Tag Archives: Katrina Germein

Meet me at Federation Square

If anyone is in the vicinity of Melbourne on Sat 13 June, I’ll be drawing at the Books Illustrated stall in Federation Square Book Market and the fabulous Ann Haddon will be selling signed copies of Thunderstorm Dancing by Katrina Germein, illustrated by me. Some of my other books will also be on sale.

Drawing and signing at Bologna Children’s Book Fair (In front with the green scarf, the lovely Sonia who has been attending the fair every year since she was a child.)

Come and say hello. I’d love to meet you! I love people to talk to me when I’m drawing… not sure what I’ll be drawing… but it’ll be something. And I’ll try to bring along some stormy craft sheets for you to take away and use to have some arty fun with your little ones… or by yourself. I’m all for that too.

Sketch for dancing scene with Poppy, from Thunderstorm Dancing by Katrina Germein

At this stage it looks like I’ll be starting at around 1pm and drawing for a couple of hours, but I’ll try to remember to update you on that a little closer to the time.

Thunderstorm Dancing, coming soon

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Hello! It looks like you can pre-order a copy of Thunderstorm Dancing now on Booktopia. And probably lots of other places too.

Plans are afoot to have some celebrations throughout April to mark the release of Thunderstorm Dancing, and I’ll post more on that soon.

Huzzah!

Thunderstorm Dancing by Katrina Germein, illustrated by Judy Watson. To be published in April 2015

Wet your toes!

Thunderstorm Dancing – nearly a book

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Here it is! the finished cover and what you will see in the shops from next April. Currently it is away being made into a book, with paper and ink and all that stuff we like.

As with childbirth… all the grunting and groaning is fading away, and soon I won’t remember that it was difficult at all :-)

The writing/drawing process July 2014

At the start of the school holidays, I was invited by artist Rosalie Street to participate in a blog tour… which means answering some questions (below) and getting some other people to do the same next.

Here is Rosalie’s interview response. A visit to her blog to enjoy her lush canvases and delightful merchandise is well worth your while.

Gold Leaf – by Rosalie Street

The blog tour topic is The Writing/ Drawing Process. Since as yet, I have found little time to work on my writing projects and instead have been madly drawing, I’ll answer the questions in the context of my artwork.

The first bit (the questions)

1. What am I working on ?

Thunderstorm Dancing, a picture book by Katrina Germein

At the moment I am in the late stages of final art for a picture book by Katrina Germein to be published by Allen & Unwin. The book is called Thunderstorm Dancing and it has been over two years since I first starting mulling over the project.

As soon as I read the manuscript, I thought it would be both a great text and a very difficult text to illustrate. It has indeed proven difficult for me, but I also realise that I suffered from the internal pressure that comes from winning an award; this will be the first of my work to be published since that award and my inner self told me very sternly that it will have to be good. But I now move towards the completion of the book and I’m looking forward to seeing it in print.

An unused sketch for ‘Thunderstorm Dancing’

There have been many sketches made for this book. A decision on medium was elusive for a while. But it came along in the end, and I’ve really enjoyed the layering and scratching in PhotoShop combined with the earthy texture of the real paint and pencil on Litho paper.

A small fragment of one final illustration from Thunderstorm Dancing

Altered book art

Last year, while struggling to progress with the picture book, I almost accidentally began sketching in old books as a form of relaxation. I say almost accidentally, because I have admired altered book art and found poetry for quite some time, and had always intended to try it. But starting was not a deliberate step into something new. It was a gentle bit of play, while watching my children in their swimming lessons.

drybrush sketches in the bombing zone of the local swimming pool. Ink on vintage book page.

I began sketching them and other children. And I really loved the effect of the drawn image on the printed page. It also helped me with Thunderstorm Dancing, because I had decided early on that the family in the story would be at a beach house, and the main characters all in swimming cosies.

Altered book art continues to be one of my favourite activities, and I intend to do much more of it, and to explore new ways of using it in art projects.

52 Week Illustration Challenge

The 52 Week Illustration Challenge, dreamed up by Tania McCartney, was something I joined early this year. It requires participants to produce artwork to a given theme that changes each Wednesday, and then post them on the 52 Week Illustration Challenge FaceBook page.

52 Week Illustration Challenge: Week 14: simplicity.
This was a really enjoyable experiment with ink and watercolour

One of the things I loved about it was that the community of people involved were from varied backgrounds and were supportive and kind to one another. Since early this year the group has grown to over 2000 members, many being expert practising artists and the standard of work has I think, sadly frightened many of the less skilled artists away, but the mood of generosity remains. And it is surprisingly good to have a theme to work to each week… often themes that I find very unappealing until they lead me off into some fun experimentation.

I have deliberately kept this challenge as a low-profile task for myself. I never spend long on anything I do for The Challenge and never worry too much if the work is imperfect or not my best. This, along with blogging imperfect work, has been a really healthy learning experience, and a great way to keep producing lots of other work and exploring as an artist, as well as doing my book project.

Clive Hicks-Jenkins’ Puppet Challenge

This is an on-line exhibition organised and curated by Clive Hick-Jenkins along with Peter Slight. I’ve not done so well with this one. In contrast to the other challenge, I have allowed this to become larger than life and daunting. I also failed to come to a decision over subject and medium, although my lightbulb moment came today in the shower (they often do happen there) when I may be too late to make it. So I’m not sure if that counts as something I’m working on or not…

Appropriately perplexed looking sketch of Greyfur the kangaroo who was my original subject matter for the puppet challenge

Graphic design work

Periodically I take up graphic design work if it is not too time consuming. I enjoy this work very much, but too often lately I have had to decline offers of work due to the unfinished book and lack of time. Some of my favourite work is with the Australian Children’s Laureate support team who produce various publications and branding items every now and then. In this context I enjoy using other artists’ work and modifying it to use as part of a design. Ann James drew the magpie who became the Australian Children’s Laureate logo and I have used him in lots of ways.

The Australian Children’s Laureate logo in one of its formats

School children from around Australia made artwork that I used in silhouette for the pitch for Boori Monty Pryor’s Storykeepers documentary.

storykeeprs sample page2 storykeeprs sample page3

Family life

This project of course doesn’t belong down the bottom here. It’s a very big part of my life – too big to summarise here. So I’ll simply say that I keep myself busy with two much loved youngsters Arthur and Hugo, husband Scott, the dog Dexter and chickens Hilda, Emily, Poppy, Storm, Stella and Vita.

Vita – Queen of the Backyard

My own writing projects

This gets a wee mention at the bottom. In fact there are several projects I’m very keen to get on to, that are waiting in line for me to find a bit of space and time. I look forward to launching into them.

2. How does my work differ from others of this genre/ style?

Watch this space

3. Why do I draw/ paint what I do ?

Watch this space too

4. How does my drawing process work ?

Hmmmm…

I have taken waaaay too long answering the first question, so I’m going to split this up and post my answer to the other questions later. Cheerio for now!

Putting Thunder Cats into Perspective

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Here’s a little peep into the book illustration process for Thunderstorm Dancing as roughs are edited on the fly while final art is being produced. For this spread, the Cat Called Thunder, needed to be inserted into the veranda scene, and I played around with various poses and movements until I found one that had the right character and jaunty expression.

…I realise Cornish Rex cats are not really characterised by jauntiness in the face of a thunderstorm. But this particular one is a Picture-Book-Cornish-Rex. And they are a specialised breed.

The problem was that the little fellow I liked is in full profile, and the illustration required him to be viewed partly from above. This can be a tricky adjustment to make (especially with drawings of people). But I usually give it a whirl by dotting in some rough suggestions of where the skeleton and joints might be, and take it from there. It puts the character into a three dimensional space in my mind.

My improvised sketch to alter the viewer's angle of Thunder and my guesses at the location of the joints. I was wrong about the shoulder as I found out later.

My improvised sketch to alter the viewer’s angle of the Cat Called Thunder and my guesses at the location of the joints. I was wrong about the shoulder as I found out later.

Here’s what I came up with to shift the view point. And I was happy enough with that to move on to inking stage, and to add in any further detail during inking.

A cat skeleton showing the position of the shoulder joint at the front of the cat, rather than up around the area we would call the ‘withers’ in a horse.

Looking at the skeleton above you will see that my shoulder joints were in the wrong spot, but as it happens it didn’t really affect the drawing. My made-up shoulders took a shortcut from the top of the scapula through to the elbow joint, skipping the humerus. (Very efficient, methinks;-)

The Cat Called Thunder struts across the decking as the storm approaches.

The Cat Called Thunder trots across the decking as the storm approaches.

Here’s the Cat Called Thunder redrawn in ink and in position against the un-inked veranda. I think he’s sufficiently jaunty for the most demanding of viewers, despite his overbite which would make orthodontists blanch.

Brian, the greyhound with an overbite

Here’s Brian with a similar jaw. I think the overbite gives these two a bit of an ‘oops’ expression.

Lucy

I’m still here.

Fragment of Sky

It’s a funny thing. When this book is finished, there will be tiny little fragments of it, like this one, only about 3 cm long, that I will really like. I think this is my favourite part of the book so far.

It has fat scribble and thin scribble, dancing together. They cross over each other in opposite directions.

I love scribble. And layering. And paint splatters. I wish all of the book were as loose as this. But it’s not.

Onward.

Thunder Gulls

A fragment of a Thunder endpaper.

Prismacolour artsticks are great to use. I’m enjoying the corners and flat sides to get sharp and gravelly effects, all rather rough and imprecise, which is a good thing when you have a tendency to over-detail things as I do, in the context of illustration work.

The Three Demon Cats

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If you mentally rotate this 90 degrees anticlockwise, and imagine the faint grey wash without the black ink details, you will be seeing what I painted a few weeks ago for page 14 of Thunderstorm Dancing. They were shadows on the floor for the cat I’m calling Thunder.

I picked up the piece of paper with three grey blobs on it today and looked at it in bemusement. ‘What are those three weird, rounded-yet pointy-blobs? They kind of remind me of something, but I’m not sure what…’

After working out what they were for, and given they are no longer needed, it seemed a shame to waste a piece of perfectly good paper. So I turned them into demon cats.

I could have turned them into nice cats. But their shape was somehow not really wholesome… more gothic. But don’t be alarmed. I will keep them in an iron-bound book and they will be unable to escape. (A small nod there to The Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O’Shea.)

The Three Demon Cats

The Cat Called Thunder having a bad day

Those demon cats may be related to the storm cat below. He kind of accidentally appeared when I was drawing storm tendrils… or whisps… or wisps.

The Storm Cat – King of Tempests