do have a lot of middle-grade-ish books. But all of my books that I would really consider my own childhood favorites are still at my parents’ house. My Harry Potter books, for example. These books here are ones I picked up recently. I would very much like to do a middle-grade book, to both write and illustrate it, so I’m trying to absorb all the exciting books, the popular ones. I want to do a highly illustrated middle-grade fantasy novel about a child of color.

Q: Your last two books have been collaborations — “Sulwe” with Lupita Nyong’o and “Hair Love” with Matthew A. Cherry. How did that go after you had so much success with the solo effort of the “Little Leaders” books?

A: For “Sulwe,” I was trying to channel Lupita as a child. She is from the Luo people of Kenya, so I studied their dress and costume. For “Hair Love,” I originally designed the characters just for the short film that Matthew Cherry made. Then they signed a deal for the book. For the dad, I was thinking about a gentle giant type, and later on I decided this would be a good opportunity to push against the stereotype and make him younger.

Q: You made the ending of “Hair Love” visually ambiguous — in the film we surmise that the mom is being treated for cancer, and that’s why she’s wearing a head wrap, but in the book she could be wearing it for any reason.

A: I wanted all kids to be able to read it over and over, and not every kid may be ready for that particular story, of a mom with cancer.

Q: What work do you have pinned to the wall?

A: I’ve started working with pastels. I bought some really nice ones and it’s something I’m exploring. I’m really attracted to how expressionistic and loose you have to be with pastel. As much as you might like to zoom in, you can’t. So it’s a nice formal way to challenge myself. I love trying to make things look really rendered with the fewest amount of strokes, and trying to make it look the way you would do it on the computer — but you have to do it with a fat piece of chalk.

Q: It looks like you work at this table a lot.

A: You know what’s ridiculous? I finally have all this space to make art, and I often end up sitting on the floor with all of my stuff spread out, just like I did when I was a kid.

Q: How do you choose what to keep on the table?

A: I found these vintage field guides to astronomy and plants. If I was to boil down the two things I want to do most, it’s capture plants and stars. Then I have different journals for everything. The Indiana Jones movies were another big influence on me. I always wanted to have a grail diary, a little leather journal. Now I have many — like 15! Some of them are too nice to write in. Some are for specific things. There’s one for drawing, one for note-taking, one for notes on a specific story. And some are blank because they feel too precious to make a mistake in.

And not everyone does, but I do need a reference when I draw hands.

Q: You do have one book here that looks like it’s from your childhood, “The Book of Goodnight Stories.”

A: I clearly remember this one. It was my older sister’s before it came to me. The stories in it are traditional fairy tales, like “The Magic Flute” and “Sleeping Beauty,” but some of the illustrations have a more contemporary look. I’ve been looking at it a lot lately because I realize some of them are done in pastel, and they have a soft, magical quality to them that I really liked as a kid.

Q: I love the green of your sofa.

A: When I think about the things I love, I think of this one shade of green, maybe almost a hunter green, but with an outdoorsy, springtime feeling, like when the garden is just coming to life. I think a lot about how to make an apartment that I have to be in all the time remind me of the things I like the most.

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