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We had a fantastic workshop with Yvette de Beer. The pictures tell the story.
The workshop was held in Yvette's lovely home on Witbank Dam where she has a beautiful work room flooded with natural light.
We began by painting backing board. Then we were asked to draw characters based on random pieces of driftwood and other natural items.
We were asked to juxtapose two characters. We placed these
If you are in or near Minneapolis, please come see my workshop on Interiority: Exploring a Character’s Inner Life. This topic is always on my mind. I find myself constantly commenting on interiority (thoughts, feelings, emotions) in client manuscripts. There isn’t a protagonist out there, in my humble opinion, that couldn’t stand to be developed more fully from the inside out.
This is an in-depth three-hour workshop where we’ll really dive into my favorite fiction craft topic. I hope to arm you with some inspiration and knowledge so that you can dive into your protagonist more confidently and deepen your own craft as a fiction writer.
The Loft is still taking registrations and you can find more information here. I’d love to see you on July 23rd.
Ages and ages ago, I was chatting via email with author Julia Jarman. We talked about this and that, then she mentioned that she had been invited to Beijing, to visit an International School, but she wasn't very keen to go. She thought it might be a little scary in China on her own, so she was thinking of turning them down. Purely as a joke, I quipped that she should ask the school if they wanted an illustrator too, then we could go together. Which is how it began.
Over a year later, Julia and I have visits booked at 4 different Beijing schools - 7 day's work - and we will be there for just over two weeks. Quite an adventure. I imagine that it will be very hard work, a bit like World Book Day week with knobs on, but I do like new and interesting experiences, plus we will get a few days at the end to explore. Of course, I'm hoping I'll have enough energy left over to sketch a bit too.
I have been to China before, but a very long time ago. In 1988, I back-packed around the north of China for 6 weeks, with a friend. It is probably the single most challenging, but also exciting thing I have ever done. That's when these sketches were done.
Apart from sights like The Forbidden City, I can't imagine that there will be much that is recognisable about Beijing now. Things were still very traditional at that time and there were certainly no gleaming, glass structures. It will certainly be fascinating to see the changes for myself.
We are due to fly out mid September, which I fully expect to be here before I know it. Yeehah!
So, spring is pretty much here (in the UK, it has been trying to be here all winter) and while the birds and bees are starting to get creative, it seems a good time for the rest of us to do the same. No... I don't mean THAT (although I don't want to be a party-pooper if you're in the mood), I mean arty stuff!
With that in mind, and in honor of National Craft Month, a little group of Craftsy instructors, who are also Urban Sketchers, are banding together to share an arty opportunity with you...
If you register for any of the 13 classes below, between Feb 29th and March 13th (using the special links here), you will not only receive a HUGE discount, but be entered into a prize draw, where you could win the chance to donate $1000 - $2000 to the 'craft' charity of your choice (Urban Sketchers is one possibility, if you don't have anything in mind. Did you know they were a charity?)
So, what makes a Craftsy class so special?
Well, Craftsy offers high quality, online courses which you can watch whenever you want, as many times as you want, and from any device.
You can ask questions of your instructor, post comments and pictures you create, plus you can see the work posted by other participants in the class from all around the world.
Each class consists of 6-7 short lessons, with homework exercises, and runs for about 1.5 - 2 hours. We are all experienced teachers and, between us, we Urban Sketchers correspondents offer 13 sketching classes - hurrah!
Several people have asked if I am planning to do a Craftsy class on 'sketching people', to go with my book. For the moment I'm not, partly because I have so much on right now. Also, I think the next class I do probably ought to be a follow-up to my existing, illustration workshop. But also, there are already two really good workshops on sketching people. One is by my good friend (and excellent sketcher) Suhita Shirodkar:
The second is by Marc Holmes, who really needs no introduction if you follow Urban Sketchers:
I can't recommend these classes enough. They are very professionally put together and delivered by experts in the field. Each one takes you through the subject carefully, with lots of demonstrations, which are all beautifully filmed, so you can see what you need to, unlike your average YouTube videos.
My class is a wee bit different to all the others, as mine is the only one on sketching for book illustration, whereas the other classes are all about drawing and painting as an urban sketcher.This promotion is only offered via the actual instructors, so you need to use these special discount links for it to kick in. If you do, you help us instructors as well because, if we attract new people to Craftsy and they register during National Craft Week, we instructors get entered into a prize draw too. Everyone's a winner!
I had a bit of an adventure recently...
It began with me getting a plane to Scotland on a Sunday afternoon. Things got off to a dodgy start though - I nearly missed my flight. I had bags of time, right up to the point where, approaching the departure gate, I realised I'd left my watch in the tray at the security bit, so had to try and get back through. It's not so easy in the other direction. 'Last call for Lynne Chapman...' Luckily someone had handed my watch in. Thank goodness I noticed before I got on the plane.
I had been invited to spend 4 days at the International School of Aberdeen: the longest school visit I think I've ever done. I was put up in a rather nice hotel and had a big, if VERY taupe room: not a whisper of colour anywhere!
Bizarrely, on that Sunday night, I was the only person staying in the entire hotel. I could have run naked through the corridors at midnight. Instead I was very boring and went to bed. Well, I needed to be up bright and early for my first day at school.
The excitement was at a pretty high level before I even got there but, as the days went by, it got better and better. I moved around the school to a constant soundtrack of 'There she is!' and 'Look, it's Lynne Chapman!' with children waving and calling hello. I was nipping to the loo one lunchtime when I overheard an excited whisper: 'Look, she's going to the toilet!', as if it was a shock that I actually needed to.
I kicked off that first Monday morning with a lecture about how picture books are created. They had a totally gorgeous theatre. It was packed tight with all the kids and quite a few parents. I immediately felt very welcome. Everyone was obviously really keen and the talk went down extremely well. Good start!
I read stories and larked about with the younger ones as usual. I read Rocky and the Lamb for the first time in ages and we designed monsters. These are some of the children's monster drawings. Very inventive - I love how they often come up with elaborate stories about their invented creature:
At the end of the session, I got them all to hold them up and make a monster noise:
With the slightly older ones, I had time for 2 different workshops for each group, which is very unusual - normally it's a squeeze to see everyone once. This meant I could try a couple of new things. After passing on all my hot tips for creating characters (basically the 'best of' my Craftsy class), I tried demo sessions, showing them how to colour artwork. Some classes experimented with the Inktense watercolour pencils I love so much and others used pastels.
I did a big demo-drawing of Giddy Goat in pastels to show them specific techniques. I added to it over the days until it was finished and left it with the school as a present. These are a few of the pastel drawings the children created:
It was a bit scary doing something I've not tried before, but the children were great and absolutely loved the Inktense watercolour pencils. Both children and teachers were all so enthusiastic about everything I shared, I walked around in a warm glow all week.
I was looked after really well too. I was taken out a couple of times for meals in the evenings with the school librarian who had booked me (Thai and Lebanese - yum). I even got to try my hand at an after-school yoga class (oh dear: lots of creaky bits). Come Thursday afternoon, I was almost sad to be going home.
Luckily, the flight back home went without incident or recourse to stupidity.
As part of my residency, I ran another of my empowerment workshops recently, working with the academics at the Morgan Centre. My merry band of would-be sketchers were all given a free set of watercolours at the outset and, although we did do some playing around with them during our very first meeting, I have noticed that most people aren't really using them. Not surprising - I know some very seasoned sketchers who are still terrified of watercolour.
So, I thought we would do some work with paint, to get them more familiar with how it feels and to discover some of the simple but effective things you can do.
For people to feel comfortable, it is vital that these workshops are fun and that results are acheivable. I need people to not only learn useful techniques, but to enjoy the session sufficiently that they are inspired to give things a go when they are on their own, with the SCARY blank page.
First of all, we used wet paper and explored simple mark-making methods, introducing watercolour to the page, but then leaving it alone, letting the water take it off to interesting places, resisting the urge to scrub and mix.
Then I asked people to see if they could see an image in the blobs and squiggles. The challenge was to use as few drawn marks as possible to turn the splodges into something. Love these funky birds:
Next, we played a game in pairs, where people took it in turns to add a mark to a shared painting, building up images which were initially abstract, but waiting for the suggestion of something representational to emerge. It's fun because people sometimes have different ideas of where it's going. You can choose to cooperate with your partner, or you can subvert their ideas as you see them emerging and deliberately take it off on a different track.
The idea of the exercise was to get people painting freely, but to keep it light-hearted and devoid of expectation. I wanted them to learn how the paint worked - what consistency to use, which colours reacted together well, the difference between working onto wet and dry paper - all this, without any pressure to create something successful.
Finally, I asked them to use the techniques we had learnt, to do a very quick watercolour sketch of an item of fruit or veg that I'd asked everyone to bring. I showed them how you can restrict where the wet paint is going to go, by creating the shape of your object in water first, then quickly introducing the paint while it's wet. This is my 10-second mango:
I asked people to use only 2 or 3 colours and to let the paint settle on its own, as before. Finally, to finish off with the minimal amount of line-work needed to make the object identifiable. This is my example apple and satsuma:
We suddenly ran out of time and everyone had to rush off, so I only got a photo of one person's painting, this gorgeous garlic. Quite a tricky thing to choose, particularly as an absolute beginner, but she did a fantastic job:
Everyone did really well. Their 'homework' was to go away and use the techniques in their sketchbooks over the next few weeks. My hope is that the workshop demonstrated that you can be quite free and easy with watercolour and still get quite dramatic results, by sticking to a few simple rules:
* Use water first to tell the paint where to go and to give you lovely marks
* Limit yourself to 2 or 3 colours
* Let the paint do its thing - don't fiddle and scrub!
* Less is more: you often don't need outlines
If you are afraid of watercolour, give it a whirl. You need plenty of clean water, a hairdryer to encourage the drying along and a good size brush, so you get enough paint down. Watercolour paper is ideal, but we only had ordinary cartridge paper books to work in and, as you can see, it was fine. So long as it isn't too flimsy. Have fun!
Things are still going really well at the Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday Lives. I am loving the opportunity to immerse myself in such a long-term sketching project and really getting into my long, concertina-format books. But one aspect of the residency which was only on the periphery of my plans before it all kicked off, is proving to be a significant part of my pleasure.
The sketching workshops, to enable the core team of about a dozen academics, were something I confess I was just slightly apprehensive about. The group is a bit different to any I have worked with before: mostly no drawing experience since school, but all high achievers in their field. I needn't have worried. They are being very brave and pitching in with whatever ideas I throw at them.
For the latest homework, I decided to give them back just a corner of their comfort zone as a reward. I want to open their approach to a blank sketchbook page as wide as possible so, since they are all used to words, I used Tom Phillips' Heart of a Humament project as inspiration. While in a 2nd hand bookshop, Phillips came across a rather tedious Victorian novel, called 'A Humament'. Back in his studio, he set about re-created every page by highlighting individual words from the text and joining them in new ways to create new meanings, before painting out the rest of the words in a way which illustrated the new text.
These are just some examples. They are all uniquely powerful and all different.
For my sketch-group, I scanned lots of pages from my copy of the Heart of a Humament book, as inspiration, as well as some randomly chosen, but pleasingly verbose pages from Salman Rushdie and Gunter Grass novels, for them to work on. Fear not fair readers: they painted on print-outs, not actual books!
Each of the academics was asked to make the new text relevant to their individual research projects, so that their finished work still fitted with the theme of documenting life at the Morgan Centre. This is a selection of what they brought back in to show me:
I was bowled over. Remember, these are people with almost no drawing or painting experience. The 'new text' was great too - some was very poetic, some hilarious. Somebody actually managed to incorporate Mr Rushdie's word 'witchnipples' into a comment on their research. What do these sociologist get up to, we wonder!
Since I've already done a few posts to promote my Craftsy illustration master-class, I'm guessing that most people who are interested will have already enrolled, but, in case I've missed anyone, or you haven't quite got around to signing up, you might want to know that it is on sale again for Christmas - It's £15.97 until Dec 12th.
The other bit of good news is that many of the other drawing classes are HALF PRICE! Here's a link to see them all.
If you are anything like me, you will have people to buy Christmas pressies for who are tricky, people you are leaving until last and who you will be panicking about in a few days. So, you might want to know that you can now send people a gift of a Craftsy class. They do all sorts, not just drawing and painting, there's cooking, dressmaking, gardening, wine, knitting... If you want to buy a lesson as a present for someone, you do it here.
All of the classes last forever. You can dip in and out of them or do them again and again, as many times as you like. And all of them give you access to the teacher: you can ask questions and show them your work for feedback at any point, as often as you like.
Okay, much though I personally hate the whole Black Friday bonkers shopping thing, it turns out that there is an very definite up side... (pause for drumroll)...
... because my Craftsy class is going to be offered at a special SALE PRICE for the whole weekend - hurrah! So, if you haven't got around to signing up yet (shame on you :-D ) here is the SUPER-DUPER BLACK FRIDAY SALE link to my illustration masterclass, which will teach you how to draw the most expressive and funny picture book characters. I make it easy. Promise.
Just think what an amazingly original Christmas present idea it would be for an arty friend. Or maybe just an early Christmas present for yourself (the best kind of present...). Go on, treat yourself...
Last week I met up again with my brave sketching group at The Morgan Centre. They are all academics and mostly people who have no drawing, painting or sketching experience. They have volunteered to keep sketchbooks during the year of my residency and I know that they were almost all pretty terrified at the prospect.
Despite this, we had a lot of fun when we first met up last month. I ran an empowerment workshop for them, introducing them to new ways of thinking about drawing and painting. A lot of people's worries centre around their perceived inability to draw. But everyone can draw. The block is created because people feel their drawings don't in any way match up to reality.
The important thing to realise, is that realism is just one benchmark of success and by no means the only or even the best one. I don't generally try to make my sketches look like what's actually there - I have the most fun when I free myself up to be expressive or think laterally.
My group all got a free kit of art materials which I chose for them, so I began by getting them to experiment with the various different marks you could get with them, so they were less afraid of the materials themselves, especially watercolour. I got them using lots of water and playing with mark-making techniques:
I also introduced them to some alternative approaches for getting across what we see. We started by drawing a simple 'drinking vessel' which I had asked each to bring in.
Instead of the generally frustrating 'realism' approach, we looked at the object from different perspectives and I asked the group to create interlocking line-drawings which explored alternative silhouettes of their object. We thought a lot about the spread as a 'design' too, letting the appearance of the open book become as important as the actual object itself.
Instead of worrying about conventional shading and colouring of the objects, individuals painted the negative spaces they had created, then enriched the spread further by adding pattern and text, to 'tell the story' of the object.
We also had a lot of fun with blind-contour and wrong-handed drawing.
If you've never done it before, it feels very strange, but is also incredibly liberating. Instead of the hesitant, spidery-fine marks which beginners usually feel trapped into using, the drawings were bold and dramatic. Plus, they were done in just 1 minute each!
This 2nd meeting of the group was partly to review the homework task I had set them at the end of the workshop. Everyone had done really well, but one person had gone bonkers. He had no previous experience, but had been so liberated and inspired by the workshop, he had not only done the task I'd set, but then produced lots of watercolour paintings (really good ones too). I couldn't have wanted for a better result.
At the end of the meeting, I set a new homework task, based on the Heart of a Humament project, by the artist Tom Phillips. He took a rather bad Victorian novel he'd found in a 2nd-hand book shop and pulled new meanings from each page of the text, which he then illustrated, sometimes figuratively, sometimes decoratively.
This weekend is your last chance to take advantage of my special half-price deal, celebrating the launch of my online illustration workshop. This little trailer shows you the kind of thing I cover in the 7 lessons:
I am thrilled to bits with how it's recruiting and I already have two really lovely 5-star reviews on the class. Here are highlights from what my new students had to say:
"This is a terrific course. Lynne Chapman is an excellent teacher who knows how to make it seem easy and fun to draw. I am a retired illustrator, and I've been rather stuck in my ways of doing things but I have enjoyed learning Lynne's approach and it is giving me new inspiration. This is carefully planned and well presented. I recommend it. A five star course for artists young and old."
" Lynne is so clear to listen to and really helpful. The homework seems really doable and the accumulated knowledge is applicable to all kinds of illustration regarding a younger audience"
Thank you guys for that smashing feedback. I'm so glad it the class is coming across so well!
So, click this link and you will get the class for 50% of the regular price. After tomorrow night, the link will still be there, but the discount will be reduced to $10 off. Have fun!!
I have done another couple of days of my residency, sketching life at the Morgan Centre and Manchester University. I thought you might like to see what I have done, especially as I have now filled the first of my 2m long concertina books:
You saw the first section at the beginning of the month, but I have managed to add quite a lot since then. It's still been okay weather, so I spent some more time drawing outdoors to make the most of it, hanging around where the students chill out, ear-wigging their conversations...
The snatches I grabbed really help to paint a picture of what it's like to arrive at a big uni at the beginning of term and sometimes be a long way from home.
When it got a bit chilly, I went into the canteen area, to capture the flavour of that. I got into several lovely conversations with students, because of course, I couldn't help attracting a certain amount of attention.
On my most recent day, I attending a lecture. It was not the easiest thing to sketch, I must say:
This was the last section of the concertina, but the lecture hadn't ended, so I started on a new sketchbook and did the sketch below, of one of the students sitting near me. I showed her and her friends as the lecture wound up.
Immediately afterwards, I attending a Morgan Centre team meeting. I just did this quicky sketch, as I was gearing up to do a little presentation to the team as part of the meeting, talking about the residency and my sketchbooks so far:
That afternoon, I ran a 3 hour workshop for around a dozen members of the Morgan Centre team, most of whom had never done any sketching at all. I was a little nervous, as the team including not only the director of the centre, but also David Morgan himself - the man the whole place was named after!
The idea was to empower them to feel comfortable about a challenge they had signed up for - each had agreed to keep a personal sketchbook during the course of my residency. Perhaps even more scary for them, they are going to take part in a chain-sketchbook project, as well as go on a sketchcrawl.
I tried to make it fun and to show them different ways of tackling drawing and painting, to free them up from the idea that the main benchmark of success is visual realism. Everyone seemed to have a good time and be genuinely pleased with their efforts. Result.
Today is the day!! My Craftsy master-class, teaching you how to draw children's book characters, just went live, slightly ahead of schedule! To celebrate, you can get the class half price for the rest of this week from this blog post. Yep - Craftsy allow me to discount the class if I want. So what better time?
Last week I got a sneak preview of how it looks and am absolutely delighted with the way it's turned out. The editing guys have done a smashing job, splicing all the material together. There's me talking (okay, nothing new there says John...), plus all the various drawing demos that we filmed, lots of illustrations from my books, as well as various extra drawing tips with bits and bobs of graphics.
Plus, Craftsy's clever, techy guys have had to build the whole background platform, because the workshop is not just a series of films. Oh no...
After each lesson, I set my students a homework project to do. Then, when they're done, they can post their work onto a gallery, for me and the other students to see. Great eh? Plus students can even ask me questions, if there's anything they need more help with.
Huge CONGRATULATIONS to Tami T, who was the winner of my prize draw. Well done Tami! Have fun. I look forward to seeing your characters :-)
If you were unlucky, don't worry: all is not lost! Craftsy classes are very reasonably priced but if you are on a tight budget, get in quick while mine is super-duper-brilliant-value with my launch-week deal...
The other brilliant thing about the workshop is that it does not have an expiry date. You can watch it as many times as you like, for as long as you want - once you sign up, everything is yours for good. And because you only need a pencil and paper, once you have signed up, it's not going to cost you anything extra at all.
I have tried really hard to pack all 7 of the lessons with tons of tips which should really help your character drawings, both of animals and people, but I've also done my best to make it a fun workshop to do.
Please do let me know what you think. As this is my first venture of this kind, I'd really like to hear your feedback.
Guess what?! To celebrate the launch of my on-line illustration workshop, the one I filmed recently in Denver with Craftsy, I am running a competition. Hurrah! I'm giving away a free subscription to my 7-lesson master-class on How to Illustrate Children's Book Characters.
It's a prize-draw. All you have to do is click this link and you will be entered. Easy-peasy. When the class launches on October 19th, one person will be picked at random to get the workshop for free.
The 7 lessons take you through everything I could think of that you need to know for creating believable human and animal characters for your illustrations: I crammed in everything I have learnt over the years for you.
We go through lots of tips to show you easy ways to sketch various basic characters as well as how to get across different ages, by playing around with various proportions:
I also demonstrate simple devises for creating different personalities, by varying the positions of facial features, in combination with different head shapes:
I show you how to make characters walk and run, and how to add different facial expressions to communicate more about what's happening:
In one lesson, we look at how you can use clothing and props to tell people more about what your characters are doing and who they are:
We had a lot of fun filming a lesson on how to communicate emotion. At home in my studio, I often act things out in a mirror, to work out the best body-language to use. Clif, my producer, thought it would be good to actually do this on set, so we stole the huge mirror from my dressing room and set it up on an easel in the studio:
I then had to do my acting out in front of the camera (!), playing at being angry, sad, scared etc. before transferring the positions to different character sketches. It took us ages to work out the best way to film it, so we wouldn't see the cameras in the mirror, not to mention the big battery pack I had tucked under my skirt (does my bum look big in this...).
So, this is actually me, being terrified:
At the end of each section, I give you homework tasks, to help you practice what we have been doing and you can then post your work for me to see. You can even ask questions.
I had a lot of fun creating the class and I am hoping it will be a lot of fun to do. By the end, you should be able to create pretty much any character you fancy. But better than that: you will be able to make them feel 'real' (even if they are a crocodile in a dressing gown and slippers), because you will learn how to communicate what they are thinking and feeling too.
So, don't forget to enter the free giveaway draw - you never know. But don't worry, even if you are not the lucky one, I will be giving away discounts in the first couple of weeks, so watch this space!
I am so excited. I can't wait to see how it's turned out!
When I found out that I was going to be flown to Denver to shoot the on-line Designing Children's Book Characters workshop for Craftsy, I wrote a quick 'showing-off' post on my Facebook page (like you do). All my friends left lovely feedback, wishing me well, which was of course lovely. But I got another bit of feedback too, one that was rather unexpected... 
I got a message from the person who runs the Botanical Illustration course in Denver. She asked if, while I was there, I would be interested in doing a real-life workshop for her students. My 1st thought was: that's odd - I am not a botanical illustrator. My 2nd thought was: wow, you never know who is looking in!
I got in touch, of course, and discovered that the course likes to invite visiting demonstrators to present different kinds of illustration workshops. Sometimes these visitors offer a wider take on Botanical Illustration (while I was there, someone from the Royal College of Embroidery was delivery a drawing-in-stitch workshop, producing wonderful rose embroideries). Sometimes though, they like to look at other kinds of illustration. Which is of course where I came in.
So, I finished shooting the Craftsy class on Friday afternoon and on Saturday morning I was sitting opposite twelve very keen illustration students, in a teaching space which was situated bang in the middle of Denver's wonderful Botanical Gardens (hence my water-lily sketches).
It was a two-day workshop. On day one, I taught pretty much the same material as I had just been demonstrating for the Craftsy film, which was very handy, as I couldn't have been better up-to-speed if I'd tried. On the morning of day two, I concentrated on idea development: how you generate ideas and allow them to evolve, so they have time to get even better. We also looked a look at communication: ways to make the ideas in your illustrations come across clearly to the reader, as well as how you add humour and impact.
In the afternoon, I tried something a bit new: I quickly sketched out an image of
Giddy Goat onto a couple of bits of paper, then got all the students to gather round, while I did a demonstration. I showed them two very different ways of colouring the same illustration: one using coloured pencils to get interesting colour blends and to shade 3-dimensionally (much as I do with my pastels); the other using watercolour, but with a soft, coloured pencil outline.
The students spent the rest of the afternoon experimenting with colouring up one of the illustrations they had developed that morning.
It went really well. I was so pleased. All the students were really nice and several of them gave me a big hug at the end, saying how much fun the weekend had been and how useful they had found it. I felt very loved.
Mervi, who ran the course, gave me a lovely thank you present of this beautifully illustrated book the students and staff had published of their sketchbook work (thank you Mervi!):
Possibly most exciting of all... she invited me to go back and do it all again sometime!
Well, goodness me - what a fun, whirlwind week I had in the US! I got back last Tuesday evening and have been catching my breath (and catching up on emails) ever since.
Where to begin? Well, the 3 days I spent at the studios were so interesting. Craftsy are a lovely company to work with and really looked after me, including a chauffeur to pick me up from the airport, which was an excellent start.
I arrived on Monday night and I had Tuesday off, to get over the jet-lag and altitude, although actually neither gave me much trouble (I think my excitement over-ruled them), so I enjoyed wandering about, exploring Denver city-centre (above) and I had a lovely visit to the art museum, which was fabulous both inside and out:
They had an exhibition on 'flower painting through the ages' and, when I spotted a bunch of easels and piles of oil-pastels in their activities room, I couldn't resist sitting down for an hour and giving it a go:
On Wednesday morning I was picked up by the lovely (and very pregnant) Danica, my make-up artist, and driven to the Craftsy studio complex, where I had my very own dressing-room:
I took a change of clothes for half-way through each day of filming, so four outfits in all, to create visual variety on screen. We had fun trying to find ways to hide the mike under my cardigans and collars. People who were doing classes about dressmaking took about 10 outfits, so I got off very lightly.
I liked the personalised star on my dressing-room door (nice touch):
That first day was a rehearsal day. We ran through a couple of lessons, to get me warmed up and used to working with the teleprompter, but it was mostly a technical rehearsal. We spent the day setting up the cameras and the clever, computerised stuff, talking through the best way to achieve things and familiarising me with the process.
We were a team of four and we all got on like a house on fire, right from the beginning. There was Clif my producer, who was as familiar with the material as me and who also acted as director and general 'person-with-an-overview'. This is Clif and pretty much the view I had while we were filming:
Then there was Tim, the man behind the sound recording and the various cameras. There were three rolling all the time I was delivering my lessons. Firstly, there was camera A which was looking straight at me, then camera B which always pointed directly down at the paper in front of me. Lastly, looking over my shoulder, was camera C. Here is Tim getting camera B into position on Wednesday morning:
Finally, there was Nick (who sadly, I forgot to get a photo of). He spent the whole time behind 3 computer screens at the back of the studio. His principle job was to create a rough-cut of the footage as we went along, editing together the output from the three cameras, on-the-hoof.
On Thursday and Friday, I was picked up at 7.30am (!), made to look gorgeous by Danica, before starting filming at around 9.00. We had such a laugh. All my team were great - they were very easy-going and good fun to banter with, but at the same time clearly knew exactly what they were doing. The attention to detail was very impressive.
We worked until 6.30 most nights, with me sitting at the desk, either explaining various elements of a lesson to camera, or doing my demo drawings of the many different characters I'm teaching people to create. I had practised the material quite a few times, so mostly I didn't need to actually 'read' it off the auto-cue, just use it as a prompt to keep me on track, but we still had to do a fair bit of stopping and starting, where I fluffed words or forgot what was coming next, because I was looking down at the drawing I was doing and so not at the prompt. That's where having 3 camera angles is really useful: you can always find an easy place to cut in again.
There are now about 5 weeks left before the class will be ready. Nick's rough-edit needs to be fine-tuned, plus lots of images from my books need to be spliced in, where I use them to illustrate various teaching points as we go through the lessons. Like with Nana Croc for instance, when I am talking about ways to add humour when you are designing outfits for your animal characters:
There are all sorts of additional graphics to add too, as well as setting up the interface for the students - one of the great things about Craftsy classes is that you can ask me questions and can show me your work.
Just before the workshop goes live, I will be running a competition, to give away a free subscription to the class, so watch this space. I will also be giving out special launch-week discounts.
I can't wait to see what the technical guys do between now and then. SO exciting!
Today is my day for getting everything together to take to Denver. I fly tomorrow!
I don't really enjoy packing at the best of times, but it's hard choosing clothes when you are working for a week and have to look good every day - no place for jeans and skanky T-shirts!
Luckily, I haven't got to take any picture books or artwork, because I posted a package a couple of weeks ago with all that. It always makes me a bit nervous when I post actual artwork, but I crossed my fingers and sent a big piece from Bears on the Stairs:
...along with various sheets of roughs and a load of my books.
I have been working really long days all this week, trying to get everything prepared, not just for the 3-day film shoot, but also for the 2-day, real-life, illustration workshop I am running for Denver University, straight after the Craftsy filming (I can't remember if I told you about that?). The university's weekend workshop has been rather tucked into the background of my head, with everything else that has been going on lately. Goodness me.
Anyway, I am as prepared as I am ever going to be - no more time to worry about it!
Wish me luck...
I've got another Skype rehearsal of my 'how to design picture book characters' workshop this afternoon. This time at least I have the chance to spend a bit of time going through it in advance, reading it aloud. It's amazing what a different that makes - lots of last minute jiggery-pokery is needed to make things flow naturally.
The Skype practices are a bit of a performance logistically. I have to use our laptop to deliver the face-to-face lesson, for my producer Clif, in Denver. I need prompt notes though, which will be on the main computer, by the side. So far so good, but I also regularly use examples of my finished illustrations (scans of which will ultimately be edited into the lessons, so the student will see them on screen). Trouble is, for me to see what I'm talking about during the rehearsal, each illustration needs to be brought up on the computer as I go along, squeezed in alongside the prompt notes. It doesn't make for easy, uninterrupted flow.
We haven't time to run though everything (7 lessons at 20-25 minutes each is a long time), so I will perform a single lesson, as a test, which will also give us an idea of how accurate my original timings were. I am either going to choose a lesson on facial expressions...
...or on creating movement, as those lessons refer less to my archive illustrations, which will definitely help. One other snag though, is that I will be drawing lots and lots of demonstration sketches (I also need to make room for paper, in front of 2 computers squeezed onto one desk), but Clif won't be able to see my sketching at all - just me talking away about what I am doing.
There's no way round that really, but Clif says he is mostly interested in the flow of me talking and the timing - he trusts that the drawing demo side will be fine. It's making the talking bit run quite naturally from one teaching point to another, as if I'm just chatting to a friend. I've got to get good enough at it that I don't ramble, so we can see more clearly how long each lesson will take.
Better get back to it then!
Things are moving on with my on-line workshop for Craftsy. I have now selected over 100 images from my archive of around 30 children's books, which I will be using to help explain various teaching points as we work our way through the 7 lessons. It's so incredibly useful to have that resource at my fingertips.
All the lessons are now planned in fine detail. The last thing I did was to time it all. I need to aim for each lesson to average out at 15 - 20 minutes. I can have some longer and some shorter: it's very flexible, but that's the target.
I had no idea how long they'd last to be honest. When I was planning, I just wrote down everything I could think of that I know about character design, then organised it all into 7 categories, and then organised that into logical sequences (each lesson is broken down into 3 sections, which helps a lot with planning).
So, timing... I set the stopwatch on my phone and got started. It takes a bit of getting used to, teaching thin air, but I've done it before, when rehearsing lectures. This time though, I had to draw as I went along, because I have to know how long it takes me to demo everything. I filled sheets and sheets of scrap paper with little characters:
I ran through each section 2 or 3 times (it gets quicker as you improve). Lesson lengths vary from 14 minutes to 26.
As always with my workshops, I could easily fill more time. I can continue to talk all the time I am doing the drawings, which helps, plus I am pretty quick with the sketches. The more demos a class has though, the more time it takes.
One way I can cut the time is to use pre-drawn sketches instead, though I much prefer to be scribbling away live. I think people like to see that too, watching the process and seeing things emerge. I have had the okay for the timings from my producer now though, so we are going to be fine.
Most of the sketches I'll be doing are quickies to explain a point, rather than proper drawings, as you can see from the sketch-sheets I created. There is a sneaky trick I can use if I need it though: my producer says, when it comes to more complex drawings which take a bit longer, we can always put in 'jumps', rather than watch the entire process. Clever thinking...
There are going to be 2 cameras filming at all times and I'm told the technical team have all sorts of clever tricks up their sleeve too. It will be so interesting. Getting quite excited now!
Yeh! I'm all set...
Remember my on-line workshop on children's book illustration? well, I fly off to Denver to start my filming adventure on September 7th and will be away for a whole week. Craftsy have a travel agent who has sorted it all out for me. They have managed to get really good flights times, so no getting up at the crack of dawn, or arriving at midnight.
It sounds like I will be looked after well when I get there too. I will be chauffeured between the airport, hotel and film studio, which will make things lovely and relaxed. There's nothing like relinquishing all responsibility for that part of things. I still get a thrill from flying and travelling alone is an even bigger adventure, but there's always a slight worry of things going awry, so I'm glad to be looked after.
An added bonus: I will be taken to the studio each morning by the hair and makeup artist, who will hopefully make me look at least 10 years younger. We'll see!
Last weekend I was away from home for 4 days in the historic village of Evesham, near Worcester, doing another of my dream jobs. It involved enormous amounts of eating (best rhubarb crumble I ever tasted), sketching in the sunshine, listening to stories, chatting into the night over glasses of wine... oh, and also delivering workshops and portfolio advice for members of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.
I knew the SCBWI retreat was to be held in a lovely old house with pretty grounds, but I was completely gob-smacked when my taxi stopped outside a long, Tudor house, all timbers and thatch. I was shown up a big, wooden staircase into a lovely old room, whose floorboards sloped down into one corner. I unpacked with a smile.
We kicked off about an hour later, with a brilliant getting-to-know-you exercise run by fellow author/illustrators, Loretta Schauer and Alexis Deacon. We paired up and had to draw or describe events from each other's past, stimulated by silly questions like: When have you injured yourself as a result of your own stupidity?
Then I ran my first session of the weekend: teaching people how to make concertina sketchbooks.
SCBWI had provided a big pile of watercolour paper. We set to, cutting and sticking. We cut up old cardboard boxes for the covers - it worked a treat. Then we all filed into the dining room for the first feast of many.
After dinner, we had a book review cum storytelling session, where we each read a favourite picture book to the rest of the group. There were 30 of us, so it took a while, but was a lovely way to spend the evening.
Next morning was a workshop by Alexis. He taught us techniques for making narratives more interesting, looking at the potential for using dishonest characters with hidden motivations. We all tried to create a story, though mine ran out of steam half way through. After coffee and biccies, we had a bit of free time, so I took my newly-minted sketchbook into the grounds:
Then it was lunch (yum), followed by an interesting talk by Andrea MacDonald, Senior Editor at Random House, about what makes a good picture book:
I did a couple of one-to-one advice sessions next. I found a lovely little summer house tucked away at the foot of the garden, which was perfect for a cost chat. people had booked appointments with me and I did my best to be wise and helpful with first an illustrator, then an author:
My 2nd workshop used the sketchbooks we made earlier. I wanted to explore the idea of finding a narrative in a place, of capturing the essence of a particular period of time using words and pictures, but doing it through close observation, recording what we could see, hear and smell. This is of course something which I am very used to doing in my sketchbooks, and I thought it might make a good source of inspiration.
I sat under a big tree and rang a bell. People gathered from around the grounds. Some had been playing croquet on the lawn!
We had expected mostly illustrators to take up the challenge, but a few authors went for it too. I showed the work I'd done since I arrived, as an example, and talked through easy techniques for getting instant results with watercolour (it was a revelation to most people that you could paint with clear water first, to control the colour), then everyone dispersed for an hour or so of experimentation.
After dinner (yum), we gathered in the conference room and, in small groups, talked though our work-in-progress. Each group then chose the strongest 3 pieces of work for each person - a great idea, as your own favourite bits of work are not necessarily your best and a fresh perspective is very useful. All the work was then displayed for everyone to browse and the next thing I knew, it was midnight!
Sunday began with my main workshop (after breakfast of course - yum). I devised a technique for drawing a journey, one piece at a time, to build up the elements of a story. Only, to put a fly in the ointment and get people out of their comfort-zone, many of the components were chosen randomly, by a neighbour. For me, the challenge was making it work, when about a third of the delegates were not illustrators. Still, it seemed to go extremely well. After coffee (and biccies) people took it in turns to pin up their drawing and tell their story.
Some ideas were hilarious, some were quite dark, some narratives were in a bit of a tangle, which the group helped to sort out: the brainstorming of 30 creative minds, all focussed on progressing one story idea was fantastic to watch.
The 'house cat' decided he wanted to join in. He demanded to be let in from the rain through the French windows, jumped up on the tables, walked across people's work, then took at seat near the front to listen:
After this of course, it was time for lunch (yum). Then we had another talk, this time by Emily Lamm, once my editor at Gullane (who worked with me on
Swap!), now working as Commissioning Editor at Hachette. She gave some excellent advice on what editors are looking for and things to try / avoid in your writing. I tried to capture her and highlights from what she was saying in the concertina sketchbook:
I had two more mentoring sessions during the afternoon, sadly in the house this time, as rain was still bouncing around outside. Then Alexis did a demo session, showing how he draws with ink, using different kinds of brushes (in various stages of decay):
I had my final one-to-one session, then at 7pm the gong sounded and it was time for another glorious dinner. I was impressed with the fact that the veggie choice for every meal was just as adventurous and delicious as its meat counterpart. We were all so impressed as a group that we asked for the chef and kitchen staff to come out and gave them a huge round of applause.
After dinner, we took a group photo in the garden:
Then we were all given a postcard, onto which we had to write three achievable goals for the next 3 months. The illustrators decorated the front of their cards. We stuck stamps on and handed them back to Loretta, whose job it was to post them all back to us in three months time. Good idea, or what?
We stayed up chatting and drinking and taking photos of each other until late, a gradually dwindling group. Finally, at 1am, the last dregs gave up the ghost and headed for bed.
Next morning, I packed my suitcase then luxuriated over my final breakfast (yum):
Then gradually, a few at a time, people had to leave (cue hugging...). It had been such a rich weekend, we all felt rather sad to be on our way. I was so sad that I had to buy myself a present from the gift shop (a VERY funky necklace).
Thank you to Loretta and all the team at SCBWI for inviting me to take part. It was a joy. Thanks as well to Sue Eves and Paul Morton, for the photos.
It was lovely to meet everyone, including the rather amazing Alexis Deacon, who's head is just stuffed with crazy story-stuff. And you know the really good news? I get to do it all again next year, as it's a 2-year invitation!
By: Beth,
on 7/23/2015
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Another good day at the Teen Design Lab. We had a pretty free form day, complete with some inspiration, project time, and stickers.
What we did:
- Watched some library related humor videos (such as Check It Out made by the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library — what a great job they did incorporating Taylor Swift into EVERYTHING). These videos served as inspiration and a potential design project. We wanted to give teens the option of making a video parody to promote the library.
- Then it was design time. This is the neat part of the camp. We just let the teens be, serving really only as sounding boards and offering words of encouragement. We provide laptops, paper, pens, and other design supplies (such as clay, building blocks, felt, etc) so they can create a prototype of some sort. It was neat to see the teens find their element — some needed to make something with their hands while others made detailed dream plans and steps to success charts. The design process also the teens to showcase their talents and strengths, which is awesome. At the same time, we are aligning with library and community priorities — giving suggestions on how to make the teens feel welcome or participate in their community and or library.
- The day ended with a sticker workshop. Again, this pulls from Makerspace and Fab Lab ideas and equipment (check out the Maker & DIY Programs YALSA Wiki page for more information about this sort of programming). It was an easy setup — laptops running Silhouette software, Silhouette vinyl cutters, and vinyl for the stickers. It’s another workshop where the teens really have free reign over what they want to do. Our only suggestion was using a silhouette image for the cleanest cut. The teens really took off on this project, most printing multiple sets of vinyl. They picked up on it pretty quickly (and a few had done this before). It was a nice way to end the workshop.
The teens will be back tomorrow, continuing to work on their designs and then give a brief presentation to their peers and community members we’ve invited to come so the teens’ opinions can be heard!
Remember the Craftsy online-workshop I was invited to run on How to Design Children's Book Characters? Well, last month, my outline got the go-ahead (yeh!), so I have now moved onto the next stage, fine-tuning the content.
The company are extremely professional and organised, which is great, as it fills me with confidence that they will get the best out of me (and help to make it look like I know what I am talking about!). They have a huge team of people working on all aspects of the process. First of all, I was commissioned by the Acquisitions Editor, who talked me through the framework of the workshops and advised me while I put together the outline and organised it into 7 similar length lessons of approx 15 - 20 minutes each. Now I have started to go through the lesson plans in detail with a Producer.
My producer called me from Denver last week and we talked for about 45 minutes about what happens next. He asked me to devise 'homework' projects to follow each of the 7 lessons. I also have to make a list of all the materials I will need and all the materials my students will need. The biggest job though is to time myself, to make decisions about which teaching points I am going to demo live and which I am going to talk through, using existing examples of my book illustrations - I can't demo everything as there is so much to teach and so little time.
I did the homework last week and have started making preliminary decisions about what book illustrations I think I am going to need to show on-screen. Next job is to hunt them out of the archive to send to my producer. Luckily, I still have the original digital scans of pretty much everything I have ever had published.
I have also just had an email from another member of the team: the Talent Coach. they are responsible for making sure I coming across well on screen. All very interesting stuff. I am so enjoying the wild variety of my work at the moment, what with this film, the urban sketching book, the residency, the school visits and of course my next picture book with Julia Jarman, which I start in October.
What a lucky bunny I am!
Mediabistro is running its first workshop to help writers craft the perfect pitch and query letter to send to agents and editors. In the Query Letter and First Pages Workshop, students will work with Kate McKean, a top literary agent and Vice President at the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency, to improve their writing and pitches.
The query letter and first pages of a novel are a writer’s best opportunities to make a good impression on an agent or editor. In this brand new, one-day workshop, students will learn how to draft a query letter and get real-time reader feedback on the first 1,000 words of their novels. Students will be given examples of both good and bad query letters so that they can become familiar with how to write a successful query for their own writing. The workshop will take place in New York City, on Saturday, June 20.
Mediabistro’s courses help students add skills to their resumes through portfolio-building courses led by media professionals. Class sizes are kept small to allow for individual feedback and interaction from industry thought leaders.
This workshop is designed for writers aiming to write and submit full-length novels of any genre. Are you ready to pitch your novel to agents? Register for the Query Letter and First Pages Workshop today before the course sells out!
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