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.
