House of Illustration Illustrators' Fair: Notes from a Newbie

Heather Chapman gives us an inside look to the House of Illustration's inaugural Illustrators' Fair that took place Sunday 22nd June in London.



As many of you may have heard the House of Illustration have a new home and although it's not completely finished, they've wasted no time celebrating with numerous housewarming events‚ the inaugural Illustrators' Fair being one.

I was lucky enough to be allowed a stand at the fair as an emerging illustrator‚ alongside established illustrators and organisations like the Association of Illustrators and, naturally, our very own SCBWI stand with Anne-Marie Perks. You can imagine my excitement (and relief) when I discovered the SCBWI stand was just behind mine! We were the perfect SCBWI Illustrator tag team with double the postcards to hand out.

The atmosphere was buzzing from the early hours of the day. Each stand was given an arrival time of two hours before the 11am kick-off. The stands were built and ready for us upon arrival, with our backboards in place and table set out in front ready to be covered with goodies. Nestled beneath historic railway warehouses, we were sheltered from any rain but still had the sun shining through the partial glass roof. And was it shining.

Heather's fair stall - A shot of Heather's stand lucky enough to get the sun.

 There was a brilliant display of diversity amongst the stands with illustrators from every walk of genre, theme and background, children, (yay!), graphics, greeting card, fashion and character. I'm pleased to say our SCBWI presence was greeted with enthusiasm. Whilst I was putting on my best saleswoman charm to recruit, Anne-Marie Perks was running out of SCBWI BI postcards and needed to replenish from the ones on my stand more than a few times. In fact, the SCBWI stand was so busy with admirers that I couldn't even get a picture of it!

SCBWI stand image courtesy of Anne-Marie Perks

The fair ran from 11am till 6pm and was filled with not only an impressive display of over 100 illustrators but also a diverse range of workshops, talks and activities for children. More importantly, there were balloons (and balloons popping explosively on occasion)!

 Workshops on the go for children.

A reportage illustration showing the view from Heather's stand.

There was plenty of time to chat with fellow illustrators, network, make new friends and get advice on how to succeed at (aka survive) having a stand at a fair. Although my method of spreading everything across the table and using a toast rack for postcards wasn't too bad, I took notes from the experts around me:

1)    You gotta make it look good: mounts and frames help your prints stand out, and lovely little cotton bags with your characters on them are always a favourite.
2)    Make sure it's easy for people to look through your work: a print display rack is perfect for allowing anyone to flip through prints easily. A basket stuffed with greeting cards is not so easy to flip through.

Another reportage illustration show how not to pack greeting cards into a basket!

3)    Be ready to sell: as unnatural as it sounds for many of us modest members, try to encourage people to keep looking and never let them leave without a business card (or a positive experience of you!)
4)    Love your neighbour, they will watch your stall when you need the loo
5)    Have fun.

Don't forget to read Anne-Marie's brilliant write up of the day from the SCBWI stall on her blog at biglittletale.tumblr.com!

Happy illustrating.
___________________________________________

Heather Chapman is an emerging illustrator and SCBWI member.
See her work at chapman-illustration.co.uk
Twitter: @HAC_illustrated

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.

 

---

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

Sketchcrawling in Manchester

SCBWI BI North West held its first sketchcrawl day event last month at the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI), Manchester.

Children's book illustrator/author Lynne Chapman led our group of 12 people, including illustrators, designers, teachers, students and writers. We had the use of MOSI's wonderful Learning Loft as a base on the top floor of the Great Western Warehouse. 


Lynne started filling sketchbooks on train journeys on her way to school visits, and went on to become involved with Urban Sketchers. Lynne sketches in a variety of small easy-to-carry hardback sketchbooks, sometimes with grey paper and sometimes in a concertina-fold format. 

The contents of Lynne's small black sketching bag: 

*Wrist sweat-band (to replace a cloth, for cleaning brusheswhile painting on-the-go). 

*3B pencil & other b&w mark-making stuff incl graphite stick, white chalk, sharpening tool 

*Watercolour pencils (Inktense by Derwent) 

*Calligraphy pen which gives lively lines (cheap Sailer) with waterproof writing ink (Noodlers) 

*Variably coloured pencil (Koh-i-Noor) 

*Small pan set of watercolours 

*Clips (to hold down paper) 

*Waterbrush (brush with a small water reservoir) 

*Blu-tack with 2 plastic hairspray tops (to stick to surface and fill with water, but too messy to use inside museum) 

*Hairspray fixative

We had 4 sketching stops in total, about 1 hour each, spaced throughout the day. The first was at the Air and Space Building, with planes and roadster cars. 

Katie Weymouth

Pattie Callaghan

Jonny Wood

 The second sketchstop was at the Power House, full of moving engines and very challenging to sketch.

Lucie Golton

Pattie Callaghan

Lynne Chapman

The third sketch stop was in the Castlefield canal basin area in the sunshine (yes, it came out specially!). Some of us also recorded writing on signs and overheard snippets of conversation.

sketching & writing in sunshine

Adelina Pintea

Anna Violet

Eleanor Boyle

The fourth sketch stop was the view from the Great Western Warehouse (top floor or ground level). 

Heather Dickinson

Celia Hume

Lynne Chapman

writing by Gill James

 At the finish, we had great fun sharing our sketchbooks and writing. Being part of a sketchcrawl group made many of us feel more relaxed than sketching alone in public places. The event also gave the challenge of drawing industrial scenes and machines, out of the usual comfort zone for most of us there. Gill James will post a further article about this event from a writing angle in Words & Pictures Network News. 

---

Anna VioletFreelance Illustrator www.annaviolet.co.uk 
annavioletillustration.blogspot.co.uk

A Question of Voice

By Anne Marie Perks with Bridget Strevens Marzo
Illustrator Masterclass Series last event for 2011

Bridget Strevens-Marzo

Author illustrator and SCBWI International Illustrator Coordinator Bridget Strevens-Marzo began the afternoon with a slide show.

The first image was to inspire us, an image from the French Book Fair in Paris, Salon du livre et de la presse jeunesse, always the first weekend of December. My own experience of this fair a few years ago was an amazing, creative experience being inspired by French publishing for Children. We all briefly mused on an Illustrator’s Masterclass Series trip to Paris.


The next slide showed several images of illustrated elephants and Bridget asked us to pick the oldest one. Of interest, the oldest one actually looked contemporary and was illustrated by an Australian illustrator, Harry Rountree, in the 1920’s. The images also showed that there are a 101 ways to illustrate an elephant.

We also had a look at Scott McCloud’s pyramid of different ways to illustrate a character, moving between reality to abstract.

Then we got into the discussion point of the masterclass, talking about style and voice. Bridget told us all that she actually hated the word style, because there is something that overrides that. And that something is ‘voice’. Our own unique ‘voice’ that makes our work authentic and our own.

In art school, we are told that you need to have a style to sell.  But, where we got to is that it is really about content and having something to say.

Lots of ways to illustrate an elephant!

Illustrating Children’s Picture Books, Steven Withrow and Lesley Breen Withrow, RotoVision Publishing - 
filled with interviews from published illustrators and Bridget is one of them.  Second book is on creative exploration.

 Bridget showed us a few pages from Quentin Blake’s book, ‘Drawing for the artistically undiscovered’,  and noted that illustrators could be divided between painters and writers. Quentin Blake is a writer. It is easy to see whether the illustrator favours lines or shapes and, it is possible to be both! An expressive line that tells the story one way, or might be more sophisticated for older children, and very simplified shapes and colours for younger readers. Bridget also suggested that If you want to add new ideas to your work, go to old books. There is so much in the past that we have barely even grazed!

‘So,’ Bridget asked us, ‘What kind of children’s illustrator are you? Are you a fox or a wild boar?’

This was a question asked of Bridget by a French art director. He then went on to tell Bridget that the fox sniffs around the forest and get’s excited and looks things up.
Meanwhile, the wild board tends to stay with it’s family, in it’s own corner. Strong in what it knows how to do, but sticks in one place. A fox is adaptable and fits what they are doing to the voice of the story. Bridget is a fox.

Busy, busy, busy.

Just a taste of lots of different art materials around the table.

Looking at more inspiration!

More playing with art materials.

So again, we come back to, It is the voice that counts, not style.

In this journey to figure out our sense of identity as artists, Bridget asked us to ask ourselves the following questions.

How old are you deep down inside?

What kinds of children’s books do you positively enjoy reading?

What ideas for books do you enjoy wrestling with the most?

Stories? Concepts? Activities?  Pop-up?
There are non-story, activities books. Games, which made me think of Highlights Magazine and the range of magazines that are part of Cricket Magazine Publishing such as Baby Bug, Lady Bug, Spider, Cricket and Muse Magazines - Cricket publishing.

Other illustrators are very conceptual. Alphabet books tend to be one of the first projects many illustration students work with.

And for those who are worried it’s too late, or that publishing gap has been going on a while now; the award winning book, Not a Box, was illustrated and written by Antoinette Portis, a designer who was over 60 when she produced it.  And, it sold all over the world!

There are fold out books  and artists books for children. Bridget pointed us to a fabulous exhibit in Paris that is only opened by appointment, Le Tois Ourses.

We also all agreed the kind of storytelling in which your character takes a child reader by the hand... This means your reader needs to immediately know who the main character is and that one character begins and ends the book.

If you are working on bringing more expression to your character’s face, Bridget suggested a great website called, artnatomia.net. On this site, it shows expression either as a mask or as a realistic drawing for reference. She also referred us to whole books on drawing eyes, noses, hands, and so on for reference. Don’t just focus on facial expression, jump into drawing your whole character in lots of positions. Look at body language as part of the expressive language you work with.

For fun, have a look at Ed Vere’s youtube video on, ‘How to draw Mr Big’.

The shape/silhouette of your characters and how they alter with gestures and expressions tell us more than a specific feature.

Part of Bridget’s workshop included written feedback on images sent to her in advance to the workshop. One of the participants said after her feedback. ‘I think I’ve got it. It’s more about what they do, and how they think and act.’ For me, it was the reminder that our characters are actors moving across a stage and interacting with each other.

Bridget also told all of us.
‘A key design word to grab (and keep) us and visual readers interested is,
CONTRAST!’
How do we show contrast? I know it seems like one of those basic design principles and elements talks, but, it is never said enough.

We do this by how we work with the following elements of design:
Space - full or patterned areas versus empty areas
Scale/size - clearly articulated big/medium/small in one composition, plus add surprise changes in scale from page to page.
Value - lights versus darks, even within colour ranges (light yellow versus dark purple)
Colour temperature -  warm versus cool colours
Colour saturation - strong versus diluted colour including chromatic greys and blacks.
Line - thick versus thin, spotty, straight, curved ...

If your work is contemplative, you have to come out of that contemplation to action and  interaction with the environment, other characters.

‘Illustrators we can easily get hung up on style - one way to do things, one type of process. To me, that’s putting the cart before the horse.’ Bridget said. ‘The horse is the content and
content is what really drives us.  It’s what we want to ride over to the reader!’

The action ‘doing’ part of the workshop was given to us as a two part mission. The first mission: Draw a character in the way you usually draw it now and try to draw it with a different expression than you’ve done before, or put in a situation that is different for that character.

The second mission: Use someone else’s art materials to colour that character. Let the strangeness of using different art materials than our own take us to a different view.

Though we had a small group, the time was full. If anything, maybe it made the afternoon even more intense in that we all love what we do and want to keep progressing in our craft.

A few lovely things I took away from this afternoon’s work are:
An introduction to a wonderful deckle edged sketchbook from Paper Chase with lushes paper that shows tonal work and colour to it’s best.

Remembering that my characters are ‘actors’ moving across my pages, telling a story.

And, an idea for a future workshop on colour and composition.

The Bic Picture Competition: What I Want to Be When I Grow Up

By Mike Brownlow

Last month I had the pleasure of being invited to be a judge in the annual competition run by BIC -- the BIC PICTURE -- to find talented young artists amongst Britain's primary school children. My fellow judges were children's TV presenter Kirsten O'Brien, and colour expert Cecile Parenton, who heads the children's division of BIC. The winners have just been announced.
The theme was 'What I want to be when I grow up,' and the ambitions of the nation's children ranged from becoming a mad scientist to a roller coaster designer. If this small sample is representative, there'll be lots of footballers, astronauts, dress designers and chefs around in the future! 

It's not as easy as you might imagine, picking winning pictures from a room full of shortlisted entrants, and there were several good-humored arguments along the way. We had some really delightful designs to sort through though, and choosing an overall winner was especially difficult. Well done to all who took part. Congratulations to all the age group winners, and especially to Laura Burton who won the main prize. Laura wants to be a children's book writer and illustrator, and with her winning picture she's made an impressive start.

I've pictured a few of my favorites here, but this is a link to the BIC Kids website, which gives more information: http://www.bickids.com/index.php?p_sa=actualite&p_actu=1 and to the Flickr site which shows more of the winning entrants: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thebicpicture.

'In Conversation' Illustrator Masterclass Event

Despite the snow and ice that had disrupted travel earlier in the week and the presence of lots of London Christmas shoppers illustrator members and non-members came to hear Ben Norland, Art Director from Walker Books, and author illustrator Viviane Schwarz talk about their working relationship at the last Illustrator Masterclass Series in 2010 on 4 December at St George's in Bloomsbury.

Viviane speaking about her book, Shark and Lobster's Amazing Undersea Adventure. Both Ben and Viviane spoke about how an illustrator's ability to write greatly increased their odds of being published as there are degree courses turning out illustrator's every year but very few courses that teaches how to write picture books.

Viviane speaking to illustrators at the tea break.

Everyone surrounded the table during the feedback session given by Viviane and Ben on the book dummies brought in by attendees.

An example of Viviane's world building for her latest book. She made the sketch on the left based on a 'set' created by toys and other materials in her studio.

Ben and Viviane 'performed' Vivian's latest book written by Alexis Deacon, available for sale in July 2011. Ben and Viviane spoke about how a picture book needs to be read aloud and is a performance.

More from the book by Alexis and Viviane, A Place to Call Home. When asked if Viviane starts with her characters, she said that she begins with 'place' - 'builds the house' then populates it. She often makes 3D models of her characters like a sock puppet. She even shares her puppet making as you can download from her website patterns to make knitted cats from her book, There are Cats in This Book. Ben added that in his opinion there are three important elements to every picture book: Consistency of character, sense of context and place and a sense of humour.