..all work and no blog at the moment. Here are some spiders to be getting on with.
Apologies…
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For the day that’s in it…
While out and about today and tonight, take the precaution of going about in disguise to avoid being recognised and spirited away by ghosties, gouls or faery folk. Also, carry a book.
It seems (if these pictures are to be believed) that witches, pixies and the walking dead can be distracted by a good read…
…just like the rest of us!
Happy Hallowe’en.
Oíche Shamhna maith agaibh.
Assorted monsters, goblins and nasties by Michael, click an image for a closer look. (Illustrations from You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You, Scary Stories by the wonderful Mary Ann Hoberman)
Once Upon a…
…Place is a collection of stories and poems, all new, all set somewhere in Ireland. I was delighted to be asked to contribute to this book put together by Eoin Colfer as part of his Laureate-ship. That was the brief – that the setting be a real place in Ireland – and here is where I set mine:
Kells, County Kilkenny, is a wee village. It’s on a bend in the King’s River and there’s nothing much there but a garage and a small pub called Shirley’s. And the Priory. Or the Seven Castles as locals also call it – because of the tower houses dotted along the walls.
It’s the nearest village to the farm my granddad was born and grew up on, the farm where my mother spent her childhood summers. She brought us there as kids to visit with our cousins and we all continued to spend weekends over the years. As a child, trundling through Kells in the old blue Beetle meant we were, in fact, Nearly There. As an adult I cork-screwed through Kells at breakneck speed many a night as my madcap cousin drove us into Kilkenny city, to the ‘disco’ at Langtons. Occasionally we’d stop, for a quiet-ish pint in Shirley’s or to walk off a hangover in the Priory of a Sunday morning.
PJ Lynch did an amazing job of bringing Kells Priory and my story, Gren’s Ghost, to life with his atmospheric black and white charcoal images. You can click HERE to see one of them happen (1 min), or HERE to see PJ chat about illustrating the book (2.39). Meanwhile the book will be available from tomorrow, all over the country.
Deadlines…
Picturebooks are a parade of deadlines. The big ‘lines’ in the process are for the final dummy and the completion of finished art, but inside that whole process are mini deadlines. New dummies or art for Bologna, for Frankfurt, a sample cover for a sales meeting, colour work for a catalogue. A couple of weeks ago Michael pulled a 24 hour day to get some work done for a sales meeting. The request was a bit sudden and we had a friend coming from the US for a few days, so Michael did a few hours each day while our visitor slept in, then got seriously stuck in as I drove our departing guest to the airport at 7am Sunday morning. He worked straight through to 7am the next day. That Sunday happened to be our wedding anniversary so I was a wee bit miffed, but completely sympathetic.
Right now I’m the one crunching. I’ve spent the last month getting as much art as possible done in time for the Frankfurt book fair, and now I have one month to complete the book.
I can do it, if I keep my head down. I won’t try any crazy 24 hour stuff – the day when I could is long gone – but I will work steadily and keep going in the evenings and through the weekends. And I’ll try not to channel my inner Douglas Adams, who famously said, ‘I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise the make as they go by.’ Though if I were to pull out my contract with Walker Books I’m pretty sure the official delivery date was May. This year.
Whoooooooooooosh.
Michael (as a bat) whooshes away on his bike, with me (as owl) sleeping in. Most recent ‘Gone Cycling’ note from Michael.
Culture Scare
An old pal of Michael’s is over for the weekend and we headed out to some local haunts for Culture Night. Food and crafts at Killruddery Market first, then off to Albert Walk in Bray to see the Scarecrow Invasion, which was staged by the Signal Arts Centre along with loads of local groups and schools.
Michael and John added for size comparison
Scarecrow Marilyn
They’re watching Telly
Albert Walk, Bray
Rónán Ó Snodaigh of Kila was playing the bodhrán at one end of the walk and we finished the evening at number 6, our favourite wine bar – Caffé Letterario.
Antonella and her crew at lovely Caffé Letterario/Gatto Nero which, despite being tiny, gives over lots of space to books!
Meanwhile Dali kept a watchful eye on proceedings. An explosion of art at night just as the evenings are growing dark can only be A Good Thing. I’m sure he approved mightily.
The Inevitable Electric Picnic Post
Children’s Books Ireland and our Laureate na nÓg went to Electric Picnic this year and they invited us along. Eoin Colfer’s laureate project is a fab new collection of short stories and poems, all set in Ireland and called Once Upon a Place. I was thrilled to be asked to contribute a story and excited to be invited along to Electric Picnic (Ireland’s biggest arts & music fest) to chat about it with a load of other contributors. PJ Lynch, Enda Wyley, Siobhán Parkinson (who edited/published), Patricia Forde, and Eoin Colfer, are all in the top photo, and Oisín McGann, Sarah Webb, myself, Roddy Doyle, and Patricia again, are in the second shot.
the Literary Stage tent, Saturday
Eoin, Siobhán, Enda, Patricia, myself, PJ with an image done on the spot, and Oisín towering o’er us
Trish did a fab job as compere and Eoin had everyone in stitches, while PJ bravely created an amazing charcoal image on the spot.
capacity crowds both days
Talkin’
Sunday panel
Sarah, myself, Patricia, Roddy and Oisín
Two days equalled two morning gigs inside the Literary Stage tent. Meanwhile outside Michael and Steve McCarthy were busy running Monster Doodles…
Michael and Steve
Book doctors
Inbetween gigs ourselves and our friend and fellow author, Sarah (Sarah Webb, author of Amy Green, The Songbird Cafe Girls), were free to roam and people watch…
People dress up. There were loads of onesies…
recycled fashion
Eoin and Michael swap hats at the Other Voices tent
Electric Faery
face painting
meeting up with our nieces, Ann and Beth, and Beth’s chap, Matt
…check out the art installations…
Every tree had all sorts up there in the boughs
wicker foxes
Sarah and Michael
…Michael and myself had our vows blessed by Elvis at the Electric Chapel, with Sarah as witness/photographer…
…oh, and we did catch a little music.
Alani, the only act that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck…
The Staves
Michael and Bob
Once Upon a Place is due out in October 2015:http://littleisland.ie/once-upon-a-place-an-anthology-compiled-by-laureate-na-nog-published-by-little-island/
Click for info on Children’s Books Ireland and Laureate na nÓg
Top Notes
I’m not a morning person; Michael is. I come down to the kitchen an hour or so after he’s left the house and check the kitchen table for a note to see whether he’s …
..cycled to work at Firehouse Bakery in Delgany
gone to work in Insomnia
@Usual early office -Insomnia
…or…
gone cycling…
…spinning the wheels…
..up the mountains…
…for a few hours
Sometimes the sketches are seriously minimalist….
And occasionally I may come home late in the day and find Michael’s ….
… down the pub. In this case, with Peter!
Getting the Lead Out
Sarah McIntyre’s PicturesMeanBusiness campaign is all about highlighting the work involved in illustrating (and why illustrators should always be credited), so Michael and myself thought we’d try and give you an idea of the drawing work we do when developing a picturebook.
Right now I am working on the colour art for a book, all of it on computer. This ‘finished art’ will take me three to four months total, but there’s been a whole pile of hand-drawing just to get to this stage.
Hundreds and hundreds of drawings, all on tracing paper, my surface of choice. Some find the bin; most get filed.
In April 2014 there were scribbled ‘thumbnail’ sketches, as I tried to catch the idea which was emerging. Sometime later I began exploring the story’s characters in more detail, filling a sketchbook. Then several weeks were spent working towards a proper full-size dummy.
After a meeting with the editorial team at Walker Books I made a new dummy, taking their comments, Michael’s comments, and my own new thoughts into account. Another round of comments got me to a third dummy/draft and another editorial meeting, at which point I got the go-ahead to begin the final art.
I then sat down and began redrawing the 32 images, this time for scanning into the computer as the templates for the colour art. I traced the previous images, making final tweaks as I went, double-checking details: have I held each of the eight character’s faces/personalities/proportions properly through-out? Have any of them become stiff/lost their energy and appeal during all this redrawing? Is the background detail working? On and on. It took two weeks straight and I drew my way through nearly 1 metre of pencil lead!
Michael does most of his rough work in sketchbooks. He does even more preliminary drawing than I do, exploring characters, poses, expressions, interactions, humour, emotion, trying out lots of alternatives, always seeking out that perfect image. With the book he’s working on now, he’s reacting to and interpreting a text by Barbara Bottner. His illustration style is very line-led so he spends a ton of time on these drawings.
There are around 2235 individual sketches for this book in just four of the sketchbooks below, and there’s another couple of hundred loose sketches lying around the studio.
4 of these sketchbooks are front to back Priscilla and two are smatterings…
Priscilla Gorilla will be published next year by Simon and Schuster, Atheneum
Michael will trace/tweak the images he chooses for the book, transfer them to watercolour paper, then work the final colour quickly to keep it all light and alive.
PS: If you’re wondering why this post isn’t illustrated with drawings we’re talking about, there’s a certain amount of ‘keeping things under wraps’ involved with books which won’t be out until the end of next year! Watch out for more posts about illustrating over the next few months.
Northern Ireland, by the Book
Narnia, Game of Thrones, Cúchulainn, Finn MacCool – Northern Ireland is full of story. We went chasing tales in Antrim, Down and Armagh last week with our two visitors from Kansas. Sally and Clyde Cowdin are a sister and brother who grew up in a children’s book shop – Reading Reptile in Kansas City.
We started our ‘book’ tour with Narnia and C S Lewis. Lewis hailed from Belfast and Dunluce Castle is thought to be the inspiration for Cair Paravel in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It also features as the House of Greyjoy in HBO’s Game of Thrones.
Dunluce Castle/Cair Paravel/Greyjoy
Dramatic limestone cliffs viewed from Dunluce
Clyde examines a medieval chimney
A lot of Game of Thrones (based on A Song of Fire and Ice series, George R.R. Martin) is filmed in NI, using the dramatic mountains and coast as the settings in Westeros – Winterfell, Stormlands, the Iron Islands (disclaimer: I don’t really know what I’m talking about here; we rarely watch it). I googled and found a do-it-yourself driving tour. All the photos below are locations – the Dark Hedges (part of the Kingsroad in GoT), Ballintoy Harbour (Lordsport Harbour/the Iron Islands), and the Carrick-a Rede Rope Bridge on Larrybane Head, which doubles as Storm’s End. I didn’t brave the famous bridge as I’m a wee bit acrophobic and it’s a 23 metre drop. Instead I chatted to the gate-keeper, who said numbers had doubled in one year.
‘Game of Thrones?’ I said. ‘Yes,’ said she.
(Roll over/click on any of the photos for details/ to navigate.)
Michael, Clyde and Sally cross Carrick-A-Rede rope bridge which most of the cast of GoT have apparently braved at some stage.
View from Ballintoy of Larrybane Head -Storms End in the show.
Clyde explores a cave at Lordsport/Ballintoy Harbour
Ballintoy harbour doubles asLordsport Harbour & the Iron islands
The atmospheric Dark Hedges, scene of Arya Stark’s escape along the Kingsroad. The avenue of beech trees was planted in the 18th century
Ballintoy Harbour in real life and in the show:
Looking seaward…
Looking landward… Nicked photo from self-guided tour, link at end of blog
Next we entered Irish legend territory – the astonishing Giant’s Causeway. The tales say it was created by Finn MacCool (Fionn McCumhaill ) so he could get closer to Scotland and call out the Scottish giant, Benandonner, to come fight him. Unfortunately the Scottish giant turned out to be a lot bigger than Finn, but Finn’s clever wife quickly dressed Finn up as a baby. Benandonner figured that if the baby was this huge then his daddy, Finn, must be enormous, and he ran home across the causeway, tearing it up as he went.
Michael amongst the basalt columns
look for the pipes and the giants’ red eye sockets… well, one and a half eye sockets.
Sally and Michael
Scotland! The blue behind Rathlin Island is the Mull of Kintyre. Yep, now you’ll be humming it all day…
The bold Finn pulled up a sod of earth to throw after him. The hole filled with water and became Lough Neagh (also on our tour), and the sod landed in the sea and became the Isle of Man. (Full version of legend here)
And this is the Ring of Gullion. No better way to end our story trail with the Reading Reptiles than with the greatest hero of Irish story – Cúchulainn!
The Ring of Gullion – it’s a volcanic ring dyke, a ring of low hills around a mountain.
Ballymacdermot court tomb
Ballykeel Dolmen, known as The Hag’s Chair
We’ve passed the sign for the Ring of Gullion several times in the last three years and thought it sounded a bit Tolkienesque. Turns out the ‘ring’ is a group of roundy hills which surround Slieve Gullion, Culann’s mountain, the very place where the boy Setanta killed Culann’s guard dog in self defence after he arrived late to Culann’s feast. Setanta then agreed to guard Culann’s property until he trained a new hound, thus earning himself the name Cúchulainn, the Hound of Culann.
Link to self-drive GoT tours here. There are loads of GoT tours online -self drive and guided.
Link
Here’s a link to a fab interview Michael just did with Julie Danielson on her blog, Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast. LOADS and LOADS of preliminary sketches to eyeball, chat about writing and illustrating picture books and growing up in a writing/illustrating household!
Click here to go see: http://blaine.org/sevenimpossiblethings/?p=3784
The Belugas are Watching 