British Library Images

The British Library have made available over one million images which are copyright free. I thought I'd give this week's blog post over to sharing the links with you and pasting up a few of my favourites (not that I have had a chance to look at all one million, you understand!)

All the images are from the 17th, 18th and 19th Century so copyright is not a problem. They have been loosely arranged into themes. There is a section of Highlights from which I have selected a Japanese illustration.

From the section entitled book covers I have chosen The Adventures of George Washington Pratt which I was amused to note was on sale for 1/-. (That's 'one shilling' for you post-decimilsation kids which is a mere 5p in today's money.) 

I was surprised to see a whole section on cycling and have chosen the only type of bike that I would feel safe on. (I may have mentioned before that I have absolutely no sense of balance!)

The section on comic art had me bemused. Humour has certainly become more sophisticated, although I suspect I know what the question to this punch line was:

There's a section on ships and one on illustrated lettering but I thought I'd share one more section with you and that is children's book illustration. This is the sort of image that would have fuelled my childhood nightmares:

Ok, who is going to be the first person to provide the first part of the 'ajar' joke?

If you go and look at the images and find some really exciting ones then do let me know and you might also know of other copyright-free sites. It would be good to share.

p.s. I'm continuing to research the history of leper windows (see previous post) and hope to blog some more about that very soon. 

Introducing Alice Povey

This week I am about to embark on an exciting new venture. I’m going to be working with a very talented illustrator to turn my text about Richard III into a highly illustrated children’s book. Firstly I’d like to introduce you to the illustrator. Her name is Alice Povey and you can see examples of her work on her website at Alice Povey's Portfolio. 

Good, isn't she!

Secondly I'd like to explain how we met. To all those people who still think that Twitter is a waste of time, I got to know about Alice through my Twitter discussions with her mother @Richard1483. As you can guess from her Twitter name, she's even more enthusiastic about 'everything Richard III' than I am. That was how we got talking. She mentioned her daughter. I looked at Alice's website and we were 'in business'. Don't you just love Twitter!

Back to Alice and the book, we're about to have our first meeting to discuss the project. I've never before had the opportunity to work so closely with an illustrator and I'm really looking forward to viewing my work through an artist's eyes. The text follows Richard's life, from when he was a young boy, through the confusions of the Wars of the Roses, to his rule as Richard III, his death at the Battle of Bosworth and his subsequent rediscovery under the tarmac of a Leicester City Council car park, including a bit about the science that was used to properly identify his remains.

The proposed publication date for the book is Summer 2014 which brings me to the only negative point in this blog post, the disagreement about where Richard's final resting place should be. The case was taken to the High Court in London last November but was adjourned because there were issues to be resolved. The next hearing will not be until 13th March 2014. I won't go into all the politics about where he should be buried. I'll just say that I hope they rule in favour of keeping him here in Leicester. It would mean a lot to us Leicester folk and I must admit that I have already written the final page of the book. I do hope I don't have to rewrite it!

My words through an artist’s eyes

I’m trying something new with my writing. I’m working with an illustrator. I suspect a couple of sharp-eyed followers will already have noticed a contradiction. Two posts ago I wrote of my dislike for change and now I’m about to embrace it. But when it comes to writing, I’m always keen to explore different styles and if I ever stop trying to improve my work then it’ll be time to hang up the keyboard.

Sue Hague

I have my writing group to thank for this idea, yet again. [They’re lovely, are my writing group!] We all belong to a children’s book group which meets once a month to read and discuss children’s books... and to have lunch, of course! One of the members is an artist. Her name is Sue Hague and whenever we have a meeting at her house we are in awe of her artwork, especially the finely detailed flower paintings. She is passionate about observing and recording all those tiny details in the world around us, the details that most people don’t notice... the same details that I, as a writer, try to record with words, whereas Sue uses a mixture of acrylic, watercolour and soft pencil.

Last week Sue ran an art workshop for us writers. We’ve never done anything like this as a group before. It was an amazing experience if a little messy... 

Our first task was to rub oil paint onto an acetate sheet and scratch a picture onto paper which had been placed over the top of the paint. My result was a little smudgy but the activity had been satisfying and absorbing in a compulsive sort of a way.

Alex Gutteridge (left), me in the middle and Debbie White who I suspect had prior art training! 

Pippa Goodhart

We worked with materials that I never thought could go together... like a pen, some bleach and a sheet of soft coloured paper. The effect appears gradually. It’s another fascinating process. This isn’t my attempt. It’s Pippa's.

I didn’t produce anything that would hang on my walls but then that wasn't the aim of the morning. What I did come away with was a lot of inspiration, especially when it comes to looking at those finer details of life that are all around us... but there was more. I had a chat with Sue about the art of illustrating and it was then that we planned our collaboration. I have a number of children’s picture book manuscripts, words only, with written illustration guidelines where relevant. I have a rough idea of what the pictures might look like but I was interested to see if Sue’s expert input would add another dimension to my work.

As soon as I got home I emailed a manuscript to her. She came straight back to me with ideas that were already ‘running through her head’. Changes began to happen, improvements began to emerge, as she suggested some fine tuning to my story line, things that I wouldn’t have thought about on my own. She’s now working on some rough drafts and we’ll be meeting up very soon to merge our ideas. We’re hoping to make a joint submission and although we both know that it could well join my list of rejections, it’s been extremely useful to look at my words through an artist’s eyes... and who knows, it might even be accepted!

    

What exactly is sparkle anyway?

I arrived home from the shops yesterday to the sound of hammering. It made me smile. Rod was repairing a stool. In the afternoon, while he pottered in his potting shed, I settled down to work on some picture books. Life is slowly returning to some sort of normality.

It’s quite some time since I worked on picture book fiction so I dug out some of my guideline notes from way back. In amongst all the bumf about double-line spacing etc it said to make sure the story had lots of sparkle. I had no doubt faithfully written this from a book I was reading or a talk I attended but I don’t think I stopped to analyse it. I mean, what exactly is sparkle anyway? And never mind getting sparkle into picture books. If it’s so important, then I need to know how I can get sparkle into my life.

In my last blog post I talked about how we felt about ourselves on a scale of one to ten, ten being fantastic. I can’t remember the last time I was a ten. A number of you said the same in your comments. If we could work out how to get sparkle into our lives would it increase our scores? An eight would be good.

As far as writing picture books is concerned I reckon that the way we can add sparkle is to write with an easy-to-read rhythm, to include a fine sprinkling of alliteration and inner rhymes, and to feed the illustrators with many and varied spreads so they can add sparkle too....

Hang on a minute! Maybe I can do the same with my life. Maybe it’s all about an easy-to-live rhythm or maybe I have an inner illustrator who needs to be fed? Now there’s a thought.

p.s. I tried to take a photograph of the sun sparkling on the frosty grass but it wouldn't show. However many times I tried and whatever setting I put the camera on, the grass and frost were there but the sparkle wasn't. Sparkle is elusive - official!