Seven Stories

In April I began working on some pieces for Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children’s Books in Byker, Newcastle. I’d been involved with them before when they had their Fairy Tales exhibition, and had used illustrations from my Grimm’s Fairy Tales book, cover published by Puffin Books, on the walls of the show.

Earlier this year Alison Gwynne at Seven Stories explained that they were about to undergo a massive overhaul of the 18th century building they were housed in, part of a previous paper mill on the River Ouse with big windows, loads of light and, as she explained, lots of bits ready for an upgrade! Nestling in the Ouseburn Valley, ‘birthplace of the industrial revolution in Newcastle’, Seven Stories is a big 7 storey (of course) wendy house of books, stories, shows and collections dedicated to celebrating British children’s books, and based at Lime Street. (Right now, you can see an exhibition about Michael Foreman, who I met while working there - now there’s a body of work to admire!)

Seven Stories is on the left behind the trees, helpfully:

Oh and yes, these you can pass as you stroll to 30 Lime Street, courtesy of the City Farm right in the belly of the valley:

The first task, completed in the studio, was first to develop a repeat type-based pattern for the big wide reception desk, and the desk inside the fulsome book shop. I wrote out the words for the seven basic types of story from which ALL stories are evolved - tragedy, comedy, rags to riches, voyage and return, monster, quest, and redemption - which were then set into a repeat pattern and printed at a huge scale on the specially-built desks - here’s the desk before and after:

Thereafter the job was to have these words applied to a set of seven bespoke lightbooks, which were to flap and hover over the heads of the visitors as they entered. Though I produced the design for them in April, we didn’t get to see these until the last couple of days of actually being on site, but here’s how they looked, lit up and wafting through all the LED colours of the rainbow:

See them glowing here!
https://vimeo.com/134312033



The big task however was the one which took us up to the Ouseburn Valley itself, saw us installing ourselves in the cosy Cumberland Arms (vegan full English brought to your bed every morning, ales and a fine view over the valley) for eight days, slapping on our Inkymole overalls and walking down the valley to work every morning: The Big Mural.

We printed up some workmanlike Proper Overalls (do workmen wear gold embroidery?) and some Inkymole On Location threads - we thought it was about time - and packed them with our fresh brushes and new paint collection, and embarked on the mega-drive to Newcastle.

The Café had had three empty walls since it opened ten years ago, but was a bit flat and tired looking. Alison’s idea was to create a food-inspired mural to fill these walls and give the little munchers and their families something their eyeballs could feast on as well as their tummies. Taking inspiration from the hundreds of children’s books whose central theme is food - or which are famous for a single foody reference! - and using Dulux Trade colour sample pots, we decided on a tryptich of images with a large, busy central illustration hiding the word ‘I’m Hungry’  in its negative space. Would it work? It did on paper, but whether it did on the wall we wouldn’t know till we started painting!

[If you would like to see the massive selection of books which contributed to the illustration, you can see it here. This is only about half of what I could have included!)

Fuelled by morning sausages, packed lunches and exquisite midday fresh-roast coffees from Ouseburn Coffee Company, just over the way, we embarked on The Big Mural.

The Café before:

During:

Watch some of the frantic action here:
https://vimeo.com/134085382




My plan was for either side of this central motif to explore the darker side of ‘food in children’s books’ - the stuff I remember from childhood; ancient classics such as Three Billy Goats Gruff, Red Riding Hood, the three tragic little piggies, terrifyingly large beanstalks and the horrific Wolf and the Seven Little Kids on the left, with the right hand side dedicated to possibly the most famous book about food, Charlie and the Chocolate factory, which has its own murky morals and lessons.

To be executed in a less playful Mole-style silhouette with brooding atmospheric skies, we wanted spray paints to achieve an almost Photoshoppy gradiented sky, and after consulting assistant Graham to look at some slighjtly left-of-centre sky gradients - this had to look a little unusual - we enlisted the help of local spraypaint expert Dan.

Dan owns the nearby spray paint emporium, Colours, and was delighted if a little surprised to be asked to come and paint our backgrounds for us. With a sandwich and *the appropriate health and safety gear*, Dan arrived on the Sunday and got those skies and aurora borealis down in a fraction of the time it would have taken us, to breathtaking effect:

After which it was down to us to add the foreground, stars and my giant cheese moon, stencilled and dabbed with more spray paint:

And the last job was - in response to demand from a few of the people we’d called out to for requests - Agatha Trunchbull's stolen chocolate cake, eaten in secret by Bruce Bogtrotter who’s then forced to scoff the lot till he…well...

Along the way we had plumbing dramas, floods and access issues - all part of the process of major works being done around us as we painted - but we also had some delicious Lebanese food, great coffee, massive breakfasts and a proper Byker welcome, and despite feeling like I could have painted for another two weeks, the mural was duly completed and the team were delighted. We are returning in early October to paint the reception wall - welcoming guests with the line ‘There are sevens stories in the world, but a thousand ways to tell them’, and I can’t wait to go back!

Seven Stories is open every day except Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, with tickets costing from Free to £7.70.

Go Set A Watchman

I am really delighted to be able to share my cover for Harper Lee's new novel, 'Go Set A Watchman', published worldwide on Tuesday 14th July.

When I illustrated the cover for the 50th Anniversary Edition of 'To Kill A Mockingbird' in 2010 (published 2010 - my blog on that written five years to the day of Watchman's publication), I like the rest of the world did not foresee a second novel from its author, so when news of its discovery, I was beside myself with excitement and secretly hurled out cosmic wishes to be given a chance at its cover.

I'd predicted that having done 'the' existing Harper Lee cover, I'd be out of the running, but it's strange how things turn out. The Heinemann/Random House UK and US covers were both done in-house - you will thus find only two versions of the cover online - but one independent publisher asked me to create an illustration for their hardcover edition, Open Books, in Korea.

A publisher of beautiful, high production value contemporary European and American books and novels, these fellas built their own Guggenheim-like office HQ and Museum in Paju Book City (such a place exists) to house their Mimesis imprint of art, illustration, architecture and photography books, and had a backlist of stylish and carefully designed books. 

Suitably impressed by their reputation, and the fact they'd been granted a license to publish the novel, we had an incredibly short space of time in which to do it, and no...I wasn't allowed to read it! With a global embargo on the manuscript except for a handful of people deep inside the publishing houses, I had to set to work with a keen but firm art director, Gregory, and only a couple of elements of the storyline.

I began with frantic sketching out of ideas, since I had quite a few and wanted to get them all out on paper. Since I have a habit of sending the client too many choices, I felt a bit bad hitting Gregory up with nine choices from the outset:

The other bit of the story I did know was that Scut, now Jean-Louise (her real name), has travelled home from New York to meet her father, Atticus, to find a change in both him and his outlook; a change in hers is also hinted at. In the middle of the civil rights movement in the small southern American town she grew up in, she is forced to grapple with political and personal issues as she tries to understand her father's attitude to society.

Since this book was to be published as a pair with a fresh edition of To Kill A Mockingbird, the brief was to create something which was connected, but visually distinct, so the silhouettes of the Mockingbird cover were to feature. I set about trying to capture both people having that meeting:

I started drawing Atticus in earnest, too - trying not to get too focussed on the beautiful Gregory Peck version forever engraved into memory:

Clothing references were careful, with the book being set in the 1950s - I also thought about what I knew about the young Scout, now twenty years older and 'Jean-Louise' - would she really be into dresses, skirts? How could I make it clear that the grown-up Scout (that bit I did know of the story) was a Woman now, and living in what were still very conservative times?

A version was picked out after working up three of my ideas to almost-print standard, then developed tightly. I was aiming to communicate the notion of a meeting of strong minds, of two adults with differing views, and the tension of one waiting for the other's arrival - the fence being a clear suggester of division but also of 'letting in' and changing attitudes to segregation. I made many hand-painted backgrounds, suggesting night-time and scorched earth, even one hinting at the stars and stripes, before settling on the dark blue.

Of course Jean-Louise is walking back into her childhood home, so memories of her 6-year-old self would be waiting inside the gate as she came in - here she is in a rough ink sketch holding her flower from Mockingbird, before turning her into Jean-Louise's shadow:

The cover was honed and refined with Korean type and an English subtitle added, together with the author's name in Korean. I think the Korean characters look beautiful - and they were sensitively given the same treatment on the Open Books edition of Mockingbird too:

Both can be bought from Open Books website, but I've ordered myself a UK edition - I'm working away the day it comes out so I've had it delivered on location, because honestly, I can't wait!

It was a challenging process, but possibly the best job ever, for many reasons: a monumental book, a hard brief, a great art director, and an impressive publishing house.

More on the book itself, and the UK/US covers:

Open Books

Open Books' charming Watchman-dedicated Facebook page

My blog about To Kill A Mockingbird

NY Times US cover review

Guardian UK cover review

Signwriting with David Kynsaston.

My weekend was spent at Waste Studios in Nottingham undertaking my first formal learning in ages. In recent years I’ve done segwaying, zipwiring, 4x4 driving; further back there was glassmaking, bee house making and even mask and fancy box-making, but those were nothing compared to this!

We’d had a busy eighteen months which saw us painting a big mural in Baltimore at a moment’s notice, a future ghost sign on a local recently-restored pub and its interior, and a 15m wall mural, all completed on a heady mixture of gun-ho, improvisation, projection and the experience we already had. Somehow, we got those jobs done to the client’s total satisfaction and looking really nice.

But with several more outdoor/wall/sign writing engagements coming up for the Inkymole Outdoor Division this year, I’d begun to feel keenly the lack of expertise in certain areas - there must be ways and means of doing more elegantly what we’d done, and better and more appropriate materials. I’d kept an eye out for a signwriting course since the start of the year, and when this one came along, grabbed it.

I’d forgotten what it’s like to be a beginner at something (I’ll get to experience this again when we go drifting next week!) and three important lessons came home with me from the weekend.

Day One was Roman type.

First, realising the crucial difference between a ‘script’ or a ‘hand’ - the style of lettering that a sign-writer created by hand is not the same thing as a typeface or a font - was the first big learning curve. The Roman and Copperplate letter-forms I was pencilling out with tutor David Kynaston’s home-made angle tool are ancient characters which, although subject to certain rules and weights, are slightly different every time depending on who’s drawn them, at what size and on what substrate. In other words - aim for hand-drawn perfection, not mechanical accuracy. I was soon auto-correcting myslf every time I reached for the word ‘typeface’.

Learning Curve no. 2 was the amount of maths involved in creating a single letter, a collection of which when spaced correctly (not kerned - spaced!) create a word. Often, the most I’ll pencil out for some type is a base line, maybe a top and centre line perhaps, but the consistent angled lines generated by measuring points were a new and slow procedure.

After two hours of drawing out letters using only a pencil, ruler and David’s special tool, and still not getting them quite right, I couldn’t help but think about how much type I’d have created in the same amount of time using my ink pens on paper. Nope - this is a very different way of working, but incredibly satisfying. There’s no ‘winging it’. I usually only get to the labour intensive part of my lettering when I’m settled down with my pen and ink, but this was a reversal - measuring out took ages, but the letters themselves, when we were finally allowed some paint and a brush, emerged fairly quickly, a wobbly and uncertain stroke at a time.

(In fact, remembering to refer to it as paint not ink, and to use it as such, was another piece of learning!)

Watching Dave create his own letters freehand was an encapsulation of his 27 years of experience, and a reminder of what it is like to be on the other side of the many hours of teaching I’ve done: Lesson Number 3. When I sweep a pen over a sheet of paper with apparent casual ease, it’s easy to forget that the person watching who’s never done it before might well be feeling they could never achieve that - just as I did when I watched Dave’s Massive Signwriting Hands pull beautiful Copperplate sweeps from thin air. I gulped back awe and intimidation with my half-aware sip of tea, and narrowed my eyes in determination.

So when the chance came to pick a complete word to render on our own at the end of Day 1, I chose:

Day Two was Copperplate.

Dave’s casual sketch of an a, for me to copy, using his points system:

My row of practise ns:

Copperplate I thought I’d be more comfortable with, but I still found there was a great deal of muscle memory in the right hand that wanted to sweep and add pressure where it wasn’t supposed to be for this script. The key to an excellent Copperplate is to get your strokes absolutely consistent - fat ups, thin downs, and vice versa, and the thins are REALLY thin.

Today, un-learning seemed to be the key - ink pens need pressure, sign-writing brushes don’t, and working vertically changes everything.
For some reason, capital letters were easier for me than the lower-case; here are Dave’s examples, and the chart to follow:

Everyone there was already a signwriter with some serious skill level knocking about, like this fella’s finished piece:

Again in the afternoon, aware I was missing a 3-year-old Coleman family member’s birthday party, I decided to make my final piece this. At this point, the concentration levels were at their highest!

And the final. The P stems are terribly wonky, but there are bits of it I was really pleased with - it took ages! As you can see I risked the disapproval of Dave The Tutor by adding in some customary (and quite unnecessary) Molesweeps:

Finally I took home the set of proper signwriting brushes, made by Dave himself in his special home-made box, which he personalised with an easy swish of the pink paint. Well we do have actual proper signwriting to do very soon, and we need the proper gear, right?

At the end of the weekend I was knackered, partly because I was standing up pretty much the whole time, but mainly because I was reminded of the fact that although the brain occupies only 2% of the body’s total mass, it uses up 20% of its energy. So, there was nothing for it but to sit down in the Oldest Pub In England with a half of dark porter and some crisps, under its roof carved from the inside of the rockface.

I’ll definitely take the opportunity for another course if I can, as one was clearly only the very micro-beginning, and I need to, shall we say…brush up! Thanks Dave for an excellent two days at just the right pace, in a sunny studio.