library of the early mind
I want to see this documentary on children's book authors and illustrators! The filmmakers also have an interesting blog with snippets of interviews and articles with impressive kidlit folk including Lemony Snicket, RL Stine, and Arthur A. Levine. Worth checking out and bookmarking.
interview with illustrator sandra boynton
Ask Ethel
by Sandra Boynton
Thanks to Marisa Haedike for forwarding this link via Twitter. I love illustrator and designer Sandra Boynton's unmistakable style and humour, so it was great to see this behind-the-scenes interview with her. What a success story! Absolutely inspiring. And funny. Hope you enjoy it.
Rosie and Ned and the Creepy Cave
deadline met and feelin' fine
I now have a freshly cleaned drawing board (*happy sigh* . . . a clean workspace feels so full of potential), after sending off final artwork for Rosie and Ned and the Creepy Cave, the third in a series by award-winning author Meredith Costain, to be published by Puffin in July this year. (I also blogged about this project here.)
This adventure allowed me to draw a spooky old cottage with a witchy inhabitant, a creepy cave and satisfyingly suspenseful situations — all those kinds of things I LOVED in books (and tv :) when I was young. It's so fun to get to illustrate the type of book I loved to read.
Here's a teeny sneak peek . . .
images © 2010 Tina Burke
from "Rosie and Ned and the Creepy Cave" written by Meredith Costain
Published by Penguin Books 2010
I'm a little teapot
I'm a little teapot, short and stout
Another little sketch done as I watched the Olympics. Now it's all over I'll have to find another show that has a lot of breaks or boring bits.
I've been enjoying my time on the couch with my sketchbook. It's not something I often do — just doodle and see what comes out the end of the pencil. Usually I have a specific project I'm working on, which guides me with characters and subject matter, mood and action. But doodling is a great exercise, it gets the brain ticking and takes me back to where it all started — drawing for no particular reason, just simply for the fun of it.
This sketch started with a pose; a girl, with her weight shifted to one hip, a hand resting on her tilted waist. And of course no-one wants to sing "I'm a little teapot" on their own, so the situation called for a little sister, her weight balanced equally on both feet as she eagerly attempts to imitate the actions. To me, her straight-up-and-down stance feels more enthusiastic and energised, while the shifted pose of the older girl feels more relaxed — perhaps she's done this little song and dance routine a hundred times already.
oliver jeffers
If you're a fan of picture books, or write and/or illustrate them yourself, you're sure to know of Oliver Jeffers' work. I enjoyed watching this behind-the-scenes video, so thought I'd share it here for other fans of his work.
I adore the illustrations, the gorgeous colours and most of all its heart warming story. I think I love it even more now, after hearing the snippet of where he got the idea for the book — from an event in Belfast "where this kid climbed into a penguin enclosure and managed to kidnap a baby penguin . . . "
Honestly, who hasn't wanted to do that at some point?
The story has also been made into an animated short:
A quote from Jeffers, on his working methods:
"I almost can't separate them in my brain:
the pictures define the words and
the words define the pictures."
I liked this description: that's how I feel when I'm writing my books — the images and words usually appear as one, and both are equally as important at getting the story and emotion across.
And on his illustration technique:
"I mix all different types of media together;
an old book cover . . . white pen . . . different types of paper with coloured pencil . . . acrylic paint . . .
really whatever material the illustration calls for at that point."
I love that. It sounds (and looks) so fun and creative — like play. Like when you're a kid with a craft box and you get so inventive with all kinds of mismatched materials to come up with a creative solution (I always wanted to make a real, live working robot. He would walk around on his toilet roll legs, and do my chores with his crunchy aluminium-foil hands).
Hearing and watching how Jeffers works inspires me to be creative, to push myself, to experiment — an artist doesn't have to be a purist, and use only watercolour or oils or pencil or digital. I'm not a purist at heart when it comes to mediums, but sometimes it's easy to forget to look outside the box, and play.
On that note, I'm off to make a robot.
FAQ: making a picture book dummy
I saw this video of Brian Selznick discussing The Invention of Hugo Cabret on School Library Journal.
The dummy book is a rough mock-up for a picture book, as visualised at this stage by the creator. They can be made for the creator's own purposes as part of the development process, but also as the final submission to a publisher.
Selznick shows us a glimpse of what an illustrated dummy for a picture book can look like, though normally you would create a full-size (or the size you envision it) 32-page* version for submission. There are different methods and styles of putting them together, but generally the idea is to have a rough model of the final book, to let the reader get a better sense of the flow and rhythm of the story and pictures, and helps them visualise it as a final product.
Even at the submission stage it is acceptable to have your dummy consisting of black and white sketches, though if your illustration work is unknown to the publisher you may wish to include two or three more polished colour samples to give them an idea of your style (always copies, never send originals). Don't do the whole book as finished art. It's not necessary, and chances are there would be tweaks and layout changes and you would be redoing them anyway.
Here is a more detailed explanation of creating a picture book dummy (ironically it's difficult to track down a good how-to with clear pictures). For the record, my first submission (for Fly, Little Bird ) was created from scratch, folding 16 sheets of A3 paper in half to create a 32-page A4 sized book, and hand stitched the spine together with wool. I scanned my original sketches, and created the layouts with text in Indesign, then printed them out. I used spray adhesive to adhere the printouts to my blank book, creating a very sticky and toxic-smelling dummy.
Hey, it worked! But even so, never again . . . I found that as careful as I was, there was still enough overspray and gluey fingerprints to make the pages stick together a little, which is distracting as you're trying to read it— I feel it messes up the pacing of the story as the reader stops to fiddle with stuck pages, or even worse, skips a page altogether (however, now you can get adhesive printer paper, which I'm sure would be much easier, cleaner, and less smelly).
So I now use "Option A", (as described in the article link above ↑): a binder from the office supply store, which has plastic sleeves and a clear cover opening where I can slip in a coverpage. I like the binders with a slim welded join, rather than a spiral bound one, so your double page spread can sit cleanly without a distracting spring running down the centre. To clarify:
I'm not necessarily saying this as a recommendation, just that it works for me. It's clean, the pages turn easily, and you still get the physical feel of holding and reading the book, and turning pages at the breaks. I also particularly like the ease that you can make adjustments to the dummy, by simply sending new A4 printouts with edited text or adjusted sketches as required — the editor can just slip the new page in and have an updated dummy! Too easy!
←
I did that for my Ruby Makes a Friend submission, as I felt the story and layouts needed a landscape (horizonal) format so it didn't fit properly in a standard binder. It worked well, too.
Print stores may also have suitable binding options for you, but you really don't need to spend a lot of money on a fancy binder or binding. It won't impress the publisher any more or less. It still comes down to what's within the pages.
Best of luck with your submission!
*32-pages is the standard length for a picture book, though there are also other less commonly used lengths. I believe it safest to stick to the standard when writing and submitting. Sophie's Big Bed was 24-page, but that was to fit a particular series of books for the very young. Anything longer than 32 pages starts to become an expensive endeavour for the publisher, so unless you are a sure-fire best-seller, a longer length may work against you.
capturing Christmas
It was so fun to see the photos of It's Christmas being read to a kindergarten class in this post! Look at those attentive little heads!!
It got me reminiscing about how much I loved the lead up to Christmas when I was a child - the Christmas-themed arts and crafts, songs, books, end of year school plays. Such an exciting time of year for this little Burke!
Tiny Tina meets Santa
(A very special occasion that required a very fancy dress)
It was my memories of all that excitement and anticipation that inspired me to create It's Christmas. I started - just for fun - sketching a series of individual "moments", initially having no intention for the illustrations to be part of a book - I actually thought I'd use them for a series of Christmas cards. However, as I sketched, I found the individual vignettes seemed to tie together so naturally that I was inspired to write It's Christmas, showing a series of snapshots of different children as they prepare for the big day . . .
. . . and their mounting anticipation as they await the arrival of that V.I.P . . .
It's so fun to now see It's Christmas being read to kids, knowing they're probably squirming with excitement as I once did, and I'm absolutely thrilled if I can play even a small part in that magical time of year!
revisiting rosie
↓ These are some my original character sketches I made when first designing Rosie and Ned for the first book - Rosie to the Rescue. I love the characters in this series, and really enjoyed working on these books and in the b/w technique, so I was thrilled to hear that Meredith had written a third in the series! Yay!
I'm about to start on the final cover art for 'Book 3', then we move on to the internal illustrations. The cover is generally the first stage of final artwork to be done, so it can be used for any marketing purposes by the publisher.
These are 'chapter books', aimed at young readers. Chapter books are typically text/story driven, with lots of black and white internal illustrations throughout, so the front and back covers are the only colour work involved. This allows me to have a bit of fun with it, though as this is a series there obviously needs to be consistency in the style from book to book.
Normally I do my children's book illustrations in watercolour, which allows me to leave a strong emphasis on the drawn line; watercolour is soft and transparent so I can have a lot of fun getting the drawing precisely how I want it, then add the colour without blotting out the facial expression or any subtle linework I want to keep. In my own picture books, I use text very sparingly and tell a lot of the story through the characters facial expressions and poses, so it's important I'm able to get the message across clearly through my drawing.
For the covers of these chapter books, however, I decided to go with acrylic as I wanted really strong, bright and bold colours for a dynamic cover - plus, in a nutshell, I love working in acrylic so was happy to have an excuse to use it!
