The Musicians

"Which makes me want to talk about my next choice–Sempé. I met this guy once. I first stumbled across him when I was living in Athens and I bought a Greek copy of Echo Des Savanes to learn Greek. In that there is a great spread full of lots of people marching, some kind of freedom or protest march, and everyone is carrying banners proclaiming freedom this and freedom that. Then one little guy has ‘Rooms to Rent’ on his banner! Haha! And it was this beautiful drawing, simple line work and so much detail. And funny. I also discovered him through his illustrations for the New Yorker. He did so many covers for them. The book I’ve chosen is The Musicians (1987) . Such a unique style, so carefully observed and softly drawn. The variety, as well, is unexpected. Clearly observed, loosely drawn trees but accurate. The story telling draws the eye and he knows just what to leave out. This allows our brain to fill it in. His design and layout play with scale to great comic effect. A great sense of perspective. It looks so effortless but many of these spreads are very complicated and difficult to achieve. “I love the stories but, for me, it’s always the pictures first” My French publisher, when I had one, took me to a Sempé book signing. So my copy is signed. I asked him if he planned things out, did he make a plan for each illustration? He said, “No, I just start drawing!” How do you do that? I can’t imagine that. I plan everything, I do roughs. I stick it on the light box and trace it out. But Sempé said he just starts and if he doesn’t like it he just starts again. Amazing. He captures those hilarious little domestic moments. What I love most about all the books I’ve chosen, or all the artists, is their sense of design and their view of a scene. They all have such a wonderful way of visualising a scene—do you view it from the top or the bottom? What do you include in that scene? This is the really important stuff when you are illustrating. With Brian Wildsmith it’s the colourwork and the draughtsmanship that really appealed to me. Sempé—it’s the line work and his view of things, how he played around with perspective and how he played with scale—great big rooms and little people. Also the way he chooses to exaggerate things. None of the artists I’ve chosen do photographic representations of the world. They have their own way of leaving things out or playing around with the landscape. The perspective may not be right, but they can still make it work and make it say something specific. I’m so aware of the way things sit on a page–the cut off, the “bleed”, do you choose to make it big or small. This all came from working in advertising–doing layouts and design of press advertising and packaging. Typography for me is also really important. I love detail. The author doesn’t have to describe everything. Sometimes authors get a bit carried away and I’ll say, “Look you don’t need all that. I’ll draw it–tell me that it’s a castle and I’ll draw you a castle. Give me some key information and I’ll include that if it is key to the story.” Yes, absolutely. I discovered later that three other artists had tried to illustrate the Winnie the Witch story and they had all done Winnie’s black house as a silhouette. Now when I had a go, because of my fine art training, I’d been taught that if you wanted a warm black add red and if you want a colder black add blue. Because black can be such a dead colour–it can be a bit flat–but adding red and blue in this way you can add something to it. So this is how I did Winnie’s house and that is what they loved. I also thought that with a black house you need colour somewhere so I made her clothing very colourful–especially her socks. I don’t know where they came from but I gave her red and yellow stripy socks. It just kind of gelled for me. Also Ron, my editor, gave me the confidence by simply saying, “Yes, go off and do it.” No other instructions–just get on with it."