Hello everyone. We are well into spooky season. Isn’t that great? I think it’s great. This time of year has always been really busy and these days it just seems especially so, and the new term bugs going around are not making it any easier. But despite this, I think we all do a really great job at keeping that momentum going, knowing we hopefully all get a little bit of a break at some point come December, when things slowly wind down.
Art challenges
Last Thursday was #KidLitArtPostcard day. Set up by the wonderful Gina Perry, illustrators are invited to create a digital postcard, like the one above, either with new or a favourite piece of artwork, and include some contact details and maybe a link to your portfolio in the caption. This takes place on Twitter and Instagram and lots of art directors often say they follow the hashtag so it is very much worth joining in on the first Thursday of every month, if you’re able to. It’s not really an art challenge though, so I’m not here to talk about that.
I am here to talk about the very best art challenge in the whole entire world: Friday Doodle Club! I say this because I am definitely biased, because Friday Doodle Club is my baby. FDC was set up at the end of 2020 with 3 of my very awesome Illustrator friends: Brenda, Sandra and Macha. We had spent a lot of 2020, obviously in the depths of pandemic hell, but also participating in online art courses, such as Make Art That Sells. One key thing that we had picked up from the picture book courses, was how important the characters are. And from my very brief experience of life as a children’s illustrator, my number one top tip for anyone that wants to tell stories through children’s books, is your characters need to be DOING SOMETHING. They need to be FEELING something. Once I got this into my head and stopped drawing people looking like they were posing for a photograph with empty smiles on their faces, I started getting work. So we decided to start a weekly prompt challenge that would help us in this area. Each week we announce 3 words that make up the prompt: a VERB, an ADJECTIVE and a NOUN. We post this on Instagram, and hope that people will feel inspired enough to create some new art based on these prompt words. The result should be an interesting character doing something and also feeling something. The adjective isn’t always an emotion, but hopefully it brings an extra dimension to the character.
Above shows a really wonderful response to our JEALOUS TWINKLING JELLYFISH prompt by the wonderful Emma Clarke. We launched our first prompt on Friday 1st January, 2021, and have posted one every Friday since then. If my math is correct, that is 93 prompts! So if you ever feel like you are lacking for ideas of what to draw, then have a scroll through the Instagram feed for loads of ideas. Our lives and careers have changed a lot through the nearly 2 years we have been doing this, and it is sometimes so hard to find the time to do more than the very minimum to keep it going, but to see the illustrations start to pop up after we announce the new prompt feels amazing, we really love it.
In honour of it being spooky art challenge season, and because farts are just so funny, this week we took inspiration from Mark Hoffman and jumped aboard #stinktober with the prompt STINKY FARTING GHOUL. So excited to see what people come up with this week!
What spread from a picture book do I love most?
I am very lucky to also be a part of another wonderfully supportive community of artists, called Illoguild. Each month, Illoguild poses a question for its members to answer. This month, the question was: what spread from a picture book do you love most?
For this prompt, I immediately thought of Sofia Valdez, Future Prez, written by by Andrea Beaty and illustrated by David Roberts. This was one of the first picture books we got as a family with David Roberts illustrations and it has remained a firm favourite. I absolutely love the message of the story, that just because you are small doesn’t not mean you can’t make a difference. But most of all, it showcased so brilliantly, Roberts’ incredibly brave and striking use of white space.
It was hard to narrow down my favourite spreads, but my number 1 is definitely this one above. I just really love the sense of movement this creates. And as a reader holding the book, having to physically turn it around to catch up with the dog makes you feel like you are right there chasing the dog too. In the corner you can see a little glimpse of trash…
After a little more chasing, that wonderfully clean yet dynamic spread is soon followed by this…! I mean, this actually makes me want to study trash and draw a giant mountain of it. How beautiful! Every single tiny pice of litter is so beautiful. And angry little Sofia in the left hand corner looks so small yet so fierce.
I could probably include every spread from this book, and indeed any David Roberts book, as they’re all so wonderful. But I’ll leave it with these two for now. I recently watch David Roberts discuss his work in workshop with Orange Beak - they always have amazing guests and workshops on if you are interested - the David Roberts talk was incredible. He was mainly talking about where he gets the ideas for the wonderful outfits his characters wear, but he did mention that his favourite part of the whole picture book process was designing the composition of the page. He hoped to do another talk on this subject so we must all look out for that!
And on the subject of inspiring talks, here is me getting my copy of There’s a Ghost in This House signed by Oliver Jeffers after a talk at Camberwell College of Art. I learned so much about the thought processes that have gone into many of our favourite books by him. But the part of the talk which really stood out, especially when considering the theme of art challenges and prompts to help with idea generation: when asked if Oliver Jeffers ever suffered from creative block he just said he doesn’t, as he reminds him self he will be dead soon so just get on with it. I love that.
That’s all for now, as always, please feel free to comment on anything I have talked about, I know I speak on behalf of the whole of Illoguild when I say we’d LOVE to hear about your favourite picture book spreads. So feel free to comment or drop a link to your post if you publish anything on the subject.
Mount Trashmore
Your characters need to be DOING SOMETHING. They need to be FEELING something. And we’ll be dead soon. Got it. Great post thanks for sharing so generously:)