Brian G Karas's process in Neville, by Norton Juster

Artist and children's author-illustrator Brian Karas,  whom I invited a while back to talk for SCBWI France about his book The Young Zeus, 
shows a great way to use a free 3D computer modelling tool, Google Sketchup for visualizing a house and neighbourhood, in his great  trailer for his new book Neville written by Norton Juster (of Phantom Tollbooth fame).


But what really makes it all work, in my book,  is the feeling behind the process,  how he puts himself in in the shoes of his main character, into his world.  


When you've got that identification right, when you feel at home in the story, any or every tool you use to help you illustrate it, will work.   


As 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.  The horse is the content - that's what drives us.  And with that,  we can draw along (excuse the pun!)  with a single nib or a whole wonderful cartload of pens, computer software,  paints, paper - you name it!  

Dots and Dogs

Spread from Mini Racer © Bridget Strevens-Marzo

I like dots.
I like dogs (and cats).
I like the way a small kid's finger is drawn to touch a dot,
first of all,  before any square or a triangle.
I like how the eye of a small child,
the tip of their finger
and the dot,
meet.

If  on GotStory Countdown
you scroll beyond Jed Henry's dogs
and Patricia Intriago's book about dots,
you can peek inside a bit more of my work for Mini Racer including a storyboard rough.
And I just realized that it's a a neat visual conclusion;
my Dog car is a Dot car.
In fact it always was a
dotty dog car
from the word GO
as you can see below.
Thank you Joy Chu for putting dogs and dots together and making us all happy!

first sketches for Mini Racers © Bridget Strevens-Marzo with a respectful nod to Richard Scarry

It's official. Mini Racer is rolling & being devoured...

Woke up my computer today to happen upon a-once-in-a-lifetime feast of a review
for a picture book I've mentioned before but which is officially launched today with Bloomsbury US and UK.

http://jamarattigan.livejournal.com/510925.html

I've never met Jama but I'm so glad to have discovered her Alphabet Soup blog about two great creative obsessions - kid's books and food.   Hilarious to discover whole new drama enfold in a kind of afterword,  when Little Ted tucks into a 3D version of my Mini Racer mouse's cheese car - in real cheese (don't miss that picture!)

I'm sure Mini Racer author  Kristy Dempsey, Jama and I would have such fun planning a Mini Racer party for a bunch of kids - of all ages...
Anyone want to book us?
If not I'll have a go in Photoshop when I've more time.  (Happen to be buying a house this week!)

Following Jama's real life lead, in addition to my drawings, I'd bring a few more bits and pieces to play with:

 - a French "Langue de Chat" for Snail's skateboard

-
 -  a British Cadbury's Flake chocolate log for the Racer Owl family to ride on.

- some spare tyres

-  and we'd get rolling on top of some wide tape with road markings and all.  I must thank Paris-based illustrator friend Jeanne de Sainte Marie  (who, incidentally, started off in automotive design)  for this great gift.

According to the label, this Road tape is called : A Path to the Future.  

And it continues:  "This Tape will enhance any package and expand your enjoyment of life".

http://www.dedeceplus.com/plus/dedeceplus_product.cfm?ID=2199

What a great start!

Sorting the mess and 'deskavation'

Last year was busy, crazily so at times, and there was no time for pondering projects.  

Just one commission which I've mentioned before.  A cube-shaped bookshelf of seven mini board books of rhymes, Ma Petite Bibliothèque de Sept Comptines à Chanter, published next month with Bayard. 

My illustrations to Mini Racer by Kristy Dempsey, are also due out in February 2011 but they were mostly done in 2008-9.

I've talked already about clearing out my parent's home.  Many of us have to do that at least once in our lives.  Are we ever prepared for it?   I groped for some kind of structure for dealing with it all.  
First I archived my father's paintings.  In his very limited spare time, Mick helped me put online a web site I wrote about my dad's work.


But I had to tackle the real physical stuff by myself.  My father's wall-to-ceiling bookcases of dusty old tomes nearly undid me.  I thought of old Soames in the Forsyth Saga,  killed by a bookcase falling on top of him.  I gave myself a deadline, setting sights on a a time when I'd be free from some of the weight.  
Auctioneers, a local charity, and clearance people came for the final haul.  I had never appreciated what an essential role such people play in the human ecological cycle; excavating, digesting and recycling for other lives. 
And what a lot of stuff there was - half a century of my father and mother's lives,  both makers and hoarders in their very different ways.


I kept asking myself,  how much more space is there in our world, to fill?
Anyway it got me thinking about creative processes and how much it's about sorting out, structuring, giving meaning, throwing away, bringing to life.  
Our shrinking spaces may be one reason why increasing numbers of contemporary artists work with archives.   Rather than generate more stuff,  they sort.  They take some aspect of the pre-existing stuff, and invent new structures for ordering it, creating new meanings for what's already there.


And I thought about how small kids learn from structures, and want order almost more than they want information, at kindergarten.  "Chaque chose à sa place / Everything has its place"  my kids were told, encouragingly, in French maternelle school from aged 3.  ("If only that were true!" I sometimes think...)   But how kids love putting things in boxes, laying out bricks or plates, fitting one lego onto another - and breaking the order and re-inventing it too.   


Back in my home, on a much smaller scale: all the work I'd done for Mini Racer  jammed and finally broke my cheap Ikea drawer.   To sort it out, I had to spread the mess all over the floor

I've sorted and kept about a quarter of this 'archive'.  A lot has gone into paper recycling.
Really the whole process is all about making messes and sorting them out.


I was delighted to receive last week my pile of advance copies of the US edition.  In a real sense, it's a re-ordered fragment of the mess above, condensed into a coherent, beautifully-designed and bound 32 page fly-leaf hardback.   


And bravo to all involved in helping make that happen from the first words that Kristy put on a page to send to her agent, to the editor, art director, designer, printers, not to mention the distributors and the guy who packed the box and the delivery man who knocked on my door!
But now I have to find a space for them in my house.
Better get back to excavating papers on my desk and drawing table - a repetitive task which I never quite get to the bottom of....Deskavation - a new word proposed by a listener to Broadcasting house on BBC Radio 4 today.

Back soon but in the meantime, happy new year!

Starred review and "it's a wild" or Scarry ride?

Hooray!  Mini Racer got a starred review in that venerable US publication, the School Library Journal! 

“An array of animals takes off in a race, ensconced in vehicles of every description, from a rainbow-wheeled wheelchair to tricked-out motorcycles and cars made of bananas, logs, carrots, or cheese. 


Bouncy rhymes curve along the race course as the critters speed, swerve, and careen around the serpentine country roads, encountering obstacles, crashes, and even having time for a swim. 


The journey is as much fun as seeing the skateboarding snail take the winner’s cup for his slow, undistracted pace. Bright, colorful illustrations feature bold dark lines and saucy, big-eyed characters zooming across the spreads. 


With a line or two on every page, this book can be used with groups, although kids with the need for speed and a love of vehicles will pore over the pictures and find details to delight on their own.” 


- School Library Journal, starred review

This week I've received an advance copy of the Bloomsbury US version - my original choice of 'road' coloured background, elegant dust jacket and all.  Here's the back of the Mini Racer:

For the Bloomsbury UK version which is in paperback only, the powerful bookstore chain Waterstones wanted the background yellow - so the designer had to change the tanker top right, to blue.  I reckon this background makes it look more Richard Scarry-like.  


And talking of Scarry,  it's scary how things come back to haunt you from the depths of your childhood.   I'm pretty sure Scarry used a  cheese or carrot car somewhere.  It didn't occur to me when I was drawing.  Too busy imagining different energy sources for cars - acorns, water, milk...and what kind of characters and vehicles matched.
That said, when I realized Scarry was lurking somewhere in my illustrations for this particular book, I toyed with dedicating the book to him.  I've always loved his details.  But then I thought that might be risky -  he's not around to approve or not so I dedicated the book to a US friend, Brian G. Karas, whose work I love and who encouraged me when I was working on this way back, during a difficult time when my mother was ill.
Anyway spot the difference in the blurbs too.  US "It's a wild ride!" /  UK "Who will win the race?"

back on track and leaving behind...

There are times when you really need to be reminded of what you do and why.

Next week I'm giving two workshops at the SCBWI British Isles conference in Winchester which will help put me back on track. 

And now I've just had this first  -  wonderful - review by Kirkus in the US, a month ahead of  the Bloomsbury US publication date for my upcoming book,  Mini Racer (author Kristy Dempsey).  The UK edition is due out in January:

"'Start your engines! Time to race, / round the corners, take your place.'   

So begins this fast-paced rhyming book featuring a diverse animal menagerie in a humorous variety of unique, coordinating vehicles revving to cross the finish line. 

Both preschoolers and adults will find much to explore in the bright cartoon-like illustrations as the track weaves past town and “Over, under, in, and through.” 

Strevens-Marzo successfully shows the circuitous route through the use of varying, at times almost Cubist perspectives. Each creature’s emotions during the race come across clearly, including frustration at crashing, panicked urgency during a pit stop and the mix of disappointment and elation at the end with the surprise winner. ... Full of zooming action and fender-bender drama, it has definite appeal for youngsters"--Kirkus Reviews

I've had no time to sit down and think about new projects  -  let alone blog -  since my last post. Shuttling between France and England, I've been clearing the way for a new stage in my life.  

My parent's house and my father's studio,  two lifetimes of memories,  is a heavy weight - to shift and to share.  Years of 200+ paintings  in their home which he didn't sell or give away (there are many more that he did!) .  Shelves of  books, old music, the trappings of an incurable romantic.  Notes by my ma, when as a young Catalan woman, she came to England in the 1950s, not knowing a word of English, and how a guitar (bought on impulse with the money saved for a winter coat) let to her meeting my pa.

Little by little I'm recording what I can.  There are stories to share there.  

A friend gave me this short film of the place, accompanied by a guitar piece that my father used to play.   I've put  it on the John Strevens site.  It's a lovely gift.  And it helps make the letting-go lighter.

And it helps too when I hear my work has got through to the toughest critics of all. 

There's nice write-up in  a French blog about a certain baby Raoul who has tested and approves of my Snail bath book.