By Author, Kaye Baillie,
On Sunday afternoon June 26, we enjoyed a fabulous Picture Book themed Zoom event thanks to the SCBWI Sydney team, Susanne Gervay, Margaret Roc, Sue Murray, Sue Whiting, Deborah Abela and Marjorie Crosby-Fairall.
The day began at 11am with Tash Besliev from Affirm Press conducting four manuscript critiques, which sold out in record time. Thanks to the brilliant organisational efforts of critique coordinator, Margaret Roc, all went smoothly and Tash said she loved each pitch and commented that the standard was very high!
After that, Deb and Marjorie got the event up and running with reminders of competitions, grants, and opportunities and a reminder to read the opportunity-packed SCBWI newsletter, which is curated by Sue Whiting and sent out on the first of each month.
The first speaker was Tash. She began by saying how she started in the publishing world and how she studied journalism before transitioning to Hardie Grant Egmont then to Affirm Press.
We got a rare glimpse into what’s really going on in the picture book publishing process at Affirm Press. Tash spoke about some of her roles from balancing the publishing program, studying data, trends, the market, and costings.
She explained how publishing is a business, but to not despair! Creators can work within the publishing framework and Tash advised to always strive to push your unique craft a little further. Consider your audience and study the market. Once you’ve found the cracks you can work to fill those cracks and improve on what’s available.
She said working with creators brings the magic of bookmaking together.
Publisher – Editor – Creator – it’s important they work together by being transparent, flexible collaborative.
Next, we heard from Mandy Foot, illustrator and author. Mandy’s talk covered what it means to be an Adventure Illustrator. She combines real life adventuring with her character creations.
Mandy is inspired by the natural world and the animal kingdom. Research is the biggest part of her book making process.
For her book with Katrina Germein, Bev and Kev, she went to Monarto Zoo where she gained valuable insight into size comparisons – a giraffe’s nose is the same size as a meerkat’s head. This is just one example of many of Mandy’s real-life studies.
While preferring to draw animals rather than people, Mandy went back to ‘life drawing’ classes to create more realistic images for the boy character in her book Joey and Riley. A fascinating tip was how to place the characters for effect. This example of turning the dog’s head towards the boy, made all the difference for the cover of the book.
Mandy said it’s important to get kids away from their screens and get them outside. With direct experiences, kids can have real adventures and see what presents itself. She is careful to create her characters in a way so that the method is teachable to kids, enabling them to gain confidence in their own drawings. For example when teaching how to draw an elephant, she starts kids off first with a shape of an apple or pear.
As an illustrator/author, Mandy works out if her images are coming through in the story to take the place of words. Great advice!
We saw how Mandy storyboards and maps her illustrations and how layers in her painting and drawing process bring the illustrations to life – and a hair dryer it would seem. Amazing!
After thanking the two amazing and generous speakers, Deb hosted the Book Babies segment where the audience caught a glimpse of some of the latest amazing books released by SCBWI members.
That’s a wrap!