December 9th - Anna Violet

#W8PAdvent

See the whole image and the growing Advent calendar here.

annaviolet.co.uk

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December 4th - Anna Violet

#W8PAdvent

See the whole image and the growing Advent calendar here.

annaviolet.co.uk

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Featured Illustrator: Anna Violet

For Featured Illustrator this month we spotlight Manchester based artist Anna Violet. A familiar presence in SCBWI and contributor to Words & Pictures, Anna's tactile and vibrant illustrations are rendered in a wide variety of materials including watercolour, ink and collage, all tied together with her own idiosyncratic style. See the Featured Illustrator Gallery for more examples of her work.

Personal path

Anna Violet - self portrait as a child

I was a child in the 1960s. I grew up with illustrations by Jean Primrose (Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, author Rumer Godden, 1961), Maurice Wilson (Fables from Aesop retold by James Reeves, 1961), Shirley Hughes (My Naughty Little Sister, author Dorothy Edwards, 1969) Alice and Martin Provensen (Iliad and the Odyssey, retold by Jane Werner Watson, 1965) and Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are, 1964).

Maurice Wilson's illustrations captivated me,
especially his foxes

This book even had instructions on how to make a
Japanese house!

Clumsy, messy and shy, I pondered on whether pigs could really fly and if fairies and harvest mice roamed wild in our garden. When I wasn't arguing with my brothers, looking after my mice or searching for dragons with my fairy wand, I had my nose in a book and my fingers in the pencils, mud and modelling clay. I was really chuffed to win a runner-up consolation prize in a Kellogg's Cornflakes competition for my drawing of a tram. I was also very proud of a Japanese doll's house I made from firelighters.

My drawing of a bus.

I didn't want to grow up, but accepted the inevitable when I hit my my teens. I trained and worked as a landscape architect for over 15 years, for three different councils. Armed with a parallel motion drawing board, a set square and stencils, I drew onto large sheets of tracing paper with technical drawing pens, scratched out mistakes with scalpel blades, and coloured-in dyeline prints with pantone pen markers. Computer-aided design was a mere speck on the horizon. Sometimes, I also had fun making models for meetings. At weekends, I made mess with clay and slip-trailers.

Paints, wobbly lines and happy accidents

When I became a mother in my thirties, I revisited childhood. My first born developed type 1 diabetes as a toddler and I became very focussed on home. It was a joy to rediscover picture books and children's fiction and share them with my children. I was impressed by Gerald Rose (Ahh Said Stork, 1977), John Burningham (Oi Get Off Our Train, 1989), Nick Butterworth (After The Storm, 1992), Margaret Bloy Graham (Harry the Dirty Dog, author Gene Zion, 1956), Cressida Cowell (How to Train Your Dragon series), Dave McKean (Varjak Paw series, author SF Said, 2003), Antony Browne (Voices in the Park, 1998), Patrick Benson (Owl Babies, author Martin Waddell, 1992), Satoshi Kitamura (Angry Arthur, author Hiawyn Oram, 1997) and Sam Lloyd (Mr Pusskins, 2006).

I love all the different marks Sam Lloyd uses in her illustrations.

One of my paintings from 1990s.

I loved messing around with paints, wobbly lines and happy accidents, without the constraints of technical drawing. I exhibited in galleries and did craft sessions with children. In 2006, I was lucky to get the chance to do a degree in illustration and get up to speed with computer technology and contemporary illustration at Stockport College, a bus-ride away. I graduated in 2009. I was introduced to the work of graphic designers and illustrators, including Paul Rand, Saul Steinberg, Christopher Corr and Beatrice Alemagna. I experimented with new toolkits (especially ink and string) and developed collage skills. I learnt the value of playfulness and I learnt the mantra, 'Less is More'. I started to sell limited edition prints of Manchester scenes and do decorative maps and commissions.

Decorative map for National Trust leaflet 2010 (Anna Violet)

Castlefield area in Manchester  (Anna Violet)

 Technique

I begin my images by sketching and playing around with marks. Then I cut, scan, copy and collage. I do lots of observational drawings in my sketchbooks, and sometimes these lead to ideas.

My sketchbook pages with start of hedgehog character

My sketchbook images from Cheshire Show 2014.
Start of new goat character.

My sketchbook images from Cheshire Show 2014

In 2009, I joined SCBWI and shared stories with other illustrators and writers in crit groups, both online and in the Manchester group. In 2010, I won the Undiscovered Voices Tribute Illustration competition.

My winning entry for scbwi Undiscovered Voices
Tribute Illustration competition

I went to SCBWI masterclasses and the SCBWI conference 2011. I started to appreciate author-illustrators  Catherine Rayner (Augustus and His Smile, 2006), Alexis Deacon (Beegu, 2003), Helen Stephens (How to Hide a Lion, 2014), Lizzy Finlay (Dandylion, 2009), Sarah McIntyre (Sharks in the Bath, 2014) and Jon Klassen. In 2013, I won the SCBWI Promo Mailer competition and my prickly hedgehog image was selected for the 2013/2014 touring SCBWI Illustration Showcase.  My illustrations have been published in Oxford Reading Tree Books in 2011 (How Anansi Got His Stories, level 8) and 2014 (Big Ears and Sticky Fingers, Infact level 9) and Spider magazine (Carus Publishing) 2013.

How Anansi Got His Stories (OUP 2011)

I've been developing my writing with several picture book stories - stories with harvest mice, fledgling umbrella birds, frogs, wrens, shrews, foxes and dragons. Oh, and I've been pondering again on whether pigs can really fly...

Pig flying over Beech Road, Manchester (Anna Violet)

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Check Anna's Featured Illustrator Gallery page to see many more examples of her work. Her personal website is at  www.annaviolet.co.uk
Follow Anna on her blog here

An Illustrator's view of the London Book Fair

This week, Anna Violet takes an illustrator's eye view of the 2014 London Book Fair

I ventured to the London Book Fair as a lone illustrator on a first visit last month. I knew it was primarily a place for global rights negotiations in the publishing world, so what use could it be for an illustrator? I was curious to find out. 


The Fair took up the whole of the Earls Court Exhibition Centre (such a handy London icon), so the sheer size was overwhelming to begin with. I kept walking around in circles before I got my bearings in the children's publishing section. When I tentatively offered a business postcard to someone at a promising-looking stand, I was told they had their own in-house illustrators. At the next stand they commented there were too many illustrators going around - they didn't want my card either! So maybe not a place to promote yourself as an illustrator.

Bonnier/Templar stand

I was impressed by the amazing range of new books on the stands, many of them in unpublished dummy book form. There were stands from Childs Play, Egmont, Top That, Walker Books, Bonnier (Templar & Orion), Usborne, Little Tiger Press, Andersen Press, Scholastic Books, Nosy Crow, Flying Books, Gecko Press, Tango Books, Ginger Books and many others. The Polish stand had some gorgeous-looking award-winning children's books (Ibby 2013). Later, I found many publishers were happy to give me a catalogue in return for my business card.
 

Polish Ibby Books of the year 2013

Usborne stand

Walker stand

I also got some useful feedback on my portfolio from Advocate Art Agency and attended a fascinating seminar with Mike Jolley (Templar Books), Tom Cole (illustrator/author) and Chris Wormell (illustrator/author).

Tom Cole

Chris Wormell

So, was the visit any use to an illustrator? I was inspired by the books and came away with a better idea of what's being published this year, where publishers were placed in the market and which publishers would be best to approach with my illustration style.

Would I go again? Earl's Court Exhibition Centre is being redeveloped (big sigh!), so 2014 was the last year for LBF at this venue. Possibly.

 

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Anna Violet is a freelance author-illustrator based in Manchester.  Check her portfolio website here, and her blog here.
 

Ten-Minute Blog Break - 15th April

Your erstwhile Blog-Breaker, Nick Cross, has decided to skive off for the week, and I’m here in his stead. It’s only a small change really, we’re just adding a “Y”– Nick for Nicky… I was a little concerned that it might be a quiet week on the blogs, with little to give you in your ten minute blog break, but I’m delighted to see that our stalwart SCBWI bloggers are blogging diligently.

Who doesn’t love a competition and the possibilities that come with it? Ewa Jozefkowicz has kindly done all us children’s writers a good turn by creating a record of all the competitions  coming up over the next 12 months in the children’s book genre. So far there are nine competitions listed – if you know of more, do let Ewa know in the comments section of her blog.

Anna Violet posted to Words & Pictures last week  about the sketchcrawl in Manchester led by Lynne Chapman. In her own blog, Lynne reveals her experience of leading the sketchcrawl . And gives you the lowdown on what she keeps in her kit bag to illustrating the post with stunning sketches done during the course of the day.

Old books and particularly old picture books hold many evocative memories. Paeony Lewis, faced with a house move, blogs about which books she decided to throw out and which to keep and why. Have you held onto old picture books from your childhood – and if so, which ones?

Some of you may have noticed that there’s been a thing called a Writing Process Blog tour doing the rounds of the blogosphere. The tour has been a fascinating insight into the writing process of so many writers. The striking thing that comes through is that there is no right or wrong way to write, only “your” way. Take a look and see how Kathy Evans, Sue Hyams and Larissa Villar Hauser  set about their writing.

And finally, I couldn’t possibly do Nick Cross’ column for him, without taking a look at his own blog post for the week. This week Nick, in inimitable style, considers how important it is for writers to get a firm grip on their ambition so that they’re able to creatively realign themselves to a realistic vision. As he so wisely says, madness is the way for those too focused on the market.

Nicky.

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SCBWI-BI “member abroad”, Nicky Schmidt  is an ex scriptwriter, copywriter, and marketing, brand and communications director who "retired" early to follow a dream. Although she still occasionally consults on marketing, communications and brand strategies, mostly she writes YA fiction (some of which leans towards New Adult) in the magical realism and supernatural genres. When not off in some other world, Nicky also writes freelance articles - mostly lifestyle and travel - for which she does her own photography. Her work has been published in several South African magazines and newspapers. As well as being a regular feature writer for Words & Pictures, Nicky also runs the SCBWI-BI YA e-critique group. Nicky lives in Cape Town with her husband and two rescue Golden Retrievers.

19th December - Anna Violet

#W8PAdvent

 See the whole image and the growing Advent Gallery here.

Anna Violet

Do you have a Tweetable micro story for

Anna's illustration?

Post it in the comments and we'll tweet it with #W8PAdvent and your Twitter handle

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2014 Illustrator Showcase launch at the Winchester Conference

Bridget Strevens Marzo

Detail of Alex Wilson's submission

The Illustrator Showcase this year at our SCBWI BI Winchester Conference was the most successful yet in drawing attention to the incredible illustrator talent
in the British Isles. For the first time ever, prints of the works displayed were for sale at a fixed £25 per print, all profits going to the Philippines Typhoon Appeal, grouping all major charities in the Disaster Emergency Fund. 


The prospect of becoming art buyers drew more conference faculty and attendees than ever to our SCBWI Illustrator Showcase
to look....

and look again
and make their orders.

We even re-hung the show at the Mass Book Launch on Saturday night... 

and the unusual pink lighting did not put pundits off purchasing a few more prints.
By the end of one full day we had made over £800 for the Philippines fund.

A big thank you to the 15 illustrators participating in the donation!
Their side of the bargain is to make archival prints, sign them and post them as instructed to their buyers.
And congratulation to Heather Kilgour whose print here:

was the first to sell out to five happy buyers.By the way, ALL works for sale for the fund were marked with a gold star sticker, not just Heather's..
You can view all the Showcase exhibits here.

And talking of stickers...
 

These hearts were stuck onto pages of each portfolio submission in the Portfolio Showcase by art directors Strawberrie Donnelly, Ngheim Ta and Lily Trotter and Advocate Art agent Ed Burns to highlight pages in individual portfolios where the judges wanted to say 1. illustration is great, 2. going in the right direction and 3. Do more stuff like this! So if you are an illustrator who submitted a portfolio  and you received a sticker, or even better, several stickers in your portfolio when you picked it up, well done! 

There were several really strong contenders among the portfolios submitted this year so double congratulations the winner of the Best Portfolio Award, Alex Wilson, a new member, recently back in the UK after a spell in the US seen here at the centre of attention at the evening Launch party.  

 More congratulations go to Anna Violet for winning the Self-Promotion Mailer Award...

with her stunning never-ending 'fold' mailer which you can also see in full detail here.

Alex Wilson and Anna Violet both win a slot as a Featured Illustrator in Words and Pictures (time to be confirmed) and a free place at one of the Illustrator Masterclass Series in 2014.
If you're an illustrator wanting to improve your portfolio presentation skills, you can learn more from John Shelley's SCBWI illustrator masterclass, Secrets of Building a Better Portfolio on March 8 2014 and get more direct feedback from agents and art directors at the SCBWI masterclass Portfolio Intensive on April 26, 2014.

And we have plans to provide even more for illustrators (not to mention art buyers and worthy causes!)  at the conference in November 2014!

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In addition to her own many projects and commissions, Bridget is Words & Pictures' Art Director and a contributing editor for the AOI's magazine Varoom. She lives in London.

Picture Book Master Class with Egmont

Heather Kilgour

This year I helped organise a picture book illustration master class with Sarah Malley, Art Director from Egmont Children’s Books, writes Heather Kilgour . 

The workshop had two phases. First, Egmont provided the fifteen illustrators who had enrolled with a picture book text that they had commissioned. The Illustrators produced black and white roughs of character studies and two full page spreads from the story, which were submitted to Sarah for feedback.


Then the illustrators used this feedback to produce final colour illustrations which they brought along to the workshop. 

Sarah started the workshop with a summary of what Egmont do, along with examples of what she is looking for in artwork. We then gathered round as Sarah reviewed and critiqued everyone’s colour work. To complete the day she showed as the work of the illustrator that Egmont commissioned for the book.

I always jump at the chance to get feedback

Illustration can be a lonely business so I always jump at the chance to get feedback about my work especially if it’s from an industry professional.

Unfortunately other deadlines prevented me from participating, but I have interviewed Anna Violet, Julia Woolf and Shana Neiberg-Suschitzky, about their experience.  Below are their paraphrased answers.

Why did you go?

A:   It was great to get feedback half way through a project, and have a chance to work on a new text. It also gave us the opportunity to meet Sarah Malley and get feedback in person.

J:    It sounded interesting and SCBWI events are always good value for money. You always gain something even if you think you won’t.

S:   I went to build my folio and get experience. In effects it’s like a commissioning opportunity where you work with a brief and a publisher and get feedback.

What were the positives? 

A:   It was great to see what everyone else had done as they all had completely different takes on the story, and then to see the one that Egmont commissioned.

J:    Sarah was very positive. 

S:    It was great to feel like part of a community, to see what fourteen other illustrators came up with from the same idea, and to get an idea of what publishers are really looking for at the moment. Sarah was so generous about giving advice about the industry and how we can improve ourselves to get through the door.

What was helpful for you?

A:   Feedback on character design.

J:    It wasn’t a pitch so I could experiment and do what I wanted. It was a complicated story with lots of characters and no art direction to go by so it was up to you. It was a real challenge; you had to just go for it.

S:   The advice she gave us and the feedback on our work.

Has it inspired any long term changes in your work?

A:   I’m going to try to make my characters funnier.

What would you say to recommend it to others?

A:   Sarah brought promotional work so we could see that she likes, and what works for Egmont.  It’s a great opportunity to meet an art director and get direct feedback. You learn a lot from seeing other peoples work and hearing Sarah’s response to it.

J:    It made me produce some work I’m really pleased with. You can’t lose really, you get to put work in front of a publisher and get a reaction, and even if it’s not a positive one you can learn from it.

S:   It was a vital wonderful opportunity.  No other society generates these types of workshops and events that can really benefit you. SCBWI illustration events are special and unique and it’s all down to Anne-Marie. 

Thanks Anne-Marie and Sarah Malley! And to all the participants who made it a fabulous day. 

Left to right. Susmita Roy, Sarah Malley, Rachel Quarry, Amanda Pollard, Anna Violet, Sarah Underwood, Heather Kilgour, Shana Nieberg-Suschitzky, Katie Weymouth, Clare Tovey, Jasmine Mercer, Elizabeth Norris, Mary Blackshaw, Elisabeth Newson, Anne-Marie Perks, Julia Woolf 

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Heather has been an artist, a blacksmith, a film sculptor and now a picture book maker. She has embarked on an MA in children’s book illustration at Anglia Ruskin College in Cambridge – which might be the start of a collection, as she already has an MA in Fine Arts.

Ink Splutterings

Anna Violet

Brush, knife or string? Which tool shall I use to make my mark?  The marks you make and choose are like your handwriting, they're unique to you. Much depends on the toolkit you use, as well as your materials. My own personal toolkit has evolved (and is evolving still) in response to my experiments with different tools and inks. Here are some of my findings.
Ink seems to have a fluid expressive life of its own. It floods, flows, runs, trail, seeps, creeps, splats, flicks, meanders, mottles, separates, puddles, scratches, mixes, patters, sprays, resists, drips, prints and swirls. Ink is bold, stubborn and wilful: it wants to go its own way. The tools you use can help you capture some of this attitude to your advantage. I like an image to look fresh, handmade and almost effortless, using just the right marks (yes, I'm on a long journey with a very large recycling bin!). So, for me, the best tool is the one that appears to do most of the work for me in the least self-conscious way. I am prepared to mix and match my application methods depending on what I want to show.

Different ink marks bring different connotations with them, depending on how they were made. Is the mark deliberate or accidental? Spontaneous or carefully measured? It is often the unintentional marks left on the floor that are the most interesting. What sort of energy do I use when I make them?  Do I flick from an old toothbrush, draw with string, blow through a straw or squirt the ink from a height? Do I add more water when it's drying or maybe try out some salt? Wet or dry paper?  Candlewax-resist or masking-tape resist? Do I tilt the paper to let the ink concentrate on the lower part or do I let the ink run down the paper in lines?  Do I mix and overlay different techniques, too? The diagram below is my take on the ink mark-making process. The mark depends on the tool I use, the materials, the sort of control I exert and the action I employ. Oh, and add in my ideas of what the character or scene should look like, too!

When I was at college I was encouraged to draw with unusual tools, such as plastic forks, string, straws, cardboard edges and sticks. They felt like impediments at first and I was out of my normal comfort zone but the results could be surprising and inspiring (as well as dreadful!). I took to certain tools and built up my own personal toolkit and way of working.

My Current Toolkit

• Big watercolour brushes hold lots of water and are great for loose fluid washes that flow, flood, creep, seep and bleed. 
• Housepaint bristle brush produces lovely stripes. 
• I get a swollen puddle edge to an area by drawing onto thick paper with a syringe filled with very dilute ink and waiting 24 hours for it to dry. 
• I also use my syringe to squirt out ink in splats onto paper on the floor. The eyedropper on the ink bottle squeezes out great dots, similar to a slip-trailer on ceramics. 
• My elder twig makes a jagged line as I scrape it across paper. Blowing ink through a straw leads to very organic plant-like growths. 
• I get my most surprising marks from a piece of string with a loop and knot at the end. I coax this gently over paper and it keeps flipping over and going another way, leaving trails of mysterious lines. 

So go on, try out some new tools! And please share any favourite or unusual tools in the comments section below.

ANSWERS: Which tools have made these marks?
1.Plastic fork dipped in ink
2 String dipped in ink
3 Ink blown through a straw + drawn with string
4 Ink wash (large round chinese watercolour brush) over masking fluid applied with stick
5 Brush mark, large bristle (housepaint) brush
6 Very dilute ink drawn with a syringe, puddle left to dry over 24 hrs
7 Ink print with cardboard edge
8  Ink flicked from a loaded large watercolour brush
9  Ink wash (large flat chinese hake watercolour brush) over torn masking tape resist

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Anna Violet is a freelance author-illustrator based in Manchester. She won the Undiscovered Voices Tribute competition 2010 and was Featured Illustrator 2011. She illustrated a young readers book, How Anansi Got His Stories (Oxford University Press) in 2011. She blogs here.

The Fox the Crow and the Smelly Old Cheese

By Anna Violet

I've been experimenting with tie-dyeing for backgrounds and I thought I'd share some of my images from the Fox and Crow and Cheese Aesops Fable that I've reworked .  I like the atmostphere/drama the tie-dye textures can give. 

Young readers phonics book

By Anna Violet

How Anansi Got His Stories has just been published by Oxford University Press (Oxford Reading Tree Traditional Tales series), and I'm very excited, because I did the illustrations for it. It is the first time I have been published in children's books, too.

Anansi is a trickster spider from traditional West African/Caribbean tales. The other characters include a leopard, a snake, hornets and a sky god.


Here is a selection of some of the illustrations. The cut-out typeface to the cover has been done by OUP.