shelley scraps: April 2007

The Curse of Hackdom

Late last year I interviewed Iku Dekune, a Japanese picture book creator who lives and works in Prague in the Czech Republic. I'm a great admirer of her work. She told me that she studied as a graphic designer, began working as a painter and then later began adapting her painting style towards children's books, thus it appears she's cycled through practically the whole gamut of 2-D visual arts.

Seeing the smooth transition of Dekune's large expressive painted gallery works to the powerful images in her picture books made me realise how different the culture and education behind Japanese picture books is from, say the UK or USA. This is work by someone who's as much an "artist" as they are an "illustrator", in fact there's little division between the two.

Apr

Bologna Book Fair notes from 2004

I really wish I was going to Bologna this year, I missed it last year through other commitments and fully intended to make up for it in 2007, but as the SCBWI Conference has been postponed until next year I've decided to wait too.

Nevertheless if anyone reading this is planning to attend the Fair, I thought I'd post a selection of some of my diary notes from the 2004 Show.

Apr

A peek inside The Boat in the Tree

Here's some spreads from The Boat in the Tree. It was a great story to work on, with a gentle tone that lended itself to dream-like fantasy episodes.

As the story is narrated in first person by the boy, everything had to focus on him, so I tried to make the fantasy subtle rather than dominating the spreads. The biggest challenge was to maintain the flow from the reality of the boy's actual situation with the escapism of his imagination, without confusing the reader.

Apr

The Boat in the Tree

My latest picture book was released on 5th March in the US. Written by Canadian author Tim Wynne-Jones and published by Front Street Inc, the story contrasts a boy's dreams of sailing with the arrival of an adopted brother.

It's important for me as being my first picture book comissioned directly from a US publisher, as opposed to co-editions of my UK books.

Apr

The Elves and the Cobbler

Here's a couple of images from the Grimm story The Elves and the Cobbler, which recently appeared in the Japanese children's magazine Ooki-na Pocket. The magazine is produced by one of the biggest children's presses in Japan, Fukuinkan Shoten, with which I released two picture books in the 1990's. The editor is a lovely guy, but seems to have pigeonholed me as solely a "traditional" illustrator of fairy tales.

Apr

Coming up for Air

I can't believe it's already April and I've shamefully left my blog standing still since New Year.

There have been a variety of reasons for this, simply put I've been balancing too many things all at once. Some of it has been work deadlines - illustrating the 4th Charlie Bone book, a couple of advertising jobs, and the beginnings of a new picturebook.