Sketchbooks

I came across this notebook of drawings that I made with a stick of bamboo on bamboo paper with Indian ink, they are from Hampi, in India. I spent four months in India in 1997 and kept a diary and drew in notebooks all the time. 

Hampi is the site of the ruins of Vijayangar. It was once the capital of one of the largest Hindu empires in Indian history. This desolate land strewn with enormous rounded boulders is the most unlikely place you'd imagine a city that once housed over 1/2 million people!

 I described it in my notebooks  'This is the most magical land... and the strangest Christmas that I have spent on earth. Long nightmarish journeys on hellish buses.

One of the strangest phenomenons of these night trips is the monstrous chai stands in the middle of nowhere. In the dead of night the bus pulls into a maniac chai stand. Blaring Hindi music emanates from loudspeakers. The giant concrete building pulsates with flashing Christmas lights. It looks like the chai stand at the end of the universe. A mad sight! Everyone piles off the bus to sup chai. I am too drowsy to sup chai...

Ah! Hampi, our recluse, our haven for a while....  Stretched out in front of me, giant boulders nest by the chocolate shores of a river that cuts through this land. Land tiered, bright green paddy fields. We walk through plantations of banana and coconut.'

I traveled with Owen and met Paul in Naintal at the beginning of our trip. We all traveled together for about 6 weeks of the trip. 

Notebooks and Ideas!

Ideas! 

All my ideas started life in my notebooks. Publishers love notebooks! Fill them with doodles, anything that interests you, overheard conversations, ideas. They don't have to be totally worked out. Publishers and editors will look through your notebooks and if they have a good eye they can spot ideas that could make a great picture book.

If you are getting a portfolio ready for college, start keeping notebooks. They will be the first thing Tutors will look at when they open your portfolio. They give tutors an idea of how your creative mind works. How you get ideas, develop them and finally work them out.

If I am starting a new project and looking for ideas and I get stuck I go back and look through my old notebooks. The Ravenous Beast started as a card design called Ravenous Monsters I painted in 1994. When I first went to Walker Books they spent most of the time looking through my notebooks. Amelia the head designer saw this painting and said mmm... interesting. It started from there.

Then I started to develop the idea. First I do lots of writing...basically anything that comes into my head. And I doodle a lot, very scientific. You have to be completely open, the story could go in any direction and sometimes in the wrong direction!

Then I work on character, you have to get to know your characters so draw them over and over again.

Next, I make up a mini dummy book in black and white to see if it's readable, that it works when you turn the page. Then I read it to my kids or anyone who will listen! Then I keep improving the original dummy book, at this stage I work with my editor.

Here is a copy of the original Ravenous Monsters card and my first thumbnails for the Ravenous Beast it gives you an idea of how rough the original idea was.

So no excuses get doodling!

OOPS! and now this

Sorry I seemed to delete yesterdays message, I never got a chance to reply to the invite from the girl in Leitrim. Oops can you can you post again?

When I was researching for Cinderella, I was allowed access to the Early Printed Books section of Trinity College Library. It was so amazing to be able to handle and make sketches of 15th and 16th century books. The Keeper Charles Benson was amazing. He told me that the collection was catalogued according to author, not by illustrator or content. It was his knowledge of the books and what was contained inside them that helped me so much. I told Charles that I would love to see books similar to the Les Très Riches Heures, a medieval manuscript that was painted by the Limbourg Brothers in the 15th Century. Charles would then disappear down into the vaults and come back with the most amazing illustrated volumes that were a wonderful inspiration to me. I spent many days in the reading room making little pencil notes in my notebook. You are not allowed bring in pens or ink to the reading room. After a few days of this Charles told me 'Why don't you bring in your digital camera and take some photos!' And so I did, the images are out of copyright here are a few little doodles from the drawing days.