Reflection of semester one and plan for semester two.

As I stated in my first post on October 19^{th 2017}, my line of enquiry and research would be based less in my illustration practise and more in literary theory, art theory, picturebook theory, and idea generation. I boarded a lot of ideas down, some like poetry, some that would be better suited to a comic or film, some that failed to have the impact I was looking for, and lots of small pieces that sort of ended up in a way working together to make the dummy version I have now. When I look back over it all as one body of work I can see how there is a thread in each experiment that links it to the next and no matter how different the story ideas are, they were all trying to get at the same thing; How to use the format to tell the story? And how to make the text carry only part of the information to encourage the reader to look to the images to find the rest of the story for themselves. 

My plan for semester two:

My plan for semester two is to take all of the research I have done, including what I have learned from writing my essay, and my experiments with story and carry it forward into the development of my first authored/illustrated picturebook. The dummy books I have made are coming close to where I want them to be, but are still in the process of revision. Really what needs attention now is the development of the artwork. This is what will be my focus in semester two. I have done some experimentation with hand drawn material in semester one – but I want to take this much further in semester two. Up until now the majority of my work has been done digitally, and I think one of the most logical steps in pushing that work forward would come from hand drawn experimentation. In the end, I might still choose to composite or colour or experiment with the images digitally, but for the initial stages of development I am going to do as much as I can on paper.

Over the mid-term break in March I am going to attend Bologna’s children’s book fair, it is the biggest book fair in the world and will give me access to meetings with the biggest international publishers in the world. It will be a great opportunity to see first-hand the illustration work that will be being published over the course of the next year, to spot trends, new developments, and to get a sense of what there is too much of. I plan to bring my development work, to meetings with publishers and sales reps to generate interest, make connections and gather some feedback to help pinpoint any problem areas that need further development. When I return I plan to take this feedback, and experience and revisit the work.  

Re-cap of this year’s achievements, and impact on my career.

This year has been a very successful start in the picturebook industry for me. My first published book has been reviewed and listed as one of the best books in 2017 in numerous creditable media sources including The Guardian and The London Standard. The book has been nominated for the Kate Greenaway Illustration Award, the most prestigious award for picturebook illustration alongside the books of Oliver Jeffers, Jon Klassen, Laura Carlin and Quentin Blake.  The book has also been shortlisted for another leading award for new talent in the industry that has yet to be officially announced. The book has sold in 10 territories out of a possible 33 so far including, USA, China, France, and Germany, putting the publishers I currently work with in touch with territories they have never worked with before.

I’m hoping that the success of this book, the illustration award lists and media coverage will help convince publishers, creative directors and editors in my abilities as an illustrator and in turn will allow me some room to make more experimental work. I want to position myself in the industry not only as someone who makes beautiful work, or sells work, but as someone that innovates and leads. I want to continue to learn and improve and I want to see evidence of this work in the books I publish, particularly in the books I author myself. I have two contracts left to illustrate over the coming year. After that I intend to publish only books I have authored myself from then on. Going forward I intend to take as much creative control over my work as is possible.

Cataloging in poetry and examples of cataloging in illustration and art

Cataloguing is a technique used in poetry that uses word repition to create a sense of praise, or sometimes to create a sense of magic or prophetic voice. Walt Whitman uses lists all the time in his poetry and its one of the things that actually defines his poetic style. In his poem ‘Song of Myself’ he uses it several times. The first list in the poem is a list of the things he loves, the next is a list of different events that add up to a vision of the chaos of the world. There is a list of jobs, roles and vocations, of all the people that exist in society; example bellow;

The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp,
The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving dinner,
The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm,
The mate stands braced in the whale-boat, lance and harpoon are ready,
The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,
The deacons are ordained with crossed hands at the altar,
The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel,
The farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a First-day loaf and looks at the oats and rye,
The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirmed case.... [etc.] 

The next is a list of things the speaker hears, then places he visits and then finally there is a list that he uses to show that he identifies with every religion he can think of. A catalogue is not a pattern, it is a list of symbols that share some common thread. Cataloguing is frequently used in literature as well. Melville’s ‘Moby Dick’, Charles Dicken’s ‘David Copperfield’, James Joyce ‘Ulysses’ and Vladimir Nabakov Lolita, usually in Melville it’s lists about whaling, and in the others its usually a list of names.But lists are something that is used by artists and illustrators as well and it’s something I’d like to experiment with and incorporate into story. Here are some of the ways cataloging is being used by Matisse, Laura Carlin, and Brian Wildsmith.

Matisse

Laura Carlin

Brian Wildsmith

Reader response theory - Louise Rosenblatt, Roland Barthes, Wolfgang Iser

This week I have been researching literary theory, I am interested in how we read words and interpret story and what this means when we come to create something that is ultimately for someone else. Who is this audience? What is their role? How can we fulfil that? How can a work create expectations? Or meet expectations? What are the expectations?

I came across Reader Response theory when I was looking for discourse on the role of the audience in literary works and I think its constructive to think about making work with this in mind. 

Reader-Response is a literary theory, that says that the reader is just as important as the author in the making of literary meaning in literary works. Reader-Response theorists think that readers are active participants who create a work of literature in the process of reading it. Contrasting theories and schools of thought focus attention primarily on the author or the content and form of the work. 

The meaning of a text, according to Response Theorists, exists somewhere between the words on the page and the readers mind. The interpretation each reader has will be similar, but each will be slight different. Reader response theory isn't just about understanding a text better; its also about understanding yourself better. Some of the main contributions of this theory came from Louise Rosenblatt, Stanley Fish, Wolfgang Iser and Roland Barthes, you can read Barthes 'Death of the Author' in full here. 

The literary work exists in a live circuit set up between reader and text; the reader infuses intellectual and emotional meanings into the pattern of verbal symbols and these symbols channel his thoughts and feelings. Out of this process emerges a more or less organized imaginative experience.

(Rosenblatt, 1978)

‘At the heart of the reading experience is the gap in the text which has to be filled by the reader. It is the gaps, the fundamental asymmetry between the text and reader, that give rise to communication in the reading process’ (Iser, 1978).