POST CONFERENCE Illustration News
Illustration organiser Paul Morton reflects on what happened at this year's conference. Plus, the thoughts and processes of illustrators chosen for the live feedback panel with designer Ness Wood & editors Emma Layfield and Tiffany Leeson.
The annual SCBWI BI Isles conference rolled into Manchester for the 2nd successive year bringing with it an extra fizz and pizzazz to a city already buzzing with culture.
Just highlighting the illustration side of what the busy programme has to offer makes you realise the sheer amount of planning and organising logistics that goes on ‘behind the scenes’ to deliver this ever popular weekend of children’s books celebration. How fitting that the actual events kicked off early at the City Art Galleries. Around 20 or so eager illustrators, and writers, arrived in time to enjoy a stimulating Sketch Crawl around the exhibitions led by Illustrator Coordinator Tita Berredo. Fun, short prompts took us around paintings and sculpture, landings and showcases where we settled into the forthcoming events by exercising our drawing and observation skills. It’s a great place to meet others and I feel it is especially fun and helpful for those new to Conference, to help ease their way into the weekend’s packed programme.
Not that the illustration interests started there. Some two months earlier the call went out for illustration entries — sketches leading to finished artwork — to feature in the Conference Exhibition. And over 50 SCBWI illustrators from across the world responded with a magnificent 200 plus submissions. These were pared down to a final 130 exhibition pieces with everyone who entered having at least one piece on display. The successful images were formatted onto A3 prints and hung, pre-conference early on Friday morning, by Paul and Mike Brownlow. The Nine large panels running through the North Atrium at the business school at MMU, coupled with the portfolio display and a dynamic ‘illustrators flyer’ area, made a stunning eye catching showcase. It became a focal point for the whole weekend.
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| Busy illustration exhibition |
The keynote illustrator was award-winning picture book creator Ed Vere. He didn’t disappoint — a captivating presenter, enormously generous with his time, information, prepared slides, demonstrations of drawing and shared industry anecdotes. His latest book The Artist tells what it is like ‘to be an artist’ and took Ed over four years to complete. He shared the process of how he dealt with this book, experiencing a creative block and the hard work he put in to overcome this and bring the idea to publication. Following his keynote presentation there were two further ‘hands on’ practical sessions. This meant we got time to share in Ed’s creative process, his journey to the present day and try out our skills at portrait sketching among other things.
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| Ed Vere's keynote |
There’s never enough time to attend all that Conference has on offer which is what makes the weekend so busy, fun and enjoyable. Buddying-up with a partner and sharing feedback is a great way to cover more of the sessions.
Other sessions of interest to illustrators included…
- A lively discussion panel, led by designer Ness Wood with editors Emma Layfield and Tiffany Leeson. ‘What it takes to make a stand out portfolio’ culminating with live feedback on 6 illustrators’ portfolios.
- A focus on Graphic Novels, with illustrator and writer Neill Cameron, Mega Robot Bros, and editor at David Fickling Books, Anthony Hinton, Bunny vs Monkey.
- The Hook pitch-off competition.
- Mass book Launch with, as always, an impressive number of books published in the last 12 months.
- Agent keynote with Hilary Delamere looking back at her career.
- Creating Picture Books with Rocketbird Books publisher Libby Hamilton.
- Marketing your books for success
- Picture Book focus, playing with ideas from successful author Clare Helen Welsh
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| A lively discussion panel, led by designer Ness Wood, with editors Emma Layfield and Tiffany Leeson |
Post Conference, as always, there is now lots of great feedback, reflections and reports, such as this one, for attendees to look back over. There are hundreds of photographs and videos to enjoy and tons of inspiration from the event to help take your children’s book career onwards and upwards.
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| Ed Vere with Paul Morton Tita Berredo, Paul, Mike Brownlow and Ell Rose illustrations from Ed Vere's illustration workshop |
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| Antoine & Robin purchasing cheese |
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| Walking home with the cheese & baguette |
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| Enjoying a feast |
I am Gizem Gozde Ucar, a children’s book writer and illustrator based
in London. My artwork “Wonder” is about the magic of storytelling. I wanted to
show that feeling of being immersed in a good book. When you are reading a
story your sense of time and space alters, you move with the story, not with
the time. The little girl is lying on the big blue grass, she is
transparent. I did this to show that she is one with the story. You can see
that grass is growing out of her body, she is becoming one with the grass and
the story. Also, there are beautiful flowers blooming from her heart. This is
to show how inspired she is. New ideas and feelings are blooming.
The idea started with that blue colour. I wanted it to be blue, like the sea; something that you can get lost in. But I didn’t want it to be the sea because I wanted to have the relaxing feeling of lying on the grass.
After finishing a good book (or after a good meal 😊) you get a serene moment. I wanted to have this relaxing aspect of it. She is comfortably part of the story. She is looking at the magical elements of the story: the fish are flying, birdhouses on the ground, the red sun... This is a magical world and she is in it, one with it. And she is inspired. She is not just transported to that world but also transformed.
This work is a digital illustration. I used Procreate and Photoshop. I
used several brushes and layered on each other to get different textures. I
like using paper textures and collages of patterns in my artwork as you can see
with the lined paper in the background. This was also done to underline the
fact that this is inside of a story, inside of the pages of a book.
As I was drawing this illustration, I got so inspired that one illustration turned into a couple more. And now I am turning these illustrations into a picture book. So, be on the lookout for more!
Website: www.gizemgozdeucar.com
Instagram: instagram.com/gizemgozdeucar/
My work starts as hand drawn linework, which I scan into
photoshop to colour. Sometimes I use other mediums as well depending on what I
feel is right for the image — in the piece reviewed for the conference I used
crayons for the children’s drawings. I love making my own patterns and put them
into my work wherever I can, so drawing clothing and fabrics is really
appealing to me. I’m also a little bit obsessed with drawing anthropomorphised
animals doing weird and wonderful things, preferably ones with long fur!
The piece reviewed at the conference was from a dummy picture
book I’m working on about the joy of drawing for pleasure and the power it has
to give children a voice and bring them together. I wanted to illustrate this
scene in colour because it is one of the busiest spreads, and I wanted to prove
to myself that I could do it. The feedback from the panel was so encouraging
and helpful. I’ve started working on edits to it already and can see a really
positive impact from the advice given. As a self-taught illustrator I’m always
looking for opportunities to put my work in front of people and get feedback — it is what has gotten me this far and who knows where it’ll take me next. This
was a really amazing opportunity, thank you SCBWI!
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Character studies |
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Character development |
Illustration submitted for live feedback
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Illustration revised after feedback |
Website: http://www.emilyyearsley.com/
Emma Latham
This illustration is from a
story I wrote last year about a magpie who loves nothing more than being the
centre of attention. She collects shiny things to use in her outrageous outfits
as she struts outside her tree-house. Each day, she has something new to show
the other animals. But one day, a fellow feathered creature swoops into the
woods and steals Maggie’s limelight. She has to try hard to claim back her
spotlight, but she learns a few lessons along the way about friendship and how
being your self is always the best.
The idea behind Maggie came about on a spring walk last year. I’ve always been
obsessed with crows, magpies and corvids in general, and in our local woodland
park, there are a lot of magpies in particular. I love how they look kind-of
sassy, like they are voguing on a catwalk somehow. The idea seed was planted
that day, and I imagined the story behind Maggie the Magnificent Magpie.
I initially researched and drew
lots of woodland animals and then began characterising them to fit into the
story. After settling on a sketch, I started to apply the background. For this,
I like to create water colour washes and scan them. I love playing with the
colours to get the palette and overall vibe I like.
I then build up the image in
layers in Photoshop. In this case I did some simple tree shapes, followed by
the characters. I block in the shapes first and then work into them with low
tones, mid tones followed by texture. Once the texture is in, I gradually work
in the lighter tones to give shape and dimension. The final stage involves
highlights, outlines, shadows and small details such as hairs, grasses, leaves
and patterns.
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Magpie character sketches |
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Layout for final piece |
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Submitted illustration for live feedback |
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Initial sketches for characters and setting |
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Character design |
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Quiet scene |
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Loud scene submitted for live feedback |
Briony Dixon
It was such a joy that my artwork was selected for the Illustration Discussion Panel and the experience provided valuable feedback.
The artwork I submitted was inspired by a childhood memory of a recurring bad dream about a giant coming to town, trampling and flattening everything in his path. It got me thinking about ways to help children process bad dreams and using a 'rewriting' method. Being safe in the arms of someone who cares and in the knowledge that they aren't real, bad dreams can be 'rewritten' and looked at with a sense of wonder. So instead of a giant being a scary monster, he could become a friend, someone magical who can take you to imagined faraway lands.
I started by sketching ideas for the child character. At this stage in my process, I usually try lots of different ways of drawing characters, different head shapes, and eye shapes for example until I land on something that feels ‘right’ for who I want to portray.
My next step was to draw my character from different angles, making different expressions so that I could get to know her better. I wanted to use vignettes to show the stages of waking up from a bad dream through to the comfort given by her mum, so much of my exploration of expression was focused on this.
For the giant character, I had a clear idea in my head about what I wanted him to look like and being a magical character there is more scope for being playful with features and proportions.
Wanting to keep the colour palette minimal, I did some colour tests before painting and inking papers to create the textures I needed. I then used Photoshop to assemble and create the final pieces.
This was a great opportunity that I was very pleased to be part of. Thank you to everyone involved!
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Character emotion sheet |
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Character designs |
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Layout sketch |
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Illustration submitted for live feedback |
Website: https://www.brionydixon.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brionydixonillustration/
[Double click to view in wide. Video Credit: Tita Berredo]
*Header: Ed Vere
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Tita Berredo is the Illustrator Coordinator of SCBWI and the Art Director of Words & Pictures. She has a Master's degree in Children's Literature and Illustration from Goldsmiths UOL, and a background in social communications, marketing and publicity. www.titaberredo.com
Follow @titaberredo on Instagram and Twitter
Email: illustrators@britishscbwi.org
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Ell Rose is the Illustration Features Editor of Words & Pictures.
Find their work at www.fourfooteleven.com.
Follow them on Instagram and Twitter.
Contact them at illustrators@britishscbwi.org
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