Congratulations to author and illustrator Jess Racklyeft on the publication of
a picture book due to be published in November for 0-3 age group by Affirm Press.
Nearby, far away, friends forever or just for a day – every friendship has its own special magic. There’s Only One Friend Like You is a delightful celebration of friendship in all its forms.
What a wonderful message to share!
Whilst we would normally meet at the Library at Docklands in Melbourne for all our gatherings, this event took place on Zoom, something everyone would be familiar with by now. Despite being an online event and without our usual chatty afternoon tea, we had over 70 registrations. That’s a great turnout so thankyou to everyone who joined us.
After a warm welcome from our ARA, Caz Goodwin, our Illustrator Corordinator, Jess Racklyeft, (who created our cute event picture up the top), started off by speaking about some exciting opportunities for illustrators: the SCBWI Australian Picture Book Illustrator’s Awards and Award Illustrator Showcase. Here is the link. https://scbwiaustralianz.squarespace.com/scbwi-australian-picture-book-illustrator-award
Next, Caz introduced our first speaker, author Claire Saxby whose topic was ‘I Try Hard To Be Good! When to do what you’re told’. She writes books on topics from Christmas to history to wildlife and nature and even old sailors who swallow krill. She loves research, which is a necessity when writing non-fiction, although sometimes she feels like she is bending over backwards and getting nowhere. She also enjoys the freedom of doing fiction projects requiring no research, where she can feel as free as if she were skydiving. Claire loves creating rhythm in language which is effective when introducing children to the wonder of playing with language.
Claire’s 2020 books include Haywire, Kookaburra and Aussie Stem Star series book: Georgia Ward-Fear.
Haywire, a middle-grade historical novel set mostly in Hay, NSW was shortlisted in the NSW Premier’s History Awards (2020). Claire spoke about how this book took six years from first idea to publication. To write convincingly, she conducted lots of research. She visited Hay where she discovered that her current descriptions of things such as street gutters, rivers and fences needed to be re-written to make them authentic in the text.
Kookaburra, a Nature Storybook picture book illustrated by Tannya Harricks, is a combination of narrative and non-fiction. The narration stays close the animal’s perspective, and the non-fiction goes into more detail on the species. Claire begins research by finding fault, eg: the untidy nest behaviour of young kookaburras. She tries to live in their world and after gathering information, she decides which information will go into the text. She looks for uncommon knowledge, eg: understanding the kookaburras’ eye vision or that they have weak feet. She then finds truth, eg: behaviour of kookaburras which shows their character. She looks at setting and landscape of the animal’s environment. Then she shapes a story arc as she would for a fictional story.
Aussie Stem Star: Georgia Ward-Fear. Claire interviewed Georgia even though she worried about imposing on Georgia’s very busy schedule. Through getting first hand feedback, Claire was able to write a great story representing this amazing reptile biologist and explorer.
Some of Claire’s answers to the Q&A:
· keep plugging away until you find the right publisher.
· if you are used to writing picture books, you have to switch your thinking when writing a novel where you do not need to leave room for the illustrator.
· Claire’s research gives her a main character and a point of beginning.
· Claire doesn’t plot. She writes into the character, setting, tone and voice. She may not know in the beginning how she will get to the end of her story, but she knows her ending before she starts.
Claire shared sneak peeks of three new upcoming books: Picture books, Iceberg with Jess Racklyeft which follows the life cycle of an iceberg, Treasure with Tull Suwannakit, and Great White Shark with Cindy Lane.
Next Caz introduced illustrator, author and art teacher, Katrin Dreiling who won the Harper Collins Illustrator’s Showcase Award 2019, which was announced at the 2019 biannual Sydney SCBWI event. She also met her US agent at this event, Essie White of Storm Literary. Katrin found her earliest style influences in her German home town where she studied its streets and architecture.
She also read lots of cartoons, and enjoyed studying illustrators, especially quirky ones who used pen and ink. She studied literature and became a teacher then moved to Australia with her husband and kids. She wanted to teach kids to love literature so began writing and illustrating.
Katrin self-published How To Get A Fat Fairy Flying to try out her skills. She concentrated on illustrating and part-time teaching then as she began to get more publishing contracts, her teaching time got less. She also loves doing school visits and holding art classes where she can get ideas from the children on how they see the world. Katrin conducts events at SCBWI Queensland and volunteers at the CYA Conference in Brisbane. Katrin is also a co-ordinator for ‘Kids Book Review’ where she loves finding and featuring illustrators on their site. Katrin has recently been busy with two projects; one for Scholastic and the other for Page Street Kids.
Some of Katrin’s answers to the Q&A:
· Push yourself to keep working on your craft.
· Attend conferences like KidlitVic and CYA and SCBWI to develop yourself.
· Consider creating an illustration dictionary. Katrin creates sections such as rocks or trees and keeps her drawings in order for easy reference.
· Digital drawing is quick, but it can lose the handmade look of the art.
· When she illustrated Bedtime Daddy, she surprised the author Sharon Giltrow by making the characters bears, not humans.
Our third speaker was publisher and director of New Frontier Publishing (NFP), Sophia Whitfield who joined us from London. Thanks for getting up so early, Sophia.
NFP publishes many Australian creators across territories Australia, UK and New Zealand. Some books might only be published in Australia if she feels there is no reach in the UK. Recently NFP began publishing some of their titles in the USA which are distributed by Lerner Publishing Services. There is a team in Sydney who look at Australian submissions. They also have freelance staff spread across Sydney and the UK who are currently all working from home.
Everything happens online through a management system and is scheduled within a timeframe.
NFP receive 80-100 Australian submissions per month.
Corinne Fenton’s and Owen Swan’s One Lone Swallow set in Italy shows how international sales can be influenced. Italian booksellers were greatly impressed by this positive depiction of their country especially during recent times.
The first reader of submissions is the editor in Sydney who makes notes on stories to be considered. These manuscripts and notes are then sent to Sophia. She likes to read the manuscript first, then looks at the notes second. It usually takes three months to reply.
Picture books still make up the bulk of what NFP publish. Board books under the Catch A Star imprint are doing well and expanding. She finds that board books work across all territories.
They also publish junior fiction such as Scoop McLaren by Helen Castles and Zinnia Jakes by Brenda Gurr.
Some authors and illustrators will get multiple opportunities to publish with NFP but also debut creators.
Regarding marketing, NFP develop videos (Sophia showed the animated trailer for Into the Wild by Robert Vescio and Mel Armstrong).
Video content goes online as well as book promotion via Instragram and Facebook. They create a newsletter each month and focus heavily on in-house produced teaching notes. NFP like to support teachers especially during this period of increased home learning. Their distributor, New South select a book per month to promote. When a book is released, NFP have a packet of images to use online and the book is heavily promoted for one month.
Lerner Publisher Services who distribute NFP books in the USA, choose what to distribute in spring and fall.
NFP books like to include diverse characters to make the books relevant to as many children as possible.
They spend a lot of time seeking the right illustrator for each project eg: if a book is lyrical compared to one that is fun/vibrant. Then the design team look at it and put together a list of possible illustrators. When the work is underway, the author gets to see sketches, storyboard roughs and final art. They often pair Australian creators. Illustration submissions are kept for reference and also Instagram is a source of finding the right illustrator.
Sophia is actively working on commissions for 2022. One topic she is interested in is mental health (post pandemic).
Audio books are also developed which creates even more reach for their books.
Wow! What a great afternoon. Caz finished off the event with a two-book lucky draw prize. Picture book Bedtime Daddy, written by Sharon Giltrow and illustrated by Katrin Dreiling and middle grade novel, Haywire, by Claire Saxby, were won by Rebecca Palmer.
Thanks everyone for making it a special afternoon.
My illustration work relies heavily on drawing and I have found over the years that I can lose line quality and vivacity if I try to recreate a drawing ‘in best’.
So nowadays I mostly now use the original drawings. But these usually need to be tinkered with.
Photoshop is like driving a car. There’s loads of stuff under the bonnet and I don’t even know what most of it called - but that doesn’t matter because all I want to do is go for a drive. There are also many different ways of driving – and possibly all of them are correct.
Here is one way of removing background from a drawing so that you can use it as the line layer for your artwork.
1. Scan in Greyscale.
2. I always duplicate that layer – so if I mess it up I still have the original.
3. Then from top menu bar select: Image > Adjustment > Levels
4. Use the eye droppers to decide on values for the whitest (the ‘white point’ = far right dropper) and the blackest (the ‘black point’ = left dropper) areas – so that you have plenty of contrast. It’s worth experimenting with this stage to get more or less graininess and texture.
5. Select the whole image and make it a channel.
6. Then Invert the image in this new channel (command + i).
7. Load the selection (the little circle at the bottom of the channel box).
8. Go to your Layers > open a NEW layer > Edit > Fill that layer in black… and Ta Dah … you have your drawing in black line all by itself, complete with all the lovely texture of your pencil drawing/print/collage.
9. It’s a good idea to rename that layer ‘Line’…
10. …and to add another layer underneath called ‘white’ that is filled with white. This makes it much easier to see what you’re doing as you work on the line layer.
11. Locking the line layer means you can colour just the line using the brush tool. The rest is really transparent … it only looks white here because of that White layer underneath.
12. I bring in scanned in collage/ paint or use the photoshop colours underneath the line layer.
13. You can have as many line layers as you like… bringing it separate bits of drawing.
14. Just remember to lock the layer if you want to colour ONLY the line
