Sea squirts
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Author Archives: Jane Porter
And for my next trick…
Here’s a little magician I have been trying out.
Covers of distinction
I’ve just spent two days in the Elephant and Castle, at London South Bank University with 9-13 year-olds from various local schools. It was all part of ShoutSouth!, a children’s writing festival organised by CWISL (Children’s Writers and Illustrators in South London). All sorts of writers and illustrators for young people ran workshops aimed at getting the children enthused about writing stories – and the pencils were flying! Many exciting stories emerged in the group I was with, and my job was to get them to design covers for their master-works in the final session.
To begin the workshop I showed everyone a set of images from the fantastic 50 Watts website, which is a tremendous resource for those interested in the history of graphic design. Recently they posted the results of a competition to design book covers influenced by Polish designers of the 50s and 60s, and I thought these could act as a good point of inspiration with their bold designs, simple lines and striking colour choices. A small selection of the children’s work is shown above: I specially like the highly ornate golden treasure chest watched by a sinister pair of red eyes, and the cover for ‘Waiting for the Wind’ where a whole village is encased in a bell jar with mysterious footsteps leading out of it. The bottom-left cover is for an as-yet untitled work about a homeless man and his dog, and the cover really sets the scene for a sense of urban alienation. ‘The Soul Keeper’ tells of a tribe who have seahorses tattooed on the back of their skulls, while ‘Shhhh…’ is about a carved elephant containing secrets of the French revolution. Meanwhile ‘The Giant Mutant Monkey’ has a secret weapon – pinecones which are filled with tiny knives.
It was great fun working with everyone, children, authors and illustrators, and I hope one day I will be able to read the full stories.
Beanstalks for Beanstalk!
Today I went to a tea party to celebrate 40 years of the children’s reading charity Beanstalk (formerly Volunteer Reading Help) – and the publication of their first ever book, Jack and The Beanstalk. The charity asked various authors and illustrators to re-interpret the traditional fairy tale – my job was to illustrate Saviour Pirotta’s version, which opens the book. I used pen and ink with a wash, and tried to give it a folkloric feel. Copies are going to be given to all of the thousands of children being helped by Beanstalk’s volunteer reading helpers. It was a lovely afternoon, and a great project to be involved in.
Norbert the newt is doing some knitting
Another one from the alphabet book project…slightly cheating as knitting doesn’t really begin with N. But I couldn’t resist the idea of a knitting newt anyway.
The trees happened to turn yellow…
This afternoon I’ve been at Sacred Heart Primary School in Battersea making books with Year 4 – and a very enjoyable afternoon it was too. I gave each child a little surprise lucky bag with a mixture of collage scraps and random words, and the challenge was to invent a story and make the spreads into different scenarios for a character to discover. They were a terrific class, full of exciting ideas and bold in their vision, and they created some remarkable work in the two hour session.
I specially like the title ‘The Trees happened to turn Yellow’ – it sounds like a chilling sci-fi novel from the 1950s. And I would love to read ‘Ruby and Sunshine Swoop Through Town’, with its boundary-busting 3-d design, it looks full of fun. The stark simplicity of ‘Dog’ rather appeals too, and the 3-d ladybird emerging from behind a leaf is genius!
The project was part of an arts week at the school organised by Pinksie the Whale, and the school had been beautifully decorated for the occasion, with fabric-wrapped trees and plastic bag blooms creating a wonderful welcome.
Frogs!
I’ve always loved frogs. Right now I am dreaming of an entirely amphibian-based project…
A vision for the river Wandle
I went down to the river Wandle yesterday afternoon to pick up copies of the booklet I illustrated and designed for the Wandle Trust – I mixed paper-cuts and wildlife drawings with photographs and a hand-drawn map for the centre foldout spread. It’s printed up very nicely – and thankyou to the Wandle Trust for the lovely bouquet of flowers! I hope the booklet will help secure an environmentally sound future for this lovely urban chalkstream.
The peace of empty spaces
I am a huge fan of libraries of all sorts, and I am constantly in and out of my local one with sackloads of books. It’s very sad when libraries close, so in theory this photograph should induce a sense of deep melancholy. But for some reason – perhaps the way the light is falling – looking at it makes me feel very tranquil, clears my head and puts me in the mood for new projects. I took the photo a couple of years ago in the marvellous Tower Hamlets archive (reassuringly, the adjacent room is packed with wonderful old books) when doing some research for the built environment project I did in Whitechapel with Canon Barnett Primary School and English Heritage. Iwas reminded of the photo when looking at sculptor Frillip Moolog’s blog post on empty spaces, which is well worth a visit here.
How straight are your cucumbers?
Victorian and Edwardian gardeners had a gadget for just about everything – apple pickers, seed tweezers, grape ripeners…but my favourite is probably the cucumber straightener. The Garden Museum in Lambeth, south London, has a marvellous collection of such items, as well as pony shoes, paintings, a very charming miniature garden with teeny little garden rollers and benches – and yes, a few gnomes too. I’ve just finished making a family trail for the museum – a little bit of it is shown above but you’ll have to go on a visit there to see more. As an extra incentive, I can tell you that the cafe is very, very delicious.