Featured Illustrator - Julia Walther

Julia Walther is this month's Featured Illustrator. One of the winning artists in last year's Undiscovered Voices, Julia has devoted much of her life to literature, both through studying literature and translation in her native Germany and Ireland, and through working as a translator within German publishing. But her heart was set on writing and illustration, where she's now also beginning to make her mark. Find more of Julia's artwork in the Featured Illustrator Gallery



One fine October day I was wandering through the huge halls of the Frankfurt Bookfair. I’d been there many times before because of my job as a literary translator, but on that particular day I happened to be free to listen to some talks by the German illustration association, to stroll through the exhibition showcasing the most beautiful books and to spend hours among the stalls of children’s book publishers.

That was the day I decided to pursue my dream to become an illustrator.

As soon as I got home I went online and started searching for illustration workshops – anything that would help me along and wasn’t another full-time college course. There wasn’t really much on offer. With one exception: a weekend event near Munich only a couple of weeks later by an organisation I’d never heard of. Ah well, I thought, I might as well give it a go and email them to see if there are still places available. There were.

Bridget, Kirsten and Donna made me feel incredibly welcome, and there was a whole bunch of lovely people there, as there always are at SCBWI events.

That was three years ago and a lot has happened since. Apart from the many inspiring regional SCBWI events, there was the amazing Europolitan conference in Paris in 2013, and I also got to travel to Winchester to experience the great buzz at one of the annual British Isles conferences with all the wonderful people there (including some of the fabulous team behind Words and Pictures – thank you so much for inviting me to be a part of this and for making it all possible!)

One of the highlights was, of course, the day I heard that my illustration was among those to be included in the Undiscovered Voices 2013 publication!

I had chosen that particular story starter partly because I was intrigued by the theatre atmosphere described so vividly in the text. I also liked the challenge to create an illustration that would appeal to a YA audience. It was actually my first black-and-white ink illustration in that style. Here are a couple pictures from the process:

Creating the illustration for UV 2013.

Because I was quite happy with the result and had spent a lot of time thinking about the scene between Ruby and her Dad, I decided to create another two pieces illustrating what I imagined might happen after this first encounter.

My studio space is very flexible: when I’m working full-time on something it tends to spread out from its contained corner to an extra desk and eventually on to the dining table.

Drawing of me working away at my art desk.

The corner desk is great because it has lots of shelves and spaces to store things. Everything has its place because I hate searching for stuff, yet sometimes I feel somebody messed around with my brushes and pens while I was asleep or in the other room working on a translation … 

Mice often find their way into most of my work!

If I had to choose a single desert-island art material it would be my favourite 2B pencil. I’ve always loved drawing and I got my first set of watercolours when I was nine, so I feel pretty comfortable with that medium. Thus, pencil and watercolour is what I choose for most of my illustrations, except the ink drawings. When I’m working on a watercolour piece there usually comes a point when my inner draftswoman starts elbowing her way to the front calling for clearer lines, i.e. some sepia ink, or more contrast between light and dark. That’s why I often add final touches with coloured pencils, but a while ago I discovered the amazing qualities of pastel pencils, which are much easier to blend with the watercolour – especially on coldpress paper.

I can’t see myself ever switching over to digital illustration because I simply love the feel of pencil on paper too much, as well as being surrounded by ink bottles and watercolour tubes. However, I’ve begun to appreciate the advantages of Photoshop, in particular at the sketching stage where you can try out new compositions by moving objects around etc. without having to redraw everything.

Studio space.

Illustration of the corner of my desk.

Over the past three years I've learned A LOT about children’s book illustration, yet there is still SO much more to learn, and sometimes I feel I’m only at the beginning of this exciting journey.
However, so far one of the most important lessons for me was this:
it’s incredibly inspiring, encouraging and invigorating to go to workshops and conferences, to talk to other artists, to read books about art and illustration, to look at art. But what makes me an illustrator is to sit down at my desk, silence the inner critics, pick up a pencil or brush and create new work.

Personal work to illustrate a friend’s story.

______________________________________________________

See more of Julia's work in her Featured Illustrator Gallery
Her personal website is here.
To email Julia click here
Julia Walther is represented by Maria Bogade at Wundergarden Agency

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)

_______________________________________________

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

Children’s Magazines and the Working Illustrator

One page of an 11 spread story,
Doudou du Loup,
for Belles Histoires Oct 2012
© Bridget Strevens-Marzo

Illustration is not only for books! With broad experience of working internationally in a wide range of published media, Bridget Strevens-Marzo looks at opportunities to work for children's magazines in this country and overseas.


Have you ever considered working for US or French children’s monthly magazines as a worthwhile sideline to your career as a children’s book illustrator?   If you are starting out, seeing your work in print for the first time will give you some hope.  If you are published, perhaps there is a gap  to fill between the last book advance and the next.  That’s how I first started, filling in gaps to keep my bank account in the black.

Why not UK children’s magazines?  Well I’d be curious to know if anyone is getting decent pay from original illustration work here.  Please say if you are!   What happened,  for example, to the lavishly illustrated Look and Learn and their stories, features and games? Aside from increased production costs, I suspect it was all about hard competition with good children’s TV not to mention the licensed TV character take-over of UK kids magazines. From the 1980s most of those titles offered far less, if any, space for original illustration. The good news now is that some new and exciting print magazines are now seeing the light, including Okido (for 3-8s) Anorak (for 6-12) and the bi-monthly Stew.  Fingers crossed that they’ll prove as successful as the US and French magazines.  That way they will be able pay illustrators properly and let’s hope they can then call upon an increasing variety of talent.

American and French children’s magazines which are mostly monthlies, have survived ups and downs and pay illustrators fairly, thanks to  a large and loyal family of subscribers, good distribution and arguably less competition from quality TV.  Highlights magazine is the oldest established magazine -  for 6-12 year olds – of a range published by Highlights Corporation has been going for over 50 years.  Like many of the French magazines it is a veritable institution.

Small selection of Highlights High Five Mags

“The Highlights staff are a lovely bunch of people to work for" writes UK author-illustrator and active SCBWI member, Mike Brownlow.

“(Highlights High Five) gives me roughly two covers a year plus the occasional double page spread illustrating a story or a poem. They’re always polite and complimentary with lots of positive feedback, and they always pay on time. They’ve been a repeat client of mine for about 3 or 4 years now. I never did find out how they came across me, but I know they have links with SCBWI. They decided to award me ‘Best Cover of the Year’ for 2012, so I’ll always be fond of them.”  You can find out more about High Five here.

Here’s Mike’s Highlights High Five prize-winning cover

Like Mike, I’ve been illustrating a couple of stories a year in an occasional series for High Five.  For 4-5 illustrations on two spreads I get around $1800- 2000.  Some illustrators may perhaps balk at the work-for-hire terms – they buy both copyright and authorship.  I see it as all about quick turnover and a window onto another market – a refreshing counterbalance to the slow book publishing world  - and it keeps you busy!

Even more plentiful are French children’s magazines. I took this snap of a small area of the children’s magazine section in a French railway station this summer and you might think they all look pretty similar.  In the summer many come with freebies which sadly means you can’t flick through and marvel at the variety of features, stories and illustrations they contain. And inside they do look different, though full of variety. Each magazine is aimed at a distinct age group and market. Milan’s Toboggan for example, has a very different feel to it from Bayard’s counterpart for the same 3-7 age group, Pomme d’Api.

You don’t have to be French to work for French children’s magazines.  I know of Spanish and Japanese as well as several English illustrators who work for one or more of Bayard’s range of 27 magazines for children from 0- 16. One famous name long associated with Bayard is Helen Oxenbury who created a long term series Leo et Popi (Tom and Pippo in the US)  which gave its name to Bayard’s youngest magazine for 0-3 year olds Popi. Helen Stephens (guest illustrator at the SCBWI Picture Book retreat) has also worked for them more than once as you can see from this English language version of a story she illustrated for Belles Histoires.  She writes “I first met Bayard when they came to London to meet some British illustrators in about 2003 (ish) I think. They seemed to like my folio, but didn't get in touch. So the next time I was in Paris I went to see them, and a lovely relationship ensued!” 

The first page of Bayard’s English language Storybox magazine
with Helen Stephen’s illustrations to a story for Bayard’s Belles Histoires.

My own contact with Bayard started when I met David McKee of Elmer fame in Bologna in the late 1990s. I was then in publishing limbo and David suggested I show my work to an art director at Bayard Presse. He said he did the odd commission for Bayard and it was good for expanding your repertoire. It certainly did mine!

Around 15 years ago I started by illustrating countless graphic games for Bayard’s general magazine for 3-6 year olds in Bayard’s Pomme d’Api  which has been famous for its games features since the 1960s. I’d never have tackled  this kind of work in the UK and it taught me to be bolder and work with limited colour palettes. Some of these illustrations were the springboard for two big doodle books published by Bayard Editions co-edited with Tate Publishing UK in 2006 -7. The first, Les Petites Mains Dessinent has just been reprinted in paperback.

Bayards’s Popi, for babies and toddlers has very short stories and sometimes, like this spread I illustrated, a novelty element. In this instance, a baby rabbit you can punch out, and slot into bed.

Bayard’s Tralalire magazine for 2-5 year olds, also has the odd novelty element as well as great regular features by well-known names including Herve Tullet, UK illustrator Tor Freeman and Jennifer Darymple.

.

In recent years I have been lucky to have had several commissions for the main story in Bayard’s Belles Histoires. At 11 spreads, this story is virtually a picture book though the magazine contains other features, including at least one comic and a science-based article.

You’ll find more information about the full range of Bayard’s 27 magazines here but to appreciate just how wide the range of types of illustrators they and other magazine publishers use for kids of all ages, it might even be worth going to the illustrator heaven of the French national kids book and press fair in Montreuil, Paris this year from November 28 - December 1 or at the very least spending some time in a newsagents in France.

If you want to work for magazines, you’ll have to be able to work to clear specifications and layouts – and be supple enough to adjust the content to the feedback they’ll give you on your roughs. As for payment – there are fixed prices. For an 11 spread story I am currently illustrating I will get €4000.  You’ll get a contract for a limited term of usage, which ensures you will get additional payment for any reprints in other children’s magazines across the world (and there are plenty from Spain to China) and the promise of a separate contract if ever your work becomes a book.

Talking of foreign reprints, here are some covers of Storybox
alongside a couple of Belles Histoires covers I did

Storybox is the youngest of the three monthly Bayard Box magazines for English speaking children. Like its older siblings, Adventure Box and Discovery Box (ages 9-12 ) it offers an excitingly varied compilation of features translated from several of the French magazines using the illustrations that went with them.  So there is no point submitting your work directly to the Box Magazines. There is every point in looking at them and considering a subscription for any English-speaking kids, school or library you know. You can see more about the kind of content they cover from the editor here.

Interested in getting in touch? Here are some links.

Marianne Vilcoq, my Bayard art director at Belles Histories and Tralalire, has kindly agreed to me sharing her name, if you’d like to send a PDF of samples to this address which she can pass on to another Bayard magazine if relevant. Like most French publishers, she’s happy to work in English with foreign illustrators.

Milan Presse, another reliable publisher, publish 17 children's monthlies as well as books. It is based in Toulouse, and in the past held an open day or ‘portes ouvertes’ for illustrators to meet with their ADs online or in person. There is talk of this happening again in June so follow this and practise your French.

Oh and don't forget that SCBWI has a Magazine Merit award! Deadline for submissions is Dec 15 in the year of publication.

Now I'd better get back to work on the next 11 spread story for Belles Histoires. 

Here’s a rough with a layout and  art director comments in yellow.
The final colour spreads for the January 2015 number are  due on September 20th
and I have not begun them yet – help!

__________________________________________________
Bridget Strevens-Marzo is a former SCBWI board member and International Illustrator Coordinator. Based for many years in France, she now lives in London and is a key member of the illustrator's committee. www.bridgetstrevens.com

Bridget's Big Draw

We're very excited on Words & Pictures today to have Bridget Strevens-Marzo here with us to share her recent publishing success. Bridget writes

"It is good to be back writing as well as illustrating.  Even better to have a couple of book contracts after a gap, a change of life and location. My next French book is out with Bayard this September and in May 2015 I have another book due out in the UK."

---

"It is over 20 years (blimey!) since I’ll have had a book which I have written - as well as illustrated - published in the UK. To signal the change for my own written and illustrated books, I am simplifying my name to Bridget Marzo. 

Tate Publishing is a ‘boutique’ publisher with good distribution here and in the US via Abrams. They are getting noticed for their original and beautifully produced children’s books. Working with them has restored my confidence to the point where, for the first time in my life, I submitted to an illustrator competition. I was shortlisted among some lovely company for the Association of Illustrators (AOI) Award. Another cause for celebration!"

Bridget tells us about some of the ups and downs she's had during her career

"I had no idea that so many years after my first three books were published in 1991-2, I’d still be battling with self-criticism and doubt. I filled drawers with projects. A UK publisher made an offer in the mid 1990s for a two-book project I wrote and illustrated - but just for the text. They thought my illustrations ‘too European’. Since most of the story was in the pictures, I declined and I took it to the first big French publisher I met – they bought the project instantly. I received full payment on completion but a change of packager and marketing strategy meant the books never came out. 
My self-confidence took a battering. David McKee (of Elmer fame) who also lived in France suggested I approach French children’s magazines. He, like Helen Oxenbury, Helen Stephens and other UK illustrators do the odd commission for them and it was good, he said, to ‘expand your repertoire’. Since then Bayard has been my mainstay as a children’s illustrator.  

Australian based Little Hare found my website in the late 1990s and commissioned me to illustrate Margaret Wild's Kiss, Kiss! It was a successful co-edition that still earns me royalties from international sales and it led to some good US illustration commissions too. But all the long while, my own stories stayed in the drawer.

But then in 2008 Bloomsbury US commissioned me to illustrate Mini Racer by Kristy Dempsey. At last I’d have a book out in the UK too. Sadly, serious family problems got in the way and the book didn’t come out until 3 years later.  

I then moved from France to the heart of London and found a cheap space in a shared studio. The studio and the chance to focus on my own work after a long interruption got me out of my self-critical stew. Leaving my time-guzzling computer at home, I went back to pencil and paper, and two characters, high-energy Tiz and low-energy Ott, came to life in a series of four little books. They are still waiting in the wings.

The publishing response to them was promising, said my agent Erzsi Deak, but I’d need a full length picture book story to launch the characters. So I bought some A4 sketchbooks, and drew and wrote in them pretending each was the final story book.  

That’s how Tiz and Ott’s Big Draw emerged. I worked on another different project in the same way, which I showed to Bayard. I’d recommend a 20 sheet sketchbook as a good way to keep your ideas, words as well as pictures, on track.

Think about what you can offer to kids from your own deep interests that is in some way distinct from all the other books out there, suggested an editor at one of the many SCBWI conferences I have been to.  

So I started to think actively about turning my obsessions – art and language – into stories. For starters there had been a language element in my very first book Toto in Paris. My dad was a Londoner and I was born in the UK. My mother was a Spanish Catalan from Barcelona with most of her family in France. Plonked into my French cousins' school playground, I felt as if I had landed from Mars and I have always felt for kids who were non-native speakers like I was there. My French editor assures me that Bridget’s Book of English will work as a title in France. (Bridget Jones to thank for that?)

I'm hoping I may use the book for non-English speaking kids here too. It’s a flap book - not a manual - offering a playful first taste of English. In it, a funny furry family go through the day from breakfast to bedtime. 

There’s a fridge to open and curtains to close and English words in context. And thanks to a chat with non-fiction packager Lionel Bender at one of the SCBWI London Socials, I asked Bayard to include for the first time in their history a QR code on the back cover that links to a site where I will pronounce all the words in the book in my - ahem - BBC accent.

As for the art, since childhood I’ve always been surrounded by the smell and splodges of paint and tools to scribble with. Later, for some years, I taught at a US art school in Paris. One of my favourite projects was getting students to put together a ‘quilt’ out of patches of marks which they had to make in as many different ways as possible. 

Tiz and Ott make marks in my story too. The  endpapers of Tiz and Ott’s Big Draw will show a bunch of crayon and paint marks like so…

  

Remember how as a child you could draw a bird by wiggling your pencil or brush in a kind of M shape? After Ott and Tiz whip up a storm and get carried away with crayon and brush, Ott manages to paint one of those simple birds – a kind of distress signal to Tiz who has scribbled herself into a hole. 

But first of all, Tiz has to draw her way out of the hole rung by rung. Just like I did, line by line!"

Bridget Strevens Marzo
@bridgimage

---

Bridget loves playing between words and pictures, pencil and paint, colour and computer. After a Cambridge MA in Chinese and Art History, she moved to Paris where among other things she copied at the Louvre and earned a living translating art books.

After she wrote and illustrated her first picture books two decades ago, she worked for US, UK and French publishers on picture books, novelty books and games for children’s magazines. She also shares her love of books with children, students and gives workshops for adults.

Co-hosting SCBWI international conferences earned Bridget a place on the advisory board as international illustrator advisor. Back in London, she's a contributing editor for the AOI's magazine Varoom and is working on two exciting new book projects.