When reading one of my latest picture books, a 10-year-old little girl asked me this question:
‘What do you tell in your illustrations that is not mentioned in the text?’
I was amazed by the relevance of this interesting but rarely asked question.
And yet it is exactly this question that gives my profession its fascinating spark.
Illustrating is not translating words into
pictures but rather building on the text to tell a story in parallel, being between the lines
and saying with pencils and brushes what the text does not. It is a way for me
to enrich the child's imagination, to invite him to question himself, to make
him react, and nourish his visual and artistic language.
In the book Miss
Eliza Flowerdew Can Nearly Touch the Ceiling, published by Red Paper Kite,
Lucy has just turned 5 and she thinks that the older we are, the taller we are.
Her grandfather
himself is so tall!
Her neighbor
Miss Eliza Flowerdew is 99 years old, but Lucy has not had the opportunity to
see her yet.
Curious, Lucy
decides to meet her.
She goes on her little adventure and will meet a very surprising Miss Eliza.
But what you may not know, not even my publisher Red Paper Kite, is that I myself met Lucy mentioned by the author Brenda Gurr in her manuscript and everything that is told with my brushes was actually whispered by Lucy.
I would like to
reveal here some secrets about the story of Miss Eliza at a specific moment of
her life.
With the magic
of a few words, Brenda Gurr makes us understand that Miss Eliza once had a life
full of adventures.
So I tried to
emphasize this trait of her personality and enrich her character through my
illustrations.
On one of the
pages Brenda Gurr writes these words:
'She boomed summer-sweet
music into the dusky night.’
So here I am
with my brushes, watercolors, gouaches and some pastel pencils.
In a corner of
the page we see Miss Eliza showing photo memories to Lucy who seems captivated
(as much as the cat by the way, who is not mentioned in the text, but Lucy
absolutely wanted him to be represented on each page).
So Lucy
imagines...
She imagines a
group of musicians standing on the roof of a van, lost in the deep night in the
middle of a lunar landscape.
‘Could it be
somewhere in the Australian desert?’
A man applauds
them with eyes full of admiration.
‘Is he a lost camper too? Where does he come from?’
The van with its
hippie look tells us that we could be in the 60s / 70s when this trend
inspired young generations.
On the roof we
see Miss Eliza playing the bass. One plays the trumpet, another the clarinet
and the singer brandishes in the sky a tool that looks like a microphone.
'But who are
they?’
Maybe some of
Miss Eliza’s best friends with whom she loved to travel all over the world, and
one of them might even have been his life companion as we see him on a photo
posing with Miss Eliza just beside.
Also Miss Eliza kept in her memories a flyer that indicates the name of her band: the 'Bribie Band' (a little wink to Lucy who is Australian).
They probably had some success as the flyer mentions 'Sold Out'. We can also notice it on the pole just next to the van. Nothing is left to chance.
‘But why are
they on the roof? How did they ever end up like this?’
The van is old, which is revealed by a
subtle detail that will
not go unnoticed to the sharp eye of some readers: one of the tires is flat,
worn out by miles of road-tripping across the
country. They are traveling through Australia, playing in villages and cabarets
during their long adventure.
So, we can
imagine that on that particular day, late in the night, they found themselves
stuck in the middle of nowhere, entangled with this old van. And instead of
lamenting themselves, they created a magical moment, thanks to their youth, their spirit of
adventure, their imagination and their joie de vivre.
They set up
lanterns, arranged old chairs, the van's roof turned into a stage, the stars
became the lights of an enthusiastic audience, with the camper as the main fan.
Voila. I wanted
this illustration to convey a whole story on its own thanks to Brenda Gurr’s
magic words.
‘But then, what
happened after this impromptu concert?’
That, I leave to
your imagination, and let us listen to them instead.
Helene Magisson started her artistic career as a painting restorer in Paris, where she was also trained in the art of medieval illumination. Helene has lived in Africa, France and India. She is now settled down in Australia with her family. Her travels both inspire and enrich her work.
In 2013, she started a new career in children’s book illustration. Since then, she has illustrated several books including classics like The Velveteen Rabbit
by Margery Williams Bianco and more contemporary stories like Slowly! Slowly!
by T.M. Clark, CBCA 2018 notable picture book of the year. Helene is an award winning illustrator (first prize CYA conference 2013).
