← The Good Ship Illustration
The Good Ship Illustration
Helen Stephens chats to Prof. Martin Salisbury - Is your illustration style really yours? When influence turns into imitation 👀✏️
00:46:21
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- [00:24]
A
Welcome to the Good Ship Illustration podcast and this week I'd like to welcome Martin Salisbury. He's the founder of the Cambridge School of Art, Massachusetts in illustrating for children, which I think has changed the face of the picture book industry. So many more diverse and interesting picture books have arrived in the world thanks to this course. Martin's written a number of books, including children's picture books, Playpen and my favorite illustrator sketchbooks. I've invited Martin on because a few episodes back we touched on the subject of the elephant in the room, which is plagiarism. And that podcast was one of our most listened to episodes ever. We had a huge amount of chat and engagement and I thought, well, Martin probably knows about this more than anybody, so Martin is our guest. Welcome, Martin.
- [01:17]
B
Thank you, Helen. Good to be here. Thanks for asking me, asking me to talk about this thorny subject.
- [01:23]
A
Yeah, it is. Let's get our teeth into it. We'll dive straight in. So we see so many successful illustrator stars being copied at the moment. Like when I go on Instagram, I see swathes of Rebecca Greens or Laura Carlin, looky likeies. I'm trying to think some of the others, I see lots of Maisie paradise sharing. Of course, nobody does it as good as they do it. So I'm interested to hear your thoughts. Do you think that the Internet and Instagram and how we can just feed our eyes with endless gorgeous illustration has changed how illustrators are finding their creative voice?
- [02:01]
B
Yes, it must have done. I mean, I think it's had a huge impact and I should say as well, I think that quite often when this happens, this kind of stealing, if you like, you know, often I suspect that people are not entirely aware they're doing it. It's just such a bombardment of imagery out there. There's some that you think, well, it must, this must have been very deliberately done. But it's tricky because I don't think there's any legal recourse, is there? Because although we call it plagiarism, I don't think within law it can be seen as that because it's just seen as sort of, you know, a similar, so to speak, style. But I. Well, you know, when I think back to when I was a student a very, very long time ago, and of course there was no Internet at all, I was hardly aware of anybody's work. I think I probably was slightly influenced in my drawing by Paul Hogarth, who had been a teacher at Cambridge. Not of me before my time, but things like that, you know, in terms of Composition, but not actually, you know, really trying to copy people. I mean, what about you as a student? I mean you were very much a sketchbook person. And to me it's, it's. That's where, you know, you start to perform your, Your voice.
- [03:27]
A
Yeah, I was at art school in the 90s or pre Internet and when I look back on it, I, I think I. I didn't really know what other illustrators were doing. You didn't really see them anywhere. You could go in a bookshop and have a nausea at some. I used to go and buy the. Or actually not buy it, it was too expensive. But look at the COVID of the New Scientist and I just didn't see a lot of illustrators. That's not where my inspiration came from. I think I used to like trolling through charity shops and buying books of painters. And sometimes I'd go to the library and they'd have a like a dead stock bit where you could buy a library book for 10p. And it might be a book of photos of children's children doing. Wearing woolly shorts in the 1940s or something. And I would take those books home and add them to a library of reference of like people doing different things so that I could get the movement right. And yeah, I think influences came from all sorts of subjects. And yeah, the other part of it, apart from looking what other people do, is draw in from life. Because I think you can discover so much about your natural taste, particularly from drawing from life, because you have no time to overthink the. Usually you're drawing from life. You're either drawing people and they're moving quickly or you're out in the wild and it's about to rain. So the last thing you're thinking of is, oh, what would, what would my. I'll use the word style. What would my style be? When you're drawing from life, you can't do that. So you get a really good insight into what your natural voice is.
- [05:12]
B
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and, and it's. I think it's not just that. It's also, you know, when you're drawing from life, especially people in, in everyday environments, you're. You're having to look in a way that, that you don't look when you, when you're just looking rather than drawing, you know, it's such an intense process of studying behavior, movement, gesture, all that kind of thing. And, and unconsciously, often you're, you're sort of finding out the. That particularly are important to you, you know, so through that kind of process. I think that's how individual people evolve very differently and evolve their own approach. I mean that's. That was the. My thinking behind how I originally designed the structure of the MA course in that the first 30% of the course we don't think about children's book illustration at all. It's drawing, drawing, drawing and thinking about sequence. So, you know, it's. It's a way of avoiding diving straight into some sort of preconceived idea of what children's illustration should look like. And it's harder for people now, I
- [06:32]
A
think, I think that having a preconception of what children's books should look like is something we see on the Good Ship course quite a lot. And I think taking inspiration from other places, like, I don't know, album covers, photography, your own childhood painters. Where else do we take inspiration from things we like collections from our childhood, fashion, weird obsessions. I think those are all the things that make up your style. So I think there's like half of it is who you are as a person and all the things that you like to feed your eyes, not necessarily other illustrators. And then the way that you make marks on the paper, I always think it's really interesting not to go and learn how to put marks on the paper. We really discourage everybody on the Good Ship course from going looking up how to use watercolor, for example, or how to use ink. Because I think if you just botch it along yourself, you're going to have a different voice to somebody who's learned a technique. So I think botching together. This is the great thing about art school as well is that I had no money and so my art materials were made up of a set of really cheap kids paints and some bingo dabbers and anything that would make a mark.
- [07:58]
B
Yeah, no, yeah, I know what you're saying. And I think a lot of our students. What's the word you used? It's the botch approach. Do mix media that, you know, are not technically supposed to be mixed. But yeah, I think the key thing is to. To not be afraid of making bad work, you know, or sort of fumbling your way through it. But I suppose that leads to another thing whereby a generation is so brought up on digital programs where you can achieve an apparently professional looking kind of finished effect. Very. But also I think accidents are really important, you know, learning from accidents. And I think with digital, the tendency to immediately erase an accident before you've had time to really learn from it is again another great temptation towards quick solutions. But yes, another issue that occurred to me when you first asked me to talk about this was I do think that sometimes this problem is exacerbated by some publishers and by agents that represent huge, certain agents that represent huge numbers of illustrators. And I imagine probably you get each of them one or two jobs a year or something, you know, and where the illustrator's work is barely distinguishable from each other. So you have these kind of swathes of illustration with the same shape dies and all the rest of it. Yeah, there's an awful lot of things contribute to the issue.
- [09:48]
A
I'm thinking about how about that point of some of it coming from the publisher. And it makes me think about. So when you get your first meeting with a publisher, if you're lucky enough to get that first meeting, the publisher wants to be persuaded that this is a good idea. Like they want to have confidence in the person sat in front of them that this is a good idea and they want to feel excited about it. They want to feel like, yeah, we really need to do this book. They want to be excited by it because then they imagine that the readers will be excited about it. And so then you think, well, so for the person in the meeting, they want that person to have confidence and to be able to talk about this idea and engage the publisher. And then, so then my thought goes to, so who are the people who are most confident arriving in those meetings? And those are probably people who had time, space and money as kids to experiment and explore, who were supported in that and yeah, given a sense of self confidence in that work. They maybe had tutors at home, they maybe talked about creative and, I don't know, arts and stories and creativity around the dinner table. Maybe they had visitors in those industries. And so then that means there are a whole swathe of people, maybe people, maybe we're talking about. The people with the confidence are people with more middle class upbringings and they can persuade more easily. So where does it leave all of the people with different stories, new ideas, people pushing the boundaries, stories we haven't heard before. So I feel as if it's like a. I don't really know how this is a problem we can solve, but to do with confidence, perhaps.
- [11:52]
B
Yeah, definitely. I think a lot of publishers want. They're very frightened of taking on something very new for all sorts of reasons, you know, to do with getting it past the sales people who have so much power in, in publishing companies. But also probably a bit of a jump from what we're talking about. But I think that I've noticed as well in, in big competitions, I won't specifically, but where there are juries selecting the best, apparently best work. And I've done a fair bit of that myself over the years, but I. I'm seeing some things shortlisted that are very clearly, I won't say plagiarizing, but are over influenced, shall we say. And I wonder whether some of them, some of the jury members, some of the publishers do actually have the, the knowledge and, or the visual literacy, if you like, to, to know what they're seeing sometimes. Because when they do select something that is so strongly influenced, then it's almost like giving a green light to people. There is one very, very big incident, incidents of that currently happen. Happening that I didn't obviously name names or anything, but I was absolutely shocked to see a piece of work that was in that category. So that certainly doesn't help.
- [13:28]
A
Yeah, that's interesting. I'm thinking that if we seeing those books shortlisted, I see so much of it on the Internet. I'm starting to think when I was at art school, to be accused of mimicking somebody else's style, it felt like a huge crime. It was really humiliating at first. You might not even be conscious you'd done it, but if somebody pointed it out, it was like it was a terrible crime.
- [13:57]
B
And it seems, I don't know whether
- [13:59]
A
you feel ashamed, but it seems that that feeling isn't there anymore.
- [14:03]
B
Well, I wonder whether people do point it out. Maybe it is just the elephant in the room. You know, I'm sure a lot of people would be hugely humiliated if it were pointed out. I mean, again, going back in time, I mentioned Paul Hogarth. I mean, he, he was course leader here in the late 1950s and early 60s and he had an amazing group of students, including Peter Fluck and John and Roger Law, the Luck and Floor and David Driver, who became art director at the Times and the Radio Times. But I've looked back in our archives at some of the publications they did at that time and they were all drawing like Paul Hogarth, I think, because he was such a powerful character, but they eventually sort of found their own way. But when, when I was at Maidstone College of art, the late 70s, the. The course leader was Gerald Rose, wonderful picture book maker, but he never showed his work to us at all. And it may have been partly because he didn't want to influence people, but I think it was more because he. Well, he actually told me in later years when I reconnected with him, he Feared being, I don't know, not being respected. Because at that time it was all about punk illustration. And unless you were drawing prostitutes or whatever, it was not taken seriously, you know. So it's interesting. I mean, I think, yes, there are sometimes course leaders and teachers who exert a very strong influence on people, but it is, I would say, much more to do with the wide availability of imagery now.
- [15:48]
A
And it's thinking about that subject. Sometimes you can look at a course or you can look at somebody's work and know what course they came from. I was thinking about not just courses now, but we have a lot of illustrators run Patreons Patrons. Patreons. I never know how you say it.
- [16:08]
B
I have no idea.
- [16:09]
A
Yeah. And yeah, I'm wondering if that's had an effect as well, because they teach what materials they're using, what paper they're using, inevitably, that's gonna have a lot of copycats.
- [16:23]
B
Yeah. It's hard to know how many illustrators, or aspiring illustrators are using those things like Domestica and all the many online courses. Yeah, it's very difficult to know in terms of sort of house styles. I think it's, you know, you can avoid that to some degree by teaching, but also, you know, sometimes you get a student whose work is particularly impressive to everybody, and there's a sort of gradual unconscious sort of following or a particular process or medium. I do think that here at Cambridge, you know, because we have such a great printmaking resource, some people have said to me that. That there is a sort of a stronger printmaking element in the work that influences it. But hopefully, you know, with students coming from so many different backgrounds and being older, it's offset by they have kind of more of their own experience to bring to it. I know there was. We had one instance that I can think of a few years ago when there was a student, a very good student, whose work seemed to be becoming more and more like one particular well known artist. And we wondered whether to say anything or not and eventually mentioned it very gently. And that student was absolutely mortified. I had no idea. So, as I say, sometimes it's just. It's often not deliberate.
- [18:03]
A
There's been periods where I've tried somebody else's hat on for a while. So I remember really early days, really getting into Sompe and really wanting to understand how he made those really complicated images. But your eye was drawn to exactly the point he wanted you to look.
- [18:23]
B
I remember talking to you about this.
- [18:25]
A
Yeah, I got quite obsessed with that. And I think Tried his hat on for a while, but that, I think, and it just became amalgamated with all of the other influences. It got piled on, amongst other things.
- [18:37]
B
Things, of course, but that was, I mean, as I remember, a conversation we had about it and I've always remembered it because I often mention it to students, you know, and about how he. He drew the eye to a particular point and even in a very complex image there would. He would leave a little bit of white space around the key character and stuff like that. But I mean, that sort of thing is. Is the right way to learn from great artists. But it's not a stylistic thing, the kind of compositional thing, isn't it, really?
- [19:11]
A
I liked how I was watching one of the Grayson Perry series. It might be the one on Channel four, about. Maybe it's about class and taste. Do you remember that series? It was really good. I remember him talking about taste and it made me think of visual voice. He was talking about how. So if you go on holiday and you eat something tasty on holiday and you come home and you want to recreate it, but when you get home, you don't have a recipe and you make your best guess about how it's made and when you go to the shop, you can't get everything, so you buy what you can and then you come home and you botch something together that is a bit like you had on holiday. And it's absolutely delicious. And he was saying, this is how culture is made. We take a bit from here, we take a bit from there, we get stuff wrong, we half ass it, we botch it together and then you get something new. And I think that's how we are finding our creative voices.
- [20:16]
B
That sounds very much like the absolutely brilliant signature dish of mine, which is a version. A version of lamb pasta that I used to get in the market in Italy. But yes, I can see the analogy with. With artwork, it is. And culture generally. Yes, you build on things and you bring your own. Your own particular take on it. I was thinking of Edward R. Dzoni when you were talking about that and how he had a little bit of academic kind of painting training, mostly in evening classes, but his unmistakable work, I just kind of grew out of obsessive interest in. In everyday life, you know, just what people were getting up to. And he would mostly draw from immediate memory, but he was always looking. But again, yes. I wonder what Ardizoni would have been like if he'd had Instagram.
- [21:13]
A
Would he have been on Instagram that I really like to think about that. Yeah. Like some of my favorite illustrators of the past, what would they be on Illustrator on Instagram now? Would we be seeing their mistakes and their mess and how they didn't arrive in the world fully formed? It'd be really interesting to see that.
- [21:34]
B
Yeah, I suppose. I mean, that. And that was one of the reasons behind my book on illustrators, sketchbooks that you are kindly in. Because I think a lot of people don't realize what's underneath those beautifully printed books or pages in a magazine. And, you know, there were lots of people's sketchbooks that surprised me, you know, and how differently people thought about them. Like Edward Gorey, who. I mean, he's wonderfully grumpy about it, you know, and that he hated actually using them, but he was just terrified that his ideas would escape. And so they were more like notebooks, you know. But yeah, the whole spread of observational drawing, quick notes, imaginative drawing, it's where it all kind of coagulates, isn't it, you know, and gets started. But I don't know what, what, how one can address the, the issue overall other than try to make students aware of it in a general sense and constantly talk about the importance of sketchbooks research. Real world.
- [22:47]
A
I've been watching.
- [22:48]
B
Listen, will they.
- [22:50]
A
We'll shame them, Martin. We'll shame them. Let's bring the shame back. I'm just thinking about. I've been watching my daughter go through school. She's. We live right on the border and she's on the Scottish side. Her school is on the Scottish side of the border. And so she's been doing NAT fives and hires and I've been watching the way that she learns art at school and it's been really interesting because they make a big emphasis on passing the exams. But my daughter, PI, wants to go to art school. In fact, I'll just have a little show off. She's just got unconditional offers from everywhere she applied.
- [23:31]
B
Lovely.
- [23:31]
A
Yes. And. But what happened was all of the emphasis is on passing the exams and there are certain things needed to pass the examination, which is not a lot of experimentation. There's a lot of drawing on the iPad from photos. There is not a lot of room for mistakes or your own voice. And so when it came to time to make a folio to apply to art school, the stuff that she'd made to pass her exams was mostly irrelevant and not, not great to put in her portfolio. So she'd made other work at home that school didn't really like, and she filled her folio with that and showed the teacher. And the teacher advised her to take some of the amazing drawings at the zoo that she'd done from life really quickly. Lots of drawings done with non dominant hand and all of those lovely experiments that you did advised her to take those out. But PI is very headstrong and would not agree to it and came home very angry about it and then applied to art school and she's got in and now it's exam time again. She's about to take the exams and the teacher is now completely dismissing all the stuff that she used to get into art school and asking her to make all of the work for the exam very, very similar to each other. So there's not much sign of experimentation. It's been really interesting to watch because it looks as if schools need kids to get through the exam so that they achieve what they need to achieve, but they don't really look forward to what an art school is going to need or that student's creative career ahead of them. So I feel as if the problem is starting way back in school.
- [25:20]
B
Oh, absolutely, yeah. I mean, we hadn't really touched on that, but I was starting to see when we were interviewing for applicants for both BA and ma, I was shocked by the kind of portfolios I was seeing which were much more about sort of art appreciation and, and, you know, young kids being asked to copy Matisse or, you know, do studies on particular artists whose work, I don't want to sound patronizing, but which they couldn't really begin to understand fully at that age until they'd started to draw and paint themselves. So I mean, one thing that you hardly ever saw was just personal drawing. And I have done odd days of teaching at other art schools just to come and give a talk and then maybe do a few tutorials and at undergrad level. And again, I've been astonished at the lack of drawing. And so what it leads to is a kind of big outbreak of manga and pre existing stylistic formulae. So yes, it's something of an epidemic, I have to say, and a very difficult one to tackle in the broadest sense.
- [26:46]
A
Okay, so grabbing somebody else's style might feel like a really easy shortcut. It might feel like that's the quickest and easiest way to get your career going. But really you're selling yourself short, aren't you? I mean, you're not going to have much fun in the long run if you're doing an impression of somebody else. So what are the benefits of finding your creative voice?
- [27:13]
B
I Mean, I suppose it's. It's perfectly possible to make a living, you know, by constructing a. A stylistic approach that is sort of borrows from other people and hasn't got a. An underpinning of drawing or whatever. But, yeah, it's partly a case of, you know, what would you get out of it long term? Just as you say, kind of, you know, turning out the same stuff. And I think it's a lot to do with authenticity. You know, a sense of something that you have ownership of and which people can see somehow connects to your own personality and your own life experience. If that doesn't sound too grand, I
- [28:00]
A
think other people can feel.
- [28:02]
B
Yes. Authenticity.
- [28:03]
A
Yeah, I think other people can feel when something's authentic. Like you can just feel it in the work, can't you? Also, if it's authentic, it means that your brain is like a big treasure chest that you can dive into and find stuff in there all the time. But if you're doing an important impression of someone else, where do you get that inspiration from?
- [28:24]
B
Yeah, becomes a sort of. Yeah, it becomes a sort of a technical process, really, of creating something that looks professional and finished, but usually it's going to be a bit lifeless. I think it's quite difficult to. To. To. To articulate what it is that. That gives something its life. But I think it is partly to do with, you know, you can still see a sense of searching for something within the drawing rather than something that is terribly well finished and almost technically
- [29:02]
A
too good, you know, I really like that. Yeah. Some of my favorite drawings, in the long term, of the ones that I've done, where I felt at the time, while I was doing it, that there was something still not finished about it, and it might have even made me feel uncomfortable. And then other drawings that I thought, yeah, brilliant, I've got that. And I look back and actually the ones where I feel like I got it are actually a bit dull. And the ones where I was feeling a little bit uncomfortable with it are the nicest drawings.
- [29:34]
B
Yeah. It's really hard looking at your own work, isn't it? Especially immediately after you've created something. It's so hard to be objective about it. But, yes, I think when you come back to it sometime later, you can see why something that was perhaps more of a struggle actually feels more alive. Trying to think of some examples. I mean, I always think of John Burningham's work as kind of awkward, like he doesn't quite know what he's doing. But it's just so, you know, from the heart. Yeah. So yeah, it's all those things really, isn't it?
- [30:12]
A
Katie and I have been writing some stories together this morning and we're really enjoying writing together. And I know I'm talking about writing and not illustrating, but I feel like it comes from the same place. And these stories are inspired by bits of our own childhood, bits of our kids stories, things that we've seen and remembered and we've laughed at it and it's just lodged in our brain a bit. And these stories are turning out to be so easy to make because they're so completely sourced from the stuff in our brains that it feels like an endless pool of ideas. And I think if you were trying to do that in the style of somebody else, it's too self conscious and it would be hard work and there wouldn't be any fun in the story.
- [31:04]
B
No, no. And I suppose people generally think of illustration or have done in certainly in the past as, you know, commercial art and, and a. Something that you do to commission with a particular goal in mind. But now, especially with so much authorial picture bookmaking, it's evolved into something that is more personal and more connected to writing, I think, isn't it? So it makes this, this question of, of originality or at least authenticity more relevant perhaps than it was in the past. I don't know. Thinking on my, thinking on my feet
- [31:47]
A
really in terms of clear career longevity as well. If you pick a style, say something is trend. I'm not talking about picking one particular illustrator, but if you pick a style that's really feeding your eyes on your feed all the time, it's just you see that type of work turning up all the time and it might be an idea to think, oh well, if I do that then I'm going to get work because that's really fashionable at the moment. But as soon as that work goes out of fashion, where does that leave you?
- [32:24]
B
Absolutely, I think back in the 1990s, I would say late 90s, early noughties, I think illustration became very. Illustration generally, not just children's books, but became very style based. And it felt like that, that what was fashionable kind of came and went in cycles about three or four years, you know, and certain illustrators would emerge from art colleges, universities and have a blazing career. You see them everywhere in the newspapers and advertising and, and then they were, next minute they were gone, you know, replaced by something else. So I think that should be a lesson to us all as well.
- [33:13]
A
Yeah. And I think when you see work done authentically in Somebody's own voice. It's just exciting, isn't it? You can feel it. And I think publishers can feel that as well. And actually when I. It's been really reassuring when I've been interviewing publishers for the course. They've all in the end said, we want somebody to be themselves. We really want to know who that person is.
- [33:42]
B
Yeah.
- [33:42]
A
Which has been really good to hear.
- [33:45]
B
Well, that is good for me to hear that because, you know, I often wonder, you know, whether publishers really do want that. I remember being asked years ago to give a lecture, I think it was in Spain. And they said, yeah, could you come and talk to our students? And again, it was a setup, private setup of people learning to make picture books. And they said, could you give a talk on how to give publishers what they want? And I said, no, I can't. I said I could give a talk on how to give publishers what they don't yet know they want. Because I mean, there are different types of publishers, aren't there? There's some that are very safe and want to know exactly what they're going to get. But I think more and more with picture books, there are publishers who really do want to be surprised and find something that feels very personal and engaging and new. So yeah, they're the better ones anyway.
- [34:45]
A
Yeah. The problem with picking a style, a style that seems to be quite trendy at the moment, is there's going to be a hundred or more people like you. There are going to be so many more people like you and there'll be somebody like you charging less.
- [35:01]
B
Yes.
- [35:02]
A
So they're always going to be able to find somebody like you, but is a bit cheaper. So you're completely devaluing your work.
- [35:10]
B
Yeah, I suppose to some degree it's, it's an issue of creative ambition. You know, how creatively ambitious are you? Do you really want to kind of find your own voice or do you want to construct something that is more of a, an amalgam of borrowed things? And, and of course it's easy for us to, to be sort of critical, if you like, but it is a huge temptation, I'm sure, for a lot of people to, to borrow in that way because it is hard. It's a long term commitment to really try and find your own voice at it.
- [35:49]
A
Sorry. Yeah, it's like a life goal, isn't. It's like a long term life goal. It's like you learn more and more about yourself and that. Oh, sorry, that's my mom FaceTiming me. Where was I? Yeah. I mean, it's not dissimilar to finding out who you are as you get older, is it? Finding your creative voice, it's an adventure and it, and it does give you confidence, but it is definitely a long term plan. And that makes me think about people who've accidentally found themselves doing this. She's not taking the hint. I'll have to get the editor to. I've got my screens on silent and everything. I don't know why it's coming through. Yeah, because it's such a nice long term goal. I'm thinking that people who've accidentally fallen into this sudden, they're listening to this and they're thinking, oh no, that's me. It's fine. Because an illustration career is a really, really long time and you've got time to sort it out and the benefits to doing it are huge. The feeling of confidence when you really know what your work is. I feel as if you stop constantly, once you've worked it out, you stop thinking about it anymore. You need to draw something. You just concentrate on that. You don't think, well, how am I going to draw it? How, what's, what hat am I going to try on today? It just comes instinctively, like speaking or writing.
- [37:21]
B
Yeah. It's like feeling comfortable in your own skill, in your own skin. It's. Yeah, it is a long term thing and I think it certainly was for me, definitely. But as I, I mentioned before, I, you know, when I was going through all this, I wasn't bombarded by quite so much imagery through the Internet, social media and all the rest of it. I must say I'm finding more and more students of ours, albeit at master's level, who are trying really to shut out a lot of that noise. And I think the younger generation are becoming, I know it's a huge generalization, but quite a lot are becoming very conscious of it and trying to tackle it in their own way.
- [38:15]
A
I think it was a long term thing for me as well, finding my own voice. It took me a long time, but I think I got into publishing before I really knew who I was, which was really great.
- [38:27]
B
You took time out, didn't you, to have a, have a real rethink.
- [38:33]
A
Yeah.
- [38:33]
B
Which I always thought was incredibly brave because I mean, once you started to earn money from what you're doing, you know, it's, you've really got to be very brave to stop and. But you, you just felt it wasn't, it didn't feel right. It wasn't, wasn't you.
- [38:53]
A
Because I Left art school and then wanted to be an illustrator and felt like, well, I'll just do. I'll do anything to make this happen. This is what I want to do. Then when I went to see publishers and they gave me art direction, I was like a sponge and I sort of soaked in too much. I just soaked it all in like, yes, well, whatever you tell me to do, I will do that. And in one way that was brilliant because it meant I got work all the time. But on another way, I felt as if I painted myself into a corner. Everything. Because their advice was at the time, this was in the 90s. I don't know whether they give this advice now, but at the time they didn't want a sense of place, so they didn't want anything that looked too British. I don't think this is true now, but.
- [39:47]
B
No, no, no, that was very much a thing. I wrote a. An article for a children's book academic thing called no Red Buses Please. Because I, I was getting to hear that so many of our graduates were being told when they were being commissioned or having their books published to avoid all place specific kind of visual elements. So I think that's a ridiculous thing because, you know, when I was a kid we had American school books and they had all those American barns and windmill things. And I thought that was great. It was just so different. It was fascinating. Again, it's. If it feels authentic, it doesn't matter. Where it is, is. Anyway, getting off the subject, do you
- [40:37]
A
think that time has passed? I do. I. I don't feel as if I'm with that anymore.
- [40:44]
B
No, I think it. I think it's definitely passed and run its course and I suppose because everything is so much more international anyway, isn't it? But no, just going back to, to that thing of, you know, trying to please too much. I remember when I first got an agent who did get me lots of work, but. And she. My first portfolio still had some student work in it and, and kind of reportage drawings and things. And I was given the chance to do this lovely job for the. What was then the London glc, Great London Council to walk down the River Thames and make loads of drawings of buildings and places and they'd wanted me to do it on the basis of my student work, you know, and then I thought, I went down and started doing these drawings and I just did the most awful, tight drawings because I thought, this is a real job.
- [41:43]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [41:44]
B
And in the end they said, no, it's just. It doesn't look like the stuff that we. That we wanted you to do, you know, so that's the confidence, right? Not having the confidence to. To just be yourself. So I've been there.
- [42:00]
A
Yeah, I think it's. It is difficult. In the beginning, I definitely didn't know where the line was between taking advice, because also I was brand new out of college and didn't know anything about picture books. And I did need to learn stuff. It was an apprenticeship and I was learning, but then I would just let them direct me beyond what felt good for me. And then. So, yeah, I took that time out and you said I was very brave to do that, but it didn't feel like it. It felt like, you know, one of those life decisions where you just. I just cannot do this anymore. It was almost like one hand had to make the other hand draw. And I was like, if I have to do this anymore, I would rather just not be an illustrator. It was that kind of decision. And so then when I took time out and thought, what did I enjoy doing at college? Like you said, all the sketchbook drawings from life. I loved all that. So I just decided to take what I'd learned in early years of publishing, what I'd learned at art school, build a bridge between the two. And so then I started putting a sense of place into my books because I thought, you use the contents of your brain and this book is going to be set where I live. And actually, they did really well. They did better than the books I'd done before. And I think the thing is, with some of my books, I've set them here in Berwick, in Northumberland, but when. When you see them with other languages beside them, they. This town now looks like a village in Italy or a village in Germany.
- [43:37]
B
Yeah. I mean, we. We love those Roger Duvoisin books that, you know, are often set in Paris or somewhere. Yeah. I mean, they weren't. Not pop. They weren't unpopular because it wasn't London or whatever. No, it's crazy. I mean, it's. It's. Whether the book just has genuine charm and a feeling of. Of authenticity is. Is the key, I think.
- [44:05]
A
Yeah. So, yeah, it feels good. I think when you find your own voice, it's worth all the effort. It feels good and it feels easy. It feels so much easier.
- [44:15]
B
Eventually.
- [44:16]
A
Eventually. Yeah.
- [44:18]
B
Yeah. But it can be quite a difficult journey, I think. So we. We hope people will. Will learn from our mistakes.
- [44:31]
A
Don't do what we did. Do what we say, not what we did.
- [44:37]
B
Yes.
- [44:38]
A
Well, I think if you've fallen into that trap, I would just forgive yourself and move on. It's much better just to. Yeah, forgive yourself. We live in a world so dominated by trends, it's an easy trap to fall into. Thank you, Martin. That was really good. I enjoyed that. And what's coming up for you? Do you have. Are you working on a new book?
- [45:01]
B
About to start one. Yeah, yeah, I think I'm signing a contract. Anytime now. Funnily enough, touches more on some of the things we've been talking about. Not about imitation, but about craft, as it were. You know, craft of. Of materials and that kind of thing. Anyway, top secret. Can't give away too much. It might change once I start writing it.
- [45:26]
A
Brilliant. I'll be looking out for that. And if people want to find you online, you're on Instagram, aren't you?
- [45:32]
B
I am. It's my new hobby. Yes.
- [45:35]
A
Lovely. Brilliant. Thank you. I really enjoyed this chat. Hopefully you might join us again for another chat sometime.
- [45:41]
B
Yes, and we'll keep an eye out for the imitation epidemic, but hopefully we can raise awareness.
- [45:49]
A
Lovely, thank you. Goodbye.
- [45:52]
B
You too. Bye now.
- [45:59]
A
It.