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Colour
In chapter 8 of his book, McCloud talks about colour and how it can communicate (1993, pp. 185-192). Eisenstein uses colour and black and white very intelligently in her memoir.
For most of Eisenstein’s memoir, her illustrations are in black and white, though some are in colour. When asked about her colour and black and white use, Eisenstein states: In a way...you could be asking me why and when I decided to write, use words, and not draw or vice versa. Colour and black and white are a language. For me, the colour, the individual portraits, was a way of stopping a moment, slowing down the pace of absorption, as if to say, here is this person, this individual, this life, this soul. And with the black and white--here is a moment in time, a memory, a past, sometimes my past, sometimes theirs, and then I could add words to that drawing, and have it be ironic, both sad and funny--and then it was also a way of showing how my own mind worked. That is, trying to see more than one way. The black and white is seeing/hearing me think. (personal communication, 2011).
When Eisenstein says that “The black and white is seeing/hearing me think”(personal communication, 2011) she could not be more right. According to McCloud “in black and white, the ideas behind that are communicated more directly. Meaning transcends form. Art approaches language” (McCloud, 1993, p. 192). Most, if not all black and white illustrations are understandable as a moment in the past or in her thoughts.
Fig. 21. Eisenstein, B, (2006). [painting]. From I was a child of Holocaust survivors (p. 86), by Bernice Eisenstein, 2006, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd.
As for her use of colour she does definitely achieve a stopping reaction from the reader in the many ways she uses it. For example: The portraits of her parents made us slow down more closely to interpret when we came across them in the memoir. There are instances where she uses a combination of black and white and colour such as on page 86 (Fig. 21). The colour in the picture really does make you slow down and look. Once you do, you realize that there is a baby drawn over and over again in the colour. In this way the reader is meant to slow down and realize that this baby (during the Holocaust, the father’s sister had a baby who was then shot)(2006, pp. 84-86) was a life and a soul as Eisenstein phrases it. The black and white photo of the father and his friend represent a moment in the past between them (Only the friend knew the fate of her father’s sister and her baby)(2006, pp. 84-86).There are also a few cases where she also uses a spot of colour in some of her black and white illustrations. For example: on pages 40-41 she uses just green for the leaves on the tree in the otherwise black and white (+ greyscale) illustration. During these pages she talks about how her parents were called “Greenies” or “greenhorns” when they arrived in Canada and then she continues to talk about the colour green (Eisenstein, 2006, p.40). It seems that here she uses colour to reinforce a concept as well.
Eisenstein, B. (2006). I was a child of Holocaust survivors. Toronto, On: McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
McCloud, S. (1993). Understanding comics: the invisible art. New York, NY: HarperCollins books.
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