Parsons New York, post the SCBWI Midwinter conference

If you happen to be in New York, next Monday lunchtime, Pat Cummings has invited me to give a talk at Parsons, New York.  See - she's put up my whole name, in big letters!

Hope to touch on the core, the 'coeur' , the heart  of what it's all about for artists. 
Knowing our strengths, overcoming self-doubt,  appreciating others and our context, and plain old plugging on are all part of it.  It seems so obvious, even banal when put like this.
The brilliantly smart comic artist Jamie Smart  puts it in much more colourful language.  By the way he's also got a kids and adult version of his site and a bunch of wonderful characters, and kids books and comics and TV pilots and all. 
And here are a few more serious words of his wisdom.... I couldn't have put it better myself!  And yes it IS fun!

"Even though I look back and think much of my older work is pretty terrible, it is still essentially me, and it’s fascinating to watch how that’s evolved and become more distinct.  That process never ends. You’ll die and never reach the pinnacle of what you’re trying to do, but that’s irrelevant.There’s no such thing as an end point with art, you’re going to keep going and growing and that’s the fun of it

Off with Tiz & Ott & more, to New York on Thursday

 For once, I have no time for words, just Tiz and Ott who are slowly growing...

Let's play with Tiz and Ott - in the Idea Store

A story I've been struggling with for months is ready to show, at last.
Could it be the pressure of my upcoming week in New York then Bologna mid-March?

And last week, I had a new idea.  I was enjoying a baked potato and the view from the top floor of the Whitechapel Idea Store  Anyway, I put down my fork, and started sketching two new characters.

Meet Tiz and Ott.   Maybe that's what an Idea Store is for?

Ronald Searle, Kaye Webb, Puffins and all

‎"Did I do all that?" Ronald Searle says in this interview on his 90th birthday.  Kilometres of line!

Right from his early traumas as a prisoner of war on the Siam-Burma railway, drawing helped him survive. 

Ronald Searle had been on my mind for some months.  This week he died at the age of 91.

Returning to London after so many years in France,  I found myself thinking about my childhood reading. When I grew old enough to buy paperback books for myself, I felt oddly close to Kaye Webb and Searle.  Kaye  'signed' every Puffin book I collected, and I treasure the card she wrote to me as a young Puffin club member.  Searle felt like my best friend in the shape of Molesworth himself. Among others, I loved his pictures in Down with Skool.

So  last autumn, I read the biography of Searle's first wife, Kaye Webb, Valerie Grove's, So Much to Tell  which I had picked up at the wonderful Puffin Club exhibition at Seven Stories Newcastle. 

Kaye Webb's biography suggests that she never really got over Searle's sudden departure for France and his new love, Monica.

Her work at  Puffin really filled a hole in her life.  Out of that, she touched and linked the lives of many young readers together in an amazing community of young readers, and budding young writers and illustrators - a kind of SCBWI for the under 16s.

Before the shock of her break up with Searle, their life together in London in the 1950s  sounded exciting and creative - their Fleet Street meetings, their working trips, their full life and New Year's parties at their eccentrically decorated house with its novel exterior, by Denys Lasdun, future architect of National Theatre.  (They were far-sighted and bought it cheaply - its modernity had frightened other buyers.)

Thanks to Kaye Webb I rediscovered Searle.  I hadn't seen the POW drawings for a start.  I went to the Cartoon Museum and bought the excellent catalogue of his exhibition there. And I I'm still taking in the incredible breadth of vision he had, working in different fields from reportage, book illustration to cartooning...and defying the labels we all too easily give him.

The UK press continue to shackle Searle with the label of his least favourite series, St Trinian's.  As he says in this interview, 'The moment it's successful - kill it!" 

An ability to move on, hard work, joy and champagne bubbles; Searle's key to a long working life...

Happy New Year to all, and cheers!

Signing at the French children's book fair, Montreuil with Hervé Tullet, Brian Selznick (of Hugo Cabret), Lorenzo Mattotti, and all...

I caught this boy reading - totally absorbed - on the Sunday of the French national children's book fair in Montreuil near Paris....

Then I looked left and up - and at the top of the pile of cubes was my bouncing black rabbit from my box of my Sept Comptines à Chanter!

Here's me getting distracted by another child wandering past, while I was signing my Sept Comptines, the original French edition of The Big Book for Little Hands and other books I've illustrated at the Bayard stall. I was sandwiched between (to the right) Nicolas Hubesch, a brilliant comic book illustrator among other things, of Serge Bloch's Zouk series,  and to the left, the amazing, innovative artist Hervé Tullet, and author of Moi, c'est Blops.  

You can see Hervé Tullet's pink and orange Blops above and the blue spot from the cover of the minimalist Press Me! which is a huge success in the US, as well as in France (where it's simply called Un Livre.)  

And there's a blue and green Blops in front of a girl watching Hervé draw. 

Does anyone know of another book with a cover that comes in a choice of colours?

Or another book with a whole in the spine like Hervé's Book with a Hole?  

And the best thing is that it's not just about the cover - his work changes the way you see and think, all the way through each book....and they are fun and always surprising.

 Brian Selznick was also signing at the Bayard stall on Sunday.  He seemed to be having a great time behind piles of the French translation of his book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret.   

I love this book for the innovative way it  alternates with words, great swathes of pictures when words aren't needed.  You need to use your eyes to follow the story.  It's a perfect example of the power of visual story telling.  Martin Scorcese understands that alright, being a film maker.  I heard Selznick talk in Bologna about how film had always been a huge influence on him.   (Coincidentally, Shaun Tan said the same thing in Newcastle).   I can't wait to see Hugo, Scorcese's film adaptation just out in France and the UK. 

And while we're still on guys and Italians -  here is the great comic book artist and illustrator Lorenzo Mattotti signing his black and white Hansel and Gretel

However for me, the best thing about the French children's book fair is the huge diversity of beautifully designed books and pictures and illustrators signing with creative colourful 'dedicaces'  on every publisher's stall.  Above Rue du Monde....below Editions Memo.

and above all a huge diversity of kids of all ages from tiny tots... 

to toddlers, not to mention teens.... 

and their parents and teachers.  

What better way to encourage kids to love books than to show all the love and attention put into the creation of books of all kinds at fairs such as this? 

My Munich SCBWI picture book workshop -this weekend Oct 22-3, 2011

This weekend I'm off to give a nice, slow 2 day stir of a big cauldron of creative juices.   

If in some way my own stirrings can help some other illustrators get a story down,  and help writers see spaces for illustrators on the page  - I'll be happy.  We'll have plenty to cook up, at any rate.  It's also very exciting also to be bringing together SCBWI Germany members,  with some illustrators from the German Illustratoren Organisation EV 

and from the Austrian Illustria.    Thanks to the brilliant young German illustrators and SCBWI members,  Constanze von Kitzing and Andrea Offerman (whom I mentored at the SCBWI Los Angeles conference in 2010)  for helping us expand the network of child-minded creators across Europe.  That sounds weird  - but we know what we mean!   And biggest thanks - in advance - go to the generous and talented illustrator and coordinator Kirsten Carlson and Donna Weidner RA of SCBWI Germany, without whom none of us would be heading to such a great looking place.

Back to school

Just got copies of this month's Pomme d'Api magazine from Bayard Presse France which features the illustrations I did in June before I left France, for a 'back to school' story by Hélène Crosnier.  And I received a nice note via Bayard from the author...

Little Lea meets a frog on the way to her first day of school.  

She's mortified when froggie leaps out of her pocket during class...

Lea  slips frog back into her pocket during the mayhem, 
but he leaps out again during lunch...

and even joins in on the piano during music class...

To cut the story short,  teacher makes the best class use of frog - without dissecting it!

Lea overcomes her shyness and it all ends well.  

The deeper story is about overcoming first-day fear, so it needed a softer more reassuring treatment than usual. My in-house teen critic Ella said it reminds her of my very first Toto books published 20 years ago.  Having illustrated so many animals, it was great to have the chance to do different kids' characters and expressions here.

Back to school for us all now -  but first, now my two resident 16 year olds, Ella and Sam, fresh from France have got into the rhythm of English Sixth Form,  I want to take stock of the summer...next post!