Introduction

“The only way to do it is to do it” Merce Cunningham, Choreographer, 2008

Parameters for development

Development begins with a review of my conclusions from the research stages of my project. Although considerable research preceded development, the process wasn’t always a linear one.

Using the conclusions from research, and my written and visual notes, I begin development with the narrative for my story based upon the Japanese concept of Kishōtenketsu. Then, I begin to develop a sequential visual narrative for my picture book.

In addition to the theoretical texts from my annotated bibliography, I assess my research and conclusions from critical studies and their potential impact upon my final project, its meaning and production.

Idea generation Mind maps Methods and processes Story development Drawing and technique development Character development Sequence development Book finishing Professional pathways

Methods

I began development by assessing my skills and my feelings about them. Reflection helped me accept that I wanted to, needed to start here. I identified several short but professional-level courses in picture book making and specific technical skills.

Then analysis of the development of my final illustrations is through evaluation and feedback. Throughout I keep in mind the key points from critical study, namely,

Show context

Family and a home for the wolf

• Show feelings, emotions - how do they manifest visually? Holding, being close, eye contact

• Show similarities between people and wolves without losing the wolf’s intrinsic identity

• How not to undermine feminist positions through traditional perspectives - that is how to portray gender?

• How we need to step away from stereotypes - as illustrators and readers.

Character development

In one of the courses I completed, Mathias Adolfsson teaches how to understand elements of a character’s essence and how to convey emotions through actions such as holding and how to illustrate figures together. Adolfsson teaches that book illustration does not require characters to be exact replicas scene to scene, just recognisable. Learning this liberated my drawing, and combined with practice into drawing people, my two human characters began to form.

Sequence development

Next, development demonstrates how my story forms through idea generation and feedback.

I pay particular attention to the development of the double-page spreads as these were, initially, somewhat challenging. This stage is notable for tutor engagement and encouragement. This stage is where my skills and confidence developed significantly.

“The blank page in a sketch- or notebook can provoke psychological anxieties. This can, in part, be alleviated by the instantaneous recording of the first thought that transpires no matter how trivial or seemingly unconnected with the brief. From plain origins, experimentation can evolve, and from this appropriate associations can manifest.” Alan Male, 2012

Integral settings

I consider the places integral to the narrative - the view outside the window for example, to show the child character is in her room.

Techniques

Following research, experiments and tutorials, I elected to use graphite pencil and ink, with coloured pencil. Picture bookmaker and teacher, Natalia Méndez recommends establishing a kind of toolbox of preferred media from which to choose during the development of finished illustrations. For example, through mood boards and word lists, I identify a selection of pencils and colours from which I make my final illustrations. This selection process supported visual continuity, time management, and it helped to steer me away from indecision when doubts loomed.

Occasionally, I have included sketches that are outside of the more obvious flow of development - they are part of tutorials or have been other conscious practice for this project. They represent steps in building my skills, confidence and appreciation of hand drawing and its relevance in contemporary illustration.

Feedback

I include examples of feedback, qualitative data collected from the online workshop group - through questions with adult guardians and from children’s thoughts shared from their guardians.

As the module guide predicts, I did feel daunted and overwhelmed at times. However, this was mitigated somewhat, through the short courses I completed. They helped with focus and introduced me to the processes of picture book illustration.

Reflection

Progress of development was fulfilling, the pace varied, some finished spreads required more time than others, some came from earlier stages, and others appeared as the story evolved.

I used reflection as a tool to ease the anxiety of challenging times during development. I reminded myself of the ebb and flow of the creative process, and through reflective conversations with myself, I could ease worries with recalling what had gone well that day or during a particular stage.

Although Lynda Barry refers directly to continuous line drawing for warming up to draw, this thought and practice kept me drawing when I faced challenges.

‘Any method of keeping your pen moving in a slow, steady way will work” Lynda Barry.

CONCLUSIONS FROM RESEARCH

• Critical studies continually generated ideas for practice and I documented these in a topic list as a kind of reference dictionary of visual elements, signs and signifiers that I might include, or purposefully exclude from my outcomes.

Use Kishōtenketsu principles for narrative

Haiku inspired illustration

• Incorporate images of nature, everyday ordinariness of wolves lives

• Must offer hopeful imagery as well as negative images of deforestation • To not make Red the antagonist. To do so reinforces the stereotypes it tries to dispel. • To research the lives of wolves and incorporate their voice • Animals - include lots of other animals - the wolf is part of a living breathing entity - the forest - not a lone wolf. • Cuteness - can engender empathy, or deceive - either way, it is usually an anthropocentric view. • The concept of them and us is problematic - have many supporting characters to dilute or dispel ideas of one versus another. • Perspective - use the lower viewpoint - the child’s and the wolf’s

• E.g. Joanna Concejo’s drawings are almost always looking from above - adult perspective. spectator’s gaze, the position of dominance

• Salience - perhaps keep the wolf halfhidden all the time - (Jaques 2015 p.250)

• Salience - ‘children’s literature, of course, has a socialising function. And one might well argue that all fiction, and especially that addressed to the very young, invites readers to ask who they are

To be flexible

or who they might become’ (Jaques 2015 p251) • Which leads me to wonder, can literature ask, who is that and who might they be?

• “You-ness is not exclusively human” (Jaques 2015) p251

• Colour Green - for eco-politics - the green imperative, green agenda and so on

• Colour - Grey wolf - wood, dandelion clock, natural things that are grey

Colour - Red character - love, warning, danger

• Colour - use more than red and grey because it isn’t as clear cut than that - more complex than the binary of red vs grey.

Colour Yellow - for Greta Thunberg and her army.

Colour yellow - for the wolf’s eyes

Show eye contact with reader and with each others

Colour Yellow for hope and happiness, for mum.

• Colours other than red risk readers missing the link to Red Riding Hood. Matt Cordell does this - by using red for his child character, he is calling back to Red Riding Hood and potentially disrupting negative images from there.

• Colour salience - green for the environment, grey for the wolf.

• Sentimental images - According to Nyrnes (2018), there is an idealistic relationship between language and nature. It is represented through opposites in emotions, either good or bad, through the idea of ‘the elegy or the idyll’ (Nyrnes (2018).

• The problem with a representation of nature as an idyll is that it places the goal for ecocritical texts behind us not ahead. (Nyrnes, 2018).

• How to not undermine feminism in my approach to the adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood.

• Complexities of avoidance of reinforcing negative human stereotypes of gender, class, race, for example. Following research into non-binary story-telling. Can I answer all these issues within one book? • Character size and scale on the page and to it each other

• Thoughts on Haiku and the films My Neighbour Totoro and Spirited Away, which lead to Kiki’s Delivery Service and Kishōtenketsu storylines.

• In Haiku poetry, nature is central, but it is the wonder in the ordinariness of it that matters.

• Point of view - To depict an adult human view could be argued as being anthropocentric (Baker 2020). Alternatively, it can be said that the point of view is always that of that of a human. Do I aim to show what we see or what the animals see? Stibbe suggests that the human viewpoint.

• ‘Records not just nature, but the act of “seeing” nature, and places the viewer in the role of the seer.’ (Stibbe, 2012).

• Therefore have at least one scene, ideally more, which depict nature for its own sake, it’s everydayness, not a specific part of the narrative or plotline.

Do this for the wolves, show their everydayness.

• “The framing of a minute part of ordinary nature, depicted artistically yet realistically, is a way of imbuing it with significance and value” (Stibbe 2012 p175)

• A call to action or resources - something to learn of real wolves. For example, sanctuaries not zoos, support a conservation project. - Encourage readers to observe nature, go out, draw it, look at it.

PREPARATION AND EXPERIMENTATION