ILLUSTRATORS – you just have to love them – DIANNE HOFMEYR

Bologna is a true celebration of illustrators... exhibitions everywhere of exciting work bursting with life, movement and expression, both from well-known illustrators and new emerging ones... and long queues everywhere of art students clutching massive portfolios, all waiting to see the art directors.

Ten days before Bologna, Roger Mello, 2014 Hans Christian Andersen winner from Brazil, and Piet Grobler of the International Centre for the Picture Book in Society fame, and their partners came to stay and for a few hours I saw the world through illustrators’ eyes. We sat above the sea on the Robberg Peninsula with icy wine in our glasses at sunset until it was dark. And the next morning what a pleasure to wake up and find Piet Grobler already working in the early African sunlight on my deck.

What undiluted energy! They were like boys let out of school. I was charmed by the quickness of ideas and the exuberance of their thinking as they brought the world alive. It struck me that this is exactly what illustrators do – they blow energy into the clay of a writer's story and make it come vibrantly to life.

Roger says he works from tins of wall paint... a first for me... because the colours are more immediate and vibrant. And vibrancy is what his work is about as these images from Maria Teresa show... an epic story steeped in fantasy, fiction and reality about the memories of a traditional carved figurehead, mounted on the prow of a vessel that ploughs the waters of the São Francisco river, and brings good luck to mariners while she collects the stories and dramatic fantasies of the river. Pity we don't see more of his work here in the UK. 

  

Piet Grobler works fast. In fact he's the fastest illustrator I've ever worked with. Without any emails going back and forth, his work suddenly appears in my Inbox utterly complete in 12 Spreads, blowing vitality and energy into my lifeless clay characters. Here are a few for our next book, Fiddle Dee Dee.

Carol Thompson is another fast worker. In her hands stories seemed to be teased out effortlessly into a coherent whole. With humour and the lightest of touch and quick sure line, suddenly a character springs from the page. Here's a glimpse into her studio and one with the artwork of My Daddy is a Silly Monkey lined up. Perhaps a penchant for turquiose if the dog, Coco's necktie (below) from a rough from our next book together is anything to go by?

Jane Ray is a master of colour and lay-out. Here's Jane in her studio and also a glimpse of her table while she was working on a Venetian illustration for The Glassmaker's Daughter. When I asked how she was going to manage a glass palace... her reply: we shall see when the time comes. The result is the glassiest of all glass palaces, blown into life by the delicate touch of Jane Ray. 

  

Jesse Hodgson too is a colourist of note... layering her pencil crayon strokes in such fine detail that I want to pick up a magnifying glass to see how she does it. A perfect creature emerges through the forest with all the tigeriness of a real tiger. I feel the sinuous energy, feel the tigery heat and smell the tigery breath in her work for Tiger Walk. 

At Bologna this year the honour of the Hans Christian Andersen Award for Illustration given by IBBY, went to Russian illustrator Igor Oleynikov, who has illustrated a broad spectrum of stories including those of Russian masters Pushkin, Gogol, and Trotsky.

Just for whimsy and imagination, these two images below would be enough to make him a winner. I wish I'd been at Bologna to see his work in real life. 

Now Bologna is behind us and it’s time to stop dreaming and get back to work... but let's not forget all the great illustrators who give meaning to our words! And yes, we DO love you!

www.diannehofmeyr.com
Twitter: @dihofmeyr
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INSPIRATIONS – Dianne Hofmeyr

Piet Grobler's exuberant illustration for our new book FIDDLE DEE DEE

Hopefully your celebration of the New Year was similarly robust. 

What’s not to like about the year 2018? Such a splendidly round number – plump and ripe and if you believe Chinese numerology, also very lucky with its 8, and the 2 for double or twice lucky, the 0 for limitless and the 1 for a beginning. New beginnings, limitless energy and twice lucky.  Sounds like a good year for writing.

What motivates or inspires us to write?

For me, so much seems to come from tiny, bright sparks of childhood experiences, a scene embedded way back in the brain, a sentence, a word, a room, a face. Slim, ethereal snippets that are somewhere in the subconscious. My cork-board, is not strewn with yellow ‘post-it’ notes of plots… but with pictures. Visual reminders of something I can’t quite place.

I’m like someone about to embark on building a house. I collect designs and ideas from magazines and photographs and put them in a folder. My end-product – not being as clear-cut as building a house – means I'm swamped. Some pictures go back more than 30 years.

Girl dancing with crocodile by Niki Daly on a note he once sent me more than 20 years ago. 

A metal sculpture, with in tiny print below November 1984

When I’m about to start working on a new picture book, the cork-board becomes my memory palace. The one below of an ice cave... probably stemming from a childhood visit to a cave in Africa not with ice but the same idea of darkness and light... went up for my next book, TIGER WALK.

On the board is a girl dancing with a polar bear juxtaposed with a picture of a watching tiger. 

The pictures are there for me to draw on. But when finally the story (without my pictures) is handed over to the illustrator, she or he will have their own memory palaces of ideas that are different to mine. And so the two meld and if the meld is strong, a wonderful book emerges that belongs neither to the writer or the illustrator but to something that is quite ephemeral.

A cave spread by Jesse Hodgson for our new book TIGER WALK

And in the making of the book, just as in the pottery studio where an accidental fingerprint on an otherwise perfect pot, adds its own dimension, so stories acquire shaping through the personal touch of both the illustrator and the writer.

In 2018, dream more, look harder, don’t judge yourself or others, do things that make you laugh and hopefully new beginnings, limitless energy and twice lucky will fall into place. 

www.diannehofmeyr.com

Twitter: @dihofmeyr