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Coloring Page Tuesday - Mousie Pool

     While the cat's away, the mice will play - especially on Christmas Eve!
     CLICK HERE for more Christmas-themed coloring pages!
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THE 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS IN GEORGIA! Makes a GREAT teacher gift!
Don't live in Georgia? Check with your local bookseller - Sterling has a version for each state. Click the cover to learn more.
I create my coloring pages for teachers, librarians, booksellers, and parents to enjoy for free with their children, but you can also purchase rights to an image for commercial use, please contact me. If you have questions about usage, please visit my Angel Policy page.

Picture Hooks

One of the reasons I chose to go to the University of Edinburgh was because of Picture Hooks. This is a mentorship program for five lucky illustrators working with successful children's book illustrators. It's organized by many of the key faculty at the College of Art as well as by some well-known picture book people who circulate around the school. I figured folks who felt so strongly about picture books were my kind of people, and it's proven to be right.
The results of the program are presented at the National Scottish National Gallery in a formal exhibition that elevates illustration to its rightful place.

Works by the mentors and the mentees hangs side by side so that the viewer can try to discern the influence.

Although the mentors often said, they learned as much as the mentees!
The show was truly inspirational. Like these pieces by mentee Hannah Coulson.

Or these pieces by Nick Sharratt.

Tracey Smith's screen prints were so interesting:

The cases were just as interesting as they held the works-in-progress for the various illustrators - their creative processes (a.k.a. their brains on the outside!)

We took a field trip to go view the exhibition along with the organizers. It was a special treat to see the final product through their eyes. Here is Catherine with Vivian French.

I hope I'm able to be involved in this somehow next year!

Seasons Greeting from Little Pickle Press

Little Pickle Press has a great way to give back and win some lovely books about kindness and environmental awareness this holiday season. As they say:

They say it's better to give than to receive, and we agree.
Instead of sending you a physical gift this year to express our appreciation, we'd like to invite you to join us in our corporate philanthropy project that will help at least two underserved schools get the items on their wish lists.

I have a cameo in the video, but it goes by quickly. Here is a photo of my clip so that you can see Edinburgh behind me (I filmed this in my studio at school), as I hold a copy of A BIRD ON WATER STREET. Click the image to learn all about The ExChange Project! (video)

Illustration Challenge #27

For this one, switch up your sketching medium. Usually use a pencil? Try a pen. Usually use small strokes, use long ones instead. Just make sure you're not making your mark the same way you always do.

Storytelling in our Wee Flat

A lovely thing has circled back into my life here in Edinburgh - storytelling. I did my exit show in college on the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee, and you may have read about my history with Jack Tales, so it's lovely to have this element back in my life again.
     The Scottish Storytelling Centre is a very big deal here in Edinburgh. The country is full of storytellers after all. In fact, the Centre is located in the heart of the Royal Mile on High Street - a most venerated location! I was eager to get involved both because of my background and because of the project I've taken on for my MFA Thesis about Tricksters - those clever characters who exist in most cultural storytelling histories. (More on that soon.)
     Recently, Stan and I bought tickets to go see the most famous storyteller in Scotland, David Campbell, in an attempt to bring these stories back into our lives. (I blogged about David HERE.)
     But then we got sick and couldn't go. PAH!
     But THEN, a few days later when I was feeling much better, lo' and behold, I ran into David in the mall of all places!
     "YOU'RE THE STORYTELLER!" I blurted and nearly accosted him. He was so kind. We had a brief, yet lovely conversation while holding up foot traffic in the perfume isle. I offered to buy him lunch (and to quiz him about Tricksters) and David kindly shared his contact information. First, he had to go tell stories in Ireland, but two weeks later I emailed him as "The strange lady from the mall." I was able to make good on my promise. Which led to...

We had lunch in a sweet little French restaurant, Le Petit Paris, in Grassmarket where I interviewed him about Tricksters. Folks at the nearby tables started looking our way, figuring out they were in the presence of a celebrity. Nervous flirting and gracious laughter ensued. Personally, I had the oddest feeling I had made a life-long friend right then and there. (David reminds me a bit of Doris Abernathy - to whom my novel, A Bird on Water Street is dedicated.) Which led to...
A local documentary cinematographer and director, Leo Bruges, was wanting to shoot three of the nation's top storytellers all telling the same story, which he would later loop together. The storytellers are David Campbell, Duncan Williamson's widow Linda Williamson, and apprenticing storyteller, Joshua Bryant. (He's all of 18 and very, very good. And just like Duncan took David under his wing, so has David taken Joshua under his wing.)

Leo was going to film in David's flat like they did for the documentary I linked to above. However, David's flat is on a main street, which means busses, and there was construction going on nearby. Which led to...
Wednesday! I wasn't able to go to school anyhow as our finals are in and are being evaluated - the studio is off limits to students as they grade. So the timing worked out perfectly for the documentary to be filmed at our flat. Stan and I were completely honored to have the renowned storytellers being recorded for posterity in our home!
The filmakers, Leo Bruges and Sandy Harris arrived about an hour early to start setting up. Our flat went from normal looking to soundstage in no time.

When the storytellers arrived, along with photographer friend, Dennis Newton, there was much chattering going on.

But soon, everybody got down to the business of telling the story "The Fair Maids Tresses" as told by Duncan Williamson.
It's a heart-breaking story of two sisters in love with the same man and how one sister's jealousy changes everything.

Here are Leo (standing) and Joshua (sitting) getting ready for Joshua's stint.
Linda spread her shawl like a bird, looking just like the cormorant from the story, and sang the Gaelic enchantment song - which enchanted us all.

David used his amazing skills at drawing visuals and connecting with the invisible behind-the-camera audience. (And yes, he wears kilts most of the time.)

And Joshua pulled us in with his steady pacing and legacy storytelling skills. (His mother is the equally famous Beverly Bryant.)
Meanwhile, Stan and I got to sit back and watch our flat transformed into a magical arena of storytelling history recorded for archives and future generations. (It will also be on YouTube - I'll share the link when it goes live.)
Just like Leo (right) and Sandy (left),

Richard Chase did a similar thing for the Jack Tales in Appalachia, and generations later, I am so grateful that he did. As did the Brothers Grimm in Germany. So, Stan and I felt a part of a true and similar happening - history in the making. What an honor!
And now for our next get-together... David, Joshua and I will have lunch next week at the best Indian restaurant in town. I told you I'd made friends - oh, what lovely friends!

Friday Linky List - 11 December 2015

From The Guardian: Top tips to joyfully declutter your home from Marie Kondo

From Atlas Obscura via Fantasy Glasgow: C.S. Lewis' Greatest Fiction: Convincing American Kids That They Would Like Turkish Delight

From The Paris Review: Illustrations from East of the Sun and West of the Moon by Kay Nielsen

Hybrid animals by Sarah Deremer - awesome!

From ALCS News (via SCBWI British Isles): Interview: Susan Hill on the art of writer reinvention.

From Notes from the Slush Pile: How to be Discovered by Candy Gourley

At BBC Radio: Colin Burrow on Fantasies for Children

At Tin House: On Pandering

From Notes from the Slushpile via SCBWI British Isles: The Fellowship of Writing

At Jane Friedman (via SCBWI Belgium): The Big Reason Why Agents and Editors Often Stop Reading

At Marcy Kennedy (via SCBWI Southeast Scotland): Four Techniques to Show Rather than Tell

From SCBWI British Isles: David Fickling on What are publishers for? (video)

Petr Horacek's BLUE PENGUIN - Guest Post

How I wrote Blue Penguin
by Petr Horacek
“Blue Penguin” is my latest book and was published exactly two years after I had the idea of writing a book about a penguin.
I travel every autumn to the Czech Republic, the country where I was born. I love autumn and I love the Czech countryside.

My good friend lets me stay in his cottage. The house is on a hill, it has a small apple orchard and woods surround it.
It’s one of the most beautiful places I know. I stay there on my own. I walk and paint in the woods and I think about new ideas for my picture books.

     Every year I come home with some ideas. Not all of them are good of course, but I always have some material to work with.
     Two years ago I was in this cottage and I was raking leaves in the orchard. I thought about one of my friends who was always himself and because of it, he didn’t make his life exactly easy. People don’t like it if somebody is different. My friend Richard was a bit different and I liked being his friend.
     The idea of writing a book about a penguin that was different came from here I think.

I enjoyed making up the story about a blue penguin, his loneliness, his dreaming up a whale who will rescue him one day and take him far away from his loneliness. He will finally meet a friend who understands him and appreciates his talent. These two will become friends.

In the very first version the blue penguin would finally separate from his new friend and he would leave with the white whale, but the story was a bit too sad.

My editor and I worked on the text for a very long time. I’m very lucky to be published by Walker Books and work with such a great team of people and editors who won’t let go until the book is just right.

I wrote many versions and it was quite frustrating since I was desperate to start on the artwork. I knew exactly how I would like to paint the pictures and I was looking forward to it.

Here are some of the sketches for the book.

I think I must have at least fifteen versions of Blue Penguin.

Finally, after many months on and off rewriting the text, I was allowed to get on with the artwork.

Painting the picture was fun. I like to get messy and I use collage, print and scratch in to the picture. I like texture and colours and this book needed it.

I don’t know how long it took me to finish the illustrations, but I remember feeling a bit sad when it was all over. Somehow I wished the book had twice as many pages.

Quite unusually even when the book was finished and ready to be printed, we decided to make a few more changes. That wasn’t easy, because I had to get rid of this picture.

It wasn’t easy, but it was a good decision. The book was finally finished.
I enjoyed writing and illustrating Blue Penguin and I hope you will enjoy reading it.

Letterpress at ECA

At the University of Edinburgh College of Art, you can sign up to learn about tons of various methods in the print shop from screen printing to engraving - they're called inductions. Recently, four of us from the post grad illustration department signed up to learn how to do letterpress.
Letterpress is the old fashioned way of laying type, letter by letter into a frame. For a long time, it was the only way to create large print runs of newspapers, books and such. Nowadays, everything is set digitally and letterpress has become an art of the tradesman. Happily, I came into the design world post letterpress - it makes life much easier. Still, there's no look quite like a hand-set letterpress piece, so I was eager to learn more about it.
Steve McDonald is the head of the print studios and he showed us through the process. First, we learned about the tools of the trade:

Then we learned to create our names - one letter at a time.

The letters are not laid out like a typewriter, but rather, the most used letters are towards the center of the drawers. Upper case letters are usually in the top drawer - hence the phrase. And many letters are hard to tell apart if they are upside down - like 'u' and 'p' - hence the term, "Watch your p's and q's!"
We placed in our leading - the space between the lines, which is literally a piece of lead - hence that term. (There are so many phrases we use that come from letterpress!)

When we had all our names together, it looked like this:

We had to make sure they were nice and tight. So much so that we could turn the entire plate over. The back was as pretty as the front!

Then we were off to the print room and the Letterpress.

Boris got the ink ready.

Then each of us got a turn running paper through the press. This is Karin.

And here's our final!

You'll notice a few letters are missing - like the 'a' at the end of my name. No, I didn't misspell it. Turns out some of the letters are so old, they've been plum worn down. You either switch them out or put a little piece of paper under them to bring them up to height - next time.
This time, it was just very cool to go through the whole process and see our results - very exciting! Next time, I'll tell you about the wood block letters we used!

Coloring Page Tuesday - Mousie Ornament

     Mousie has a surprise under the Christmas tree - a big reflection of himself!
     Have a Christmas image you'd like to see? Email me!
     And CLICK HERE for more Christmas-themed coloring pages!
     Happy Hanukkah to my Jewish friends! CLICK HERE to download some Hanukkah images.

CLICK HERE for more Christmas-themed coloring pages!
CLICK HERE to sign up to receive alerts when a new coloring page is posted each week and... Please check out my books! Especially...

my debut novel, A BIRD ON WATER STREET - winner of six literary awards. Click the cover to learn more!
When the birds return to Water Street, will anyone be left to hear them sing? A miner's strike allows green and growing things to return to the Red Hills, but that same strike may force residents to seek new homes and livelihoods elsewhere. Follow the story of Jack Hicks as he struggles to hold onto everything he loves most.
I create my coloring pages for teachers, librarians, booksellers, and parents to enjoy for free with their children, but you can also purchase rights to an image for commercial use, please contact me. If you have questions about usage, please visit my Angel Policy page.