Children’s story
No Nose Rocking Horse
In September I made my first children's book. I've always wanted to try, and finally had a good reason to do so when in June I received this beautiful text written by Pascal Colman.
Bellow I'm sharing the process I went through; how it reminded me of my previous studies and, as always, what I've learned about myself by doing it.
The process, from the first read in June to completion in September.
I let visual ideas come to my mind over the first months, only sketching as a means to study (i.e. learning how to draw horses from statues when I was in Rome).
I started scribbling thumbnails and mood boards. I liked the way the text plays with rhythm, repetition and silence. I had the feeling a horizontally elongated format would allow such time-based compositions.
Going back to the text, I started breaking it down, in big ideas first and then sequencing spread by spread, including text blocks and everything. I pretty much stuck to this plan.
I bought some watercolour paper, cut it to size and took it with me on holidays in Scotland. I had quiet evenings to fully pencil in my story. Going for the real scale presented new challenges as I had to resolve and 'freeze' in one answer many things that were still floating elements until then. As if I had been enjoying this story as a universe in my head and now had to find the best snapshots to illustrate it.
Back in London, the inking process started! Thanks to a great class with Kim Whitby I had some very useful tips to try out.
I have no experience in book binding so did what I could, grouping the spread in four segments each sewed to a spine. The cover is fabric, which allowed some embroidery and paint.
Tada. Or almost. I was very happy to share the original when possible, but because of obvious material limitations I also wanted to make copies, for the pleasure of sharing. I scanned it, used Photoshop and in InDesign to gather everything in one file and had some printed.
Illustrating a story was a big first but also reminded me of my previous studies, in the thought process and development.
I first trained as a movie editor, and was also enjoying pre-production tasks such as story-boarding. As I worked on my thumbnails, the vocabulary was similar: pan or reverse shot, close up, an image edited in a 'jump cut' manner…
I also worked in video games for a short time, which also influences me: parallax scrolling, platform climbing or interactive scenes/elements.
Finally, I've recently been etching regularly. This is probably why everything came to my mind in a black & white, with a combination of lines (dry point) and tones (aquatint).
I learned quite a lot doing it! Technically for sure, and also about what I like and don't like.
I love a collaborative project! Our roles were obviously delineated and independent: I was given this story and then it was all mine to add my part to it. On solo projects, there's some internal voices to fight whereas here I had a purpose beyond myself: it'd allow me to share with others this story that moves me.
I can Photoshop, but I don't think I'd have liked creating this book through a computer. In many ways software would have offered ways to fix mistakes and perfect an image but for those reasons I'm glad I chose the irreversibility of ink. It made the process enjoyable and possible to complete, compared to the overwhelming 'undoing / redoing / layering / adjusting' that digital offers.
The physical object matters a lot to me. The size, binding, thickness, cover…I simply love the idea of creating a little world one can hold in their hands.
If you'd like to know more about this book, let me know. I've nearly ran out of prints for now but I'm sure we'll find ways if you'd like one.
And of course, if you're an editor and are interested…please get in touch!
