On a foggy Sunday morning in July, 25 SCBWI SA members assembled in the new Blackwood Library, Tiwu Kumangka, in the Adelaide Hills for our annual Winter Workshops.
Our first presenter was acclaimed SA author Jane Jolly who has 12 published picture books to her name, including Tea and Sugar Christmas which has remained in print since its publication in 2014. Jane gave a humorous and candid talk about her writing career. She showed photos of her writing room, where she’s hand written directly onto the walls examples of beautiful language she’s read. She told us about her publication journey and also about other wonderful picture books she’s written, finishing each description with ‘No one wants that.’ Jane admitted that she has written over 400 stories, making her publication strike rate 3%. Jane’s advice to writers of non-fiction picture books is to save all your research so you can fact check on publication, which may be years after you’ve written the manuscript.
Our second presenter was the current May Gibbs fellow, Judy Watson, an artist, writer and illustrator from Victoria. She started by quoting John Cleese, ‘Nothing will stop you from being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake.’ Judy then went on to tell us about how she uses different styles for each of the picture books she illustrates, which involves a lot of experimentation and playing. She spoke about her latest junior fiction illustration project, Zanni Louise’s Hazel’s Treehouse, which will be published by Walker Books later this year. She set herself the challenge to draw the illustrations using only pen and ink lines, with no tone. She showed us how she researched her favourite illustrator’s use of line and looked at their rules to help develop her style. Judy also spoke about her process for creating the illustrations for her latest picture book, still a work in progress. We look forward to seeing the finished book.
Ross Morgan, fine artist, author and illustrator, was our final presenter for the day. He started by telling us that ‘being playful is the key to creating.’ He took us through the development of his latest book, and his first as author and illustrator, Glow. His initial idea came from a piece of music he wrote, which he then storyboarded. Ross says that he uses pictures to drive the story and the words come later. To develop the illustrations he paints small pictures on canvas boards, scans the picture and prints it, then paints directly on that. His final artworks are paintings on stretched canvas. Ross showed us a time lapse video of one of his paintings, showing that his process is very time consuming and labour intensive. At the end of Ross’s talk, Mandy Foot launched his book.
The day finished with optional critique groups. It was wonderful to have the chance to discuss our current projects in person with fellow SCBWI SA members.
Our next event is our Professional Day on 13th October.