I’ve just got back from a great little holiday visiting my mum up in Scotland. Last time we went to the Outer Hebrides and it poured with rain every day… this time we went to the Inner Hebrides and we were much more lucky! I’ll show some pages from my sketchbook and some of my favourite photos from the trip…

We took two ferries to the stunning Isle of Mull, and then a small boat to the uninhabited islands of Lunga and Staffa. I particularly loved Mull because it had a lot of trees… some of the more outlying islands can be pretty barren! The island of Staffa is made up of amazing hexagonal columns of basalt, and has a famous cave which inspired Mendelssohn’s ‘Hebrides Overture.’

Lunga is home to puffin colonies in the spring and summer… they’re great birds to visit because they seem to be strangely unafraid of people. I also got to witness an exciting drama in the skies at Lunga, when a white-tailed sea eagle put in an appearance, and was driven away by a gang of hostile falcons and ravens.

I saw my first wild otter just off the coast of Mull, and also saw Ben Nevis for the first time. Back over on the East coast where my mum lives, I climbed down the gorse-covered cliffs near Cromarty to a place called Macfarquhar’s Bed, where there are some nice rock formations.

One of the things I enjoy about Scotland (apart from the open spaces and the wildlife) is the intensity & richness of colour. I love how much moss and lichen there is… and (when there’s sunshine) the landscapes seem to glow with vibrancy somehow. Going in spring was good because the bright yellow gorse was in flower and there were lambs and Highland calves everywhere we went!

Finally two photos that sum up things I most like to do on holiday… hang around on or next to the water, and drive through stunning mountains.

Bye Scotland… til next year!

It’s hard to know where to start summing up the experience of Bologna! As anyone who’s been will know, it can be an overwhelming few days. The experience of trying to cart a portfolio round to busy art directors can be exhausting and sometimes demoralising, but the benefits of seeing the best children’s books from around the world all collected to together in one place are huge. My only previous experience of attending one of the big book fairs was early on in my career when I spent a few hours at the London Book Fair. On that occasion I found it so intimidating I resorted to hiding in the toilet… at least this time I was more confident and managed to meet a lot of people and even quite enjoy some of it! For anyone who hasn’t been before I’ll include any tips here that I can think of that might be useful. Several illustrators gave me tips before I went and it was such a great help.

I managed to make a couple of appointments to see art directors in advance, but I was also able to show my portfolio to a lot of people on the spur of the moment. Things change from hour to hour at the fair… one publisher said they would be arranging a schedule of appointments to see portfolios on the second day… but by the second day had decided not to see illustrators at all. Some publishers set aside a window of time where they’ll see as many portfolios as possible… if you can find out about it in advance it’s really useful as queues will be long for these sessions! One I went along to nearly an hour ahead of time and illustrators were already queueing.

My advice would be not to spend a lot of time queueing unless you feel your work is a really good fit with the publisher… you can waste hours waiting in line and then not end up having a very productive meeting. Of course showing work to publishers who turn out not to be too interested in you can be helpful if they’re good enough to give you useful feedback. You can really pick up some useful information by talking to as many people as possible. More useful than queueing (unless you’re sure the publisher is a dead cert) is to frequently visit the stands you’re interested in, and hope for a moment when someone’s free to squeeze you in. Many publishers advised that they would see portfolios if they weren’t busy, and suggested just walking by from time to time and waiting for a suitable moment. I met a few people this way.

If you don’t manage to meet with many potential clients, there’s still plenty of useful things you can do. You can collect catalogues to help you with your publisher research… and ask to take down art directors’ names. Many stands had cards to give out with info specifically on how they like to be sent illustration samples, and you can often get the art director’s business card as well.

With regards to what to take with you, I learned that you can’t really take too much promotional material. I think art directors appreciate a very concise portfolio that they can take in quickly, (many were also very interested in seeing published books or book dummies) …but you can leave business cards and postcards on the illustrators’ wall, and my pack of 60 had pretty much run out by the end of the first day! I also took 100 business cards and managed to offload almost all of them by the end of my time at the fair. For the illustrators’ wall I made a couple of A4 posters with tear-off strips with my contact details. That allows you to show one image quite big, but give people an easy way to take your web address. I also put up a postcard holder with several designs that went very quickly… my business cards went more slowly, so I wonder if people liked the larger size of the postcards? If anyone out there reading this picked up one of my cards, do leave a comment and say hi by the way! :o)

One other thing about the illustrators’ wall… it fills up very quickly. I arrived a couple of hours into the first day, and I was already having to look for space near the floor as all the best space was already taken. This photo from writer Angela Cerrito‘s blog shows how crazy the wall gets…

Some publishers have a guestbook or box where you can drop off or staple in promotional material too.

My partner Sergio was a huge help… as a Spanish speaker he was able to translate for me on a few occasions and he also made enquiries on my behalf with a lot of the publishers as to whether they were seeing portfolios and if so when. If you’ve never been to the fair before and are planning to go, it can be great help to have someone with you to help take some of the pressure off, or to meet up with other illustrators there and give each other a bit of moral support. Other tips I picked up before and during the fair from other illustrators were:

Take LOTS of good cards (and possibly a small poster) of your work to leave on the illustrators’ wall… also take a good supply of pins, blu-tack, sellotape etc. (Thanks Maria Bogade!)

Arrive early on the first day if you want a good spot on the illustrators’ wall to display your work. (Thanks Daniela Dogliani!) Another good tip from Daniela was to take your time and spread your efforts out during the fair… I knew I wouldn’t want to do more than two days at the fair, but in fact going along to all four days but at a more leisurely pace might actually be better. At the end of the first day I was so worn out & overwhelmed I couldn’t remember who I’d spoken to at what stand. It was all a blur. I also missed out on a few publishers who had set aside Wednesday as ‘seeing illustrators day’, because I only attended Monday and Tuesday. The four-day pass is more expensive, but might allow you to have a more relaxed time of it!

Go along on the last day if you can, as publishers will give away freebies to avoid having to carry too much back home with them (Thanks Olu Oke!) You can read a really good personal account of my friend Olu’s Bologna experience a couple of years ago, by clicking here.

Personally, even though I knew Bologna was going to be hard work… I hadn’t anticipated quite how much it would make me re-evaluate everything about the way I work. I’d say it was the single most useful thing I’ve ever done in terms of my career… it totally focussed my thoughts about where I want to go with my work and what changes I need to make. So watch this space for some experiments in the coming months!

I’ll finish up by showing some of the amazing illustrations and books that I saw at the fair. Firstly two winners of the Ragazzi ‘New Horizons’ award. The first book ‘Migrar’ is by José Manuel Mateo with illustrations by Javier Martínez Pedro, published by Edicónes Tecolote in Mexico City. The second is by amazing Indian publisher Tara Books… ‘Waterlife’ with text and illustrations by Rambharos Jha. I’ve always admired Tara Books and their love of handmade… ‘Waterlife’ is silk-screened and bound by hand on handmade paper.

Next two winners of the ‘Opera Prima’ award: Drôle d’Oiseau with text and illustrations by Jennifer Yerkes (published by Éditions MeMo in France) is ridiculously clever in its simplicity. And ‘Grimmie’s White Canvas’ with text and illustrations by Lee, Hyeon-ju (published by Sang Publishing, Korea) is just beautiful.

I loved this book with illustrations by Nicoletta Ceccoli, published by Grimm Press in Taiwan.

‘Victor et les amulettes’ has illustrations by Sophie Lebot and is published by Éditions Auzou in France.

‘Have you seen the Lion’ is illustrated by Géraldine Aibeu and published by OQO Editora in Spain.

‘Gondwana’ is published by Balivernes Éditions in France, and illustrated by Sandrine Mercier.

‘La Bruja y el Espantapajaros’ published by Fondo de Cultura Economica, Mexico, is illustrated by Gabriel Pacheco.

My illustrator friend Gaia Bordicchia also introduced me to these amazing pieces by Gabriel:

Finally ‘Ma Mère a des Super-pouvoirs’ with illustrations by Vincent Mathy, published by Éditions Milan, Paris. Lovely hand-lettering, not to mention the amazing boots!!

So that’s my summing-up of Bologna :o)

This is exciting – my first new blog post since I redesigned my website a couple of months ago! I’m incredibly busy at the moment… moving house coincided with getting a great commission to illustrate the Greek myth Demeter and Persephone, which has meant very hard work getting it all done (and trying not to go mad creating order out of the chaos of house-moving at the same time.) Above is a sneak peek at one of the illustrations from this current book project… of course I’ll show much more from the book once it’s published.

One of the most exciting things about where I’m living now is that for the first time in my life I have my very own studio… a whole room that’s just for illustrating! It has made a huge difference to have so much space to organise myself and my materials… and to be able to spread out my work as I’m painting or drawing. I thought I’d show some photos here of the stage I’ve got to with the studio so far.

I have great artwork here by Mike Hall (who does beautiful illustrated maps, among other things) and Luke Pearson…

I love surrounding myself with random objects! Some have come from different parts of the world, some from my garden. They all have a story and mean a lot to me.

I already need a second pinboard to display artwork by friends and illustrators I admire…

My collection of picture books…

My collection of comics…

Most exciting of all… to store & organise the massive sheets of watercolour paper, card, mountboard etc that I order in, my boyfriend has constructed this piece of furniture for me which doubles as a cutting surface on the top:

So that’s my brand new studio… I’ll leave with another little detail from my current book project. Hades and Cerberus:

]]> http://katrionachapman.com/my-new-studio/feed/ 1 http://katrionachapman.com/629/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=629 http://katrionachapman.com/629/#comments Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:50:18 +0000 katrionachapman http://katrionachapman.com/?p=629 National Theatre Christmas card

I was delighted recently to find out that I’d won a competition to design a Christmas card for the National Theatre… it’s very exciting to see my card on sale in the bookshop there! My design was inspired by the view of the building from the Waterloo Bridge side…I’ve always liked that the Lyttelton flytower is just a massive cube. It’s a great example of brutalist architecture. I also wanted to work in watercolour (which gives some nice textures,) but keep the look of the design quite modern & uncomplicated. Here’s a photo of the NT bookshop that I took just the other day…

I have a long history with the National so also thought I could also use this opportunity to blog about some old sketches that I did in and around the theatre about 10 years ago. I used to find it a good place to sketch, as it’s full of interesting angles and I found the different levels useful for being able to sketch people without being seen! I also used to challenge myself to draw inside the auditoriums during performances.

First of all here’s how my card looks… it’s a nice big size!

Just a final blog update before Christmas! A couple of months ago I received copies of two books that I illustrated quite recently, and I haven’t had a moment to blog about them til now. ‘This is Me’ (published by HarperCollins Big Cat) is an instructional book about making a self-portrait from buttons, paint, wool and other fun things. I had just two weeks to complete the final artwork for this book…it was quite an intense two weeks but I managed it!

I really enjoy drawing hands, so loved the task of drawing the little girl’s hands as she completed different stages of her project.

This is from one of my favourite pages… the girl’s reflection as she looks at herself in a hand-mirror.

Here’s one of my roughs from the early stages of planning the book…

‘Jo and Jess’ (published by Hinkler) is an early-reader book that tries to encourage kids not to be afraid of the dentist.

Another thing I did recently was attend a couple of winter craft fairs with the lovely Vicky Scott…

I also went to see my friend Olu’s comic ‘Ding’ which was on display at the cafe in Foyles, Charing Cross Road. It won second prize in the Observer/Jonathan Cape Graphic Short-story Prize. ‘Ding’ is based on the fascinating and hilarious snippets of conversations that you overhear in the course of bus journeys sometimes… it has a clever structure which repeats and alternates between the different characters page by page. The Observer describes Olu’s illustrations as ‘waspish and very funny.’ You can see more at Olu’s website here: www.oluoke.com

I also couldn’t resist showing a couple more examples of Olu’s work… first an illustration she created for Camus’ ‘The Outsider’, and secondly a page from her Cuba sketchbook.

One final piece of news is that I coloured a cover for a comics magazine… the new (and brilliant) DotComics by Elliot Baggot and Mike Medaglia who I’ve been lucky enough to meet at various comics events over the last year. The cover was drawn by Elliot, inked by Mike and coloured by me, and it’s the second issue of their magazine, which aims to bridge the gap between web-comics and print. You can find out more at their Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/dotComics

Elliot and Mike: Serious about comics! :o)

At the weekend I attended the amazing Thought Bubble sequential art festival in Leeds for the first time. It was a great weekend with atmospheric foggy weather…

Here’s Sergio looking after my table at the convention…

…and a few more pics of the Thought Bubble craziness:

Here are just a few of the things that caught my eye, and the nice people that I met:

Kristyna Baczynski

Kristyna’s work is incredible… her blog is here: http://kriskicorp.blogspot.com/

Edward Ross

Some of Edward’s work combines two of my favourite things… comics and films! Check it out here: http://edwardmaross.blogspot.com/

Dot Comics – Elliot Baggott and Mike Medaglia

Elliot and Mike are lovely guys who’ve just created a new project aimed at linking web comics and print. The first edition was fab, and I’m excited to be colouring the cover of their 2nd edition for them! Can’t wait to share the illustration soon…

http://www.facebook.com/dotComics

Nelson

This week is Nelson week! It’s an amazing comics anthology… a collaboration between 54 of the best UK comics artists. There are a lot of signings at various locations in London all week… check out the details here: http://www.blankslatebooks.co.uk/2011/11/nelson-week-19th-27th-november-2011/