How illustrator Jill Calder built a long-lasting creative career (without losing her voice)

Summary

---

The Good Ship Illustration

Episode Summary: "How illustrator Jill Calder built a long-lasting creative career (without losing her voice)"

Podcast Date: November 28, 2025
Guest: Jill Calder
Host: Tanya Willis (The Good Ship Illustration)

---

Episode Overview

In this episode, Tanya from The Good Ship Illustration sits down with the acclaimed illustrator Jill Calder to explore the secrets behind her three-decade-long career. Calder, whose distinctive, energetic style is instantly recognizable, has navigated a vast range of illustration sectors—from editorial to branding, corporate, heritage, and most recently, award-winning children’s books—while always retaining her unique creative voice. The conversation dives deep into her journey, industry changes, creative process, and what it takes to sustain an authentic, evolving career in illustration.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

Jill’s Career Journey and Evolution

• Background and Education:
  • Jill studied at Edinburgh School of Art and Glasgow School of Art (03:02). She graduated in 1992.
• Initial Focus & Industry Landscape:
  • Upon graduation, Jill dreamed of editorial work when magazines and newspapers were the major source of commissions and paid well (05:24).
• Early Breakthroughs:
  • Opportunities often came by chance, such as a local design agency commissioning her for calligraphy after she handwrote postcards to them (05:24–07:38).
  • Transitioned from editorial to corporate and design work, including regular columns and work for major agencies (08:10).
  • Early feedback and encouragement on her unique combination of illustration and lettering—“They wanted to use your calligraphy.” (05:24)
• International Work and Diverse Sectors:
  • Work has spanned advertising, editorial, branding, packaging, murals, and heritage sites—"I have definitely sailed across the illustration atlas and into choppy waters and also doldrums and smooth sailing and all of that." (Jill, 04:34)
• Adaptability in Career:
  • Jill did not proactively shift sectors; many changes happened “by chance” when someone took a risk on her, rather than deliberate strategic pivots (05:24, 09:54).

The Power (and Fun) of Lettering

• Lettering as a Career Catalyst:
  • Handwriting played a major part in opening new markets—first with postcards, later with large campaigns (10:39).
• Notable ‘Maddest’ Job:
  • A well-paid American campaign had Jill mimic handwriting styles from a “9-year-old Korean girl” to a “65-year-old German professor,” an experience she called "bonkers" and a taste of “crazy corporate money flying around” (11:45–13:36).
  • “Let’s just say...I bought her an iPad as a thank you, even though I didn’t really have one myself!” (Jill, 14:54)

Creative Voice & Industry Changes

• Staying Unique Across Sectors:
  • Jill’s style never became traditional or hemmed in, which she and Tanya agree made her work adaptable to many areas (04:48).
• The Good Ship Connection:
  • Jill has taught and contributed to The Good Ship’s courses, notably with her honest, popular film that inspired students to “make spontaneous work and not aim for perfection” (16:39–17:34).
• Industry Shifts:
  • Noted significant changes—the move from high-paying editorial to more varied but less lucrative opportunities (09:57).
  • Remote work and fewer face-to-face portfolio meetings restrict the relationship-building that once shaped her early career (09:57).

Children’s Publishing & Picture Books

• Transition to Children’s Books:
  • Despite external suggestions, Jill “never really was interested in that” at first and entered children’s publishing almost accidentally (18:23).
  • Her first was “Robert the Bruce” (2014), which she approached “naively” as a series of sequential editorial images (18:23–20:23).
• Process and Artistic Approach:
  • Used strict color palettes inspired by medieval paintings; handled spreads as standalone pieces linked by palette (20:23–21:25).
• Fee Structures & Business Realities:
  • Nonfiction picture books often come with fixed fees, whereas fiction can be royalties-based. She negotiated better terms with time and guidance from the Society of Authors (22:16–23:50).

Recent Acclaim: Picture Books & Collaboration

• Coorie Doon with Jackie Kay:
  • Jill’s recent fiction book, with the Scottish poet laureate Jackie Kay, “has been a huge success” and reprinted within three months (26:28–27:06).
  • The book deals with “big emotions,” aging characters, and generational love, which was challenging and rewarding to illustrate (28:25–29:18).
• I Love You Every Colour:
  • Collaboration with Carol Lewis. Inspired by a Welsh poem, full of playfulness and color—“an illustrator’s dream!” (Tanya, 30:22).
  • Jill deliberately contrasted the dreamy, soft palette of “Coorie Doon” with the vibrant explosion in this book (31:13–33:13).

Process: Creative Play and Energy

• Adapting Process for the Work:
  • Jill regularly switches methods to maintain “energy” and avoid formulas, alternating between monochrome inking and direct color (31:13–33:13).
  • After intense projects, she seeks “something a bit different...have a bit more freedom” (31:13).
• Maintaining Freshness:
  • Even after years of experience, she confesses to “getting stressed and procrastinating” over maintaining energy and spontaneity (35:21).

Looking Ahead

• Next Book:
  • Jill is working on “Cass and the Beast” for Gecko Press, a New Zealand publisher—due September next year, featuring a strong female lead. She shares she’s “absolutely loving it,” and focused on retaining the roughs’ energy in final art (33:57–35:12).

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Career Longevity and Change:

  "I have definitely sailed across the illustration atlas and into choppy waters and also doldrums and smooth sailing and all of that. Yeah, you suppose you have to expect that after 30 plus years in the business."
  — Jill Calder, 04:34

• On Serendipitous Opportunities:

  "A lot of the kind of changes of direction in my work...have happened by chance. Someone's taken a risk on me rather than me being massively proactive."
  — Jill Calder, 05:24

• On Standout Commission:

  "The brief basically was that they wanted handwriting but in the style like lots of different people. But I was to do all the handwriting. They were very specific briefs. One of them was a 9-year-old Korean girl..."
  — Jill Calder, 11:45

• On Artistic Play and Experimentation:

  "When I look back at some of my early editorial work...‘I love you every color’ book was almost giving a nod to that...there’s always a pull to do something a bit different after you’ve done a big project."
  — Jill Calder, 31:13

• On Pressure and Keeping Energy in Work:

  "I still get stressed about it. I get really anxious about it and procrastinate and chew my fingers. Oh, I'm never going to do this. And how am I going to do this?"
  — Jill Calder, 35:21

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Intro & Jill’s Biography: 00:30–04:34
• Transition from Editorial to Design: 05:24–08:21
• Lettering and “Maddest” Commission: 10:39–14:54
• Maintaining a Personal Voice: 16:39–18:23
• Entry into Children’s Books: 18:23–21:25
• Business Side & Negotiating Fees: 22:16–23:50
• Coorie Doon Success and Collaboration: 26:28–29:18
• I Love You Every Colour & Artistic Playfulness: 29:33–33:13
• New Projects and Maintaining Artistic Energy: 33:57–36:37
• Wrap-up & Jill’s Role on The Good Ship: 37:08–37:37

---

Tone & Style

The conversation is warm, candid, and supportive—filled with industry anecdotes, practical wisdom, and a spirit of encouragement for fellow illustrators. Both host and guest speak as peers and friends, imbuing the episode with honesty, a dash of humor, and deep respect for the challenges and joys of a creative career.

---

Final Takeaways

• Resilience and adaptability are crucial in creative careers—embrace chance, try new things, and don’t fear transitions.
• Maintaining your distinctive voice opens unexpected doors; flexibility and authenticity matter more now than ever.
• Relaxation and play within your process bring freshness to your art, even after years of experience.
• Industry has changed—from high-profile, in-person portfolio runs to digital submissions and new business models—but community and peer support remain invaluable.

"It's amazing what you get asked to do." – Jill Calder, 13:13
"It's so nice that...that film brought out the best in me. And it was nice to talk so honestly about a career in illustration." – Jill Calder, 16:54

---

For more on Jill Calder:
Website: jillcalder.com
See her work and teaching on The Good Ship Illustration’s courses and Facebook community.

---

Transcript

[Jill Calder]

Sa.

[Tanya]

Hello, it's Tanya here and this week.

[Narrator]

I'm going to be interviewing multi award winning Jill Calder, the illustrator. If you're on a picture book course or our Find your Creative Voice course, you'll know Jill through the much loved films that she's made us about her work and her process and generally the life of being an illustrator.

[Tanya]

I would admit that I've always been.

[Narrator]

A huge Jill Calder fangirl and adored her work when I first saw it in the 90s. So being on the Good Ship gave me the perfect excuse to chat to her. Jill's been illustrating for more than 30 years and she's worked across an impressive variety of industry sectors. Yet amazingly, throughout this, her work retains her own unmistakable voice, which was why she was perfect to invite onto Find you'd Creative Voice course. And then when we ran our recent Illustration Atlas workshop for the business course, which was looking at all the different areas that illustrators can work in and make money in, it occurred to us that Jill is one of those rare illustrators who has experience across an incredible range of diverse areas because she illustrates, she has beautiful lettering as well. So she's worked in advertising, in editorial, in illustration for design, illustration for branding.

[Tanya]

Illustration for packaging, murals, heritage.

[Narrator]

So many areas, yet her work is still immediately recognizable. And recently she started to build a reputation as a uniquely gifted children's picture book illustrator in both nonfiction and now fiction. You may have seen her recent collaboration with the previous Scottish poet laureate and macca, Jackie Kay on her book Corrie Doon, which is winning multiple awards, and I don't think the awards have stopped yet.

[Tanya]

Jill represents everything the Good Ship is.

[Narrator]

About and she's the perfect person to listen to and we really hope you enjoy this chat.

[Tanya]

Hi everyone, this is Tanya from the Good Ship and I'm here with Jill Calder, who is a big friend of the Good Ship because she's been sailing with us since our very first voyage. Haven't you, Jill?

[Jill Calder]

Yes, absolutely. Since May 2020.

[Tanya]

I think that was our first outing. Jill and I have been walking around either behind or in front of each other over the past 30 years. I'd spot her name in Hong Kong and she'd be doing residencies in Hong Kong when I was there, or I'd see her work somewhere else and I was a huge fan of her work and lettering. Jill also was up in Scotland, having been to two of the best Scottish art schools, Edinburgh School of Art and Glasgow School of Art. She's a veteran of the illustration industry with more than 30 years of illustration.

[Jill Calder]

Oh gosh. Veteran. Yes, it is. It is more than 30 years.

[Tanya]

Can we also add those other old favourites of award winning? Lots of awards, haven't you?

[Jill Calder]

Yeah, but I haven't really gone in for any competitions recently so I haven't really been winning awards recently or a couple of things maybe.

[Tanya]

But yeah, well, I think it's time to get that competition thing going again and I haven't done much of that for years. You get a little older and you lose interest in it. But I think it's great now to start going in for these things. There's so many good awards of VNA award is out this year, isn't it?

[Jill Calder]

That's true.

[Tanya]

The World Illustration Awards go from strength to strength and you've got so much great work recently. You've got a global client list of heavyweights. I was looking through your about section. Anyone listening to this, I would say go on to Jill's website. Jill with a J jillcolder.com all about Jill. She's got in her editorial section, she's got the New Yorker Gardens, Illustrated corporate and advertising sections. You've done some lovely work for heritage buildings and site specific work.

[Jill Calder]

Yeah.

[Tanya]

With English Heritage also publishing children's picture books and children's non fiction picture books as well. And that's one of the reasons why we got you on the podcast because you've sailed your ship across the entire illustration atlas as far as I can tell because you've got your lettering as well as your illustration and that's quite unusual to have someone who's explored so many different areas and now you're. You've moored your boat in children's picture book. Sorry, excuse the pardon, I'm over.

[Jill Calder]

No, it's all good. I have definitely sailed across the illustration atlas and into choppy waters and also doldrums and smooth sailing and all of that. Yeah, you suppose you have to expect that after 30 plus years in the business.

[Tanya]

I wonder whether other illustrators of the same era have explored the huge variety that you have. A lot of people stay in a. Maybe a couple of areas that suit them. I'm thinking someone like Marion D. Charles, who's also doing picture books now but did a lot of design and corporate as well and interestingly actually both of your work is so individual in style that it makes sense that it could be applicable to so many different ways of working because you've noticed, hemmed yourself in by being traditional in any form. You've very much got your own creative voice, so to speak.

[Jill Calder]

Yeah, yeah. I think it's interesting because when I left art School in 1992, I really only wanted to do editorial work then. And it was completely different landscape back then. And where newspapers, magazines were paying, they were, first of all commissioning lots of illustration and paying you pretty well for it. So I did that for a bit. And then really, if I'm absolutely honest, a lot of the kind of changes of directions in my work, going from editorial work to suddenly doing work that's a bit more for design agencies and things and sort of corporate work, they've happened by chance. Someone's taken a risk on me rather than me being massively proactive in trying to get work in that particular field. I think it was about 93, 94. You're talking about my lettering a minute ago. And I sent out some postcards. They were promo postcards I'd done for my degree show and I just wanted to use them up. I couldn't work out how to work a label printer, so I just hand wrote the addresses of these designers and design agencies in Edinburgh and Glasgow. And then nothing happened. And then I got a phone call from a design agency saying, oh, we want to use your calligraphy. And I genuinely was like, I think you've got the wrong person. I don't do calligraphy. And they were like, no, we got your postcard. So it's these chance things that happen, and that set me on a course of doing a really lovely job for this agency. It doesn't exist anymore, but it was their 40th anniversary, so they were spending lots of money on it. I suddenly had this beautiful job in my physical portfolio. And then suddenly all other designers, Tanya, they jump on the bandwagon. They go, oh, that's a nice job. And they suddenly start to commission you to do all sorts of work for brochures, corporate stuff, annual reports and things like that. So I went from doing editorial work to doing corporate work. They'd much better. And I went, oh, yeah, this is lovely. I like this. This is good fun.

[Tanya]

It's always nice as well, because the editorial art directors have very good t. But the design. The art directors in design groups are really nice to work with, aren't they?

[Jill Calder]

Yeah.

[Tanya]

You know, there's a kind of attention to detail. There's a time scale involved in all of this as well, which allows work to be a little bit more considered and a bit more finished in editorial. Yeah. How early on in your career did you get your first break into design? What I remember is everyone does editorial for ages, but desperately tries to work with some of the nicer British design.

[Jill Calder]

Agencies by saying that particular job. I've just been talking about the 40th anniversary thing. That was quite early on. That was about 19, I think it might be 1994.

[Tanya]

Yeah.

[Jill Calder]

So that saw me doing a lot of work with different Scottish design agencies and ad agencies. Big wigs like Leith and McElroy coats, and they don't exist anymore, but they were a big wig at the time. And so I got known for doing that kind of work. But I was still doing editorial work. I got a regular column in the Scotsman, or was it Scotland on Sunday? It was one of the Scottish newspapers for their weekend magazine. And that was a weekly thing. So that was brilliant. And lots of freedom to have fun illustrating this sort of daft column written by a supermodel, Honor Fraser, who is like a mega sort of. She owns a gallery in San Francisco now or Los Angeles or something. She's pretty mega in the art world, but she was a supermodel back then. In the 90s I did that. And then on the back of it, I had loads of work. I went to London, physically went to London with a portfolio and I made appointments with folk like the Times, the Sunday Telegraph, various magazines. And then I literally there then when the art directors, I think, at the Telegraph gave me a job, the weekly illustration. I was there in the right place at the right time and he liked my work. That was me starting to get work from places like the Garden as well. Sometimes you have to take a chance and show people your work, but it's no guarantee that people are actually going to commission you. I mean, that to happen there and then in the room while I'd gone down to London for a couple of days.

[Tanya]

It's great. That in real life thing used to be such a treat.

[Narrator]

It could be exhausting.

[Tanya]

And now with the low rates of pay, people just couldn't afford to do a week of portfolio visits with clients. Which is a shame because you learn so much from those face to face. You understand what someone else is looking for, how they perceive your work, what they see in it and the opportunities. But yeah, art directors don't have the time, nor do illustrators, which is really sad because that was a fantastic experience. Thinking about how your lettering works so beautifully and harmoniously with your illustrations. Were you then encouraged by that first interest by a design group to start using them together in the same imagery or illustration jobs as much as possible?

[Jill Calder]

Yeah, I suppose I was. I think with my early illustrations, these early ones. Let's remind the listeners that they were pre digital. I was completely without computer from 1992 when I graduated up to about 97, 98. So I was drawing on paper, literally gluing bits on cut and paste, literally. So I. But lettering and things like that was always incorporated into my illustrations. And I think it played out that way until someone, someone actually said we'd really like you to do some book cover lettering or we'd like you to do some lettering for packaging standalone, without illustration. And that kind of went that way for a while. Hand lettering became really popular, didn't it? Fast forwarding it into whatever the kind of. I don't know, from about 2005 or something. I'm making a wild guess there. But there was loads of hand lettering around and I did some really nice. I did some mad jobs that were lettering only.

[Tanya]

Can you remember your maddest, the absolute.

[Jill Calder]

Maddest one, which actually was one of the best paying jobs I ever had. It came through my American agent friend and Johnson who are fantastic. And it was about 10 years ago and it was a very big financial company and they were doing adverts like proper big billboard advertising and online or every kind of advertising you can think of. And the brief basically was that they wanted handwriting but in the style like lots of different people. But I was to do all the handwriting. They were very specific briefs. One of them was a 9 year old Korean girl. There was a 65 year old German professor, your male professor. And they were very specific and there was lots and lots of different characters and I had to do and these little bits of text. There's about four or five lines of text for each person and I just had to do it as handwriting. And they wanted me to write in the things like Biro or pencil. So there wasn't any kind of calligraphy, ink or anything like that. It was a bonkers job. I was thinking, I don't know whether I'm doing this right or not. Anyway, it was great. I did manage to get pictures of billboards in New York with these kind of big photographs just of normal people, the people that they're describing, but these little bits of handwriting on them that was very well paid. That was one of my biggies. It's amazing what you get asked to do.

[Tanya]

Corporate clients and people of our generation may also get this, which is you're being asked to be the Mike Yarwood of handwriting. You've got that lovely handwriting. A lot of design and advertising work is like that. Where art directors have a preconceived idea about something and they need someone to act it out. Often those bigger jobs aren't where you're being asked to be yourself.

[Jill Calder]

This was a really fun job. I really enjoyed it. It was a great ad agency design ad agent. I think there was two agencies working on that job and they were great. I really enjoyed working for them. It felt like being in the 80s, do you know what I mean? It was like crazy corporate money flying around.

[Tanya]

Were you bathing in champagne and kicking up piles of 10 pound notes?

[Jill Calder]

Let's just say this is going to sound so grand. I was at the time talking to my American agents about it, saying, God, Hannah, I can't remember what you call them, but she wasn't an art director designer, but she managed all the art coming into the agency and she was great. She was a proper New Yorker and absolutely brilliant to work with. She really listened to me and fed it back. It was great. And I wanted to thank her. Send some wine or you know, something. She was really lovely to work with. I'd like to work with her again. And my agent at the time, he was in the New York office, he was going, jill, I think you should buy her an iPad. Like What? This is 10 or so years ago. And I was like. And he was like, yeah, I'm serious, I think you should buy an iPad. So that's what I did. I bought her an iPad. And that was. I did. Honestly, that's so mad that how bonkers the whole thing was.

[Tanya]

I hope you had an iPad at that point. A nice.

[Jill Calder]

I do remember thinking this is crazy. I'm buying someone something I don't really have myself. But let's take a little nod to your business course. Things like that are all expenses and you could put them through your book says corporate gifts or whatever. That's what I did. And I worked with her a couple more times. She was great. And there you go. It's one of these things.

[Tanya]

Clearly the iPad paid off. It paid off that you got in that kind of highfalutin business society where gifts are not a box of iPad.

[Jill Calder]

She didn't ask for an iPad or anything. She didn't ask for anything. But it's that very American way which maybe is dying out a little bit now. I don't know of you thank someone and you give them a gift. So something useful.

[Tanya]

Yeah, Kate, I think Katie does send some gifts. She's mentioned that on particularly important jobs or these unique lifetime project kind of things, it's always good to acknowledge it with a thank you. I'M so glad, Jill, that at least one of us has had the glitzy experience after we saw your lovely exhibition, that you had a Blink of Ink, which was so exceptional. You had that beautiful film in the exhibition as well. And it was a chance to see your work from early days, like you say, when it's all analog and that's right. It's just that fresh touch of work that you have, where the marks are really this flamboyant and energetic and that whole freedom and playfulness in your work and that risk is what makes it so beautiful. That exhibition was fantastic and the film was so good that I was like, this is someone talking about the realities of illustration and an evolving career.

[Narrator]

We have to get Jill into the.

[Tanya]

Course because the way you speak about making the work and the whole industry that you work in was so fresh and honest and you have a really good take on it. And now that's one of the most popular films in the course. People really love that.

[Jill Calder]

I get lovely messages from people who have. Are either new to the course or coming round to it a second time, third time, fourth time, lifetime course. That it is. And I just get lovely messages about the film. They're lovely to get. And it's so nice that that wonderful film that was made by Cornelia, a wonderful Lithuanian filmmaker that I met during my. When I was doing that for my exhibition. She's brilliant. It's a lovely film. She brought out the best in me. And it was nice to talk so honestly about a career in illustration, really. So. And I'm glad that people are affected by it and respond to it in the way that they do. And then it's helpful, I think.

[Tanya]

Oh, I think it's inspiring. People say they'd want to go and paint as soon as they've seen it, and it gives them permission and freedom to make spontaneous work and not aim for perfection and see the illustration, see the creativity that's in illustration, rather than that kind of end product where you feel you have to come, you have to arrive fully formed and that there's not that journey through creativity and discovering a very personal voice. You've always had a really strong personal voice from the get go, and now it's led you to children's picture books, which is a world of great tradition within itself. Being uniquely you is adaptable. It's a rule breaker for illustration in a way. Do you think the industry has changed and is more open to different types of work than it used to be? Do you think this could have happened to you? 20 years ago or not.

[Jill Calder]

Oh, lots of people throughout my career have always said do children's books, should do children's books. And I've never really. I never really was interested in that. Not because I don't love children's books. I've got a bookcase over there bursting with children's books and books that I kept from my childhood just because they had illustration in them. Actually I did my first picture book which is the Robert the Bruce, which is not a non fiction one. I stumbled into that as well really. I hadn't been out looking to do children's books. I'd been teaching quite a lot as a lecturer at Edinburgh College, doing quite a lot of big American client jobs. And Jim Hutchson, who's creative or was the creative director at Berlin Books in Edinburgh, got in touch and said, we've got this idea for a picture book about the life of King Robert the Bruce of Scotland from 700 odd years ago. Would you be interested in illustrating it? And he did have to persuade me a little bit because I was a bit like, well, I've never done a book before and I don't know anything about this history and I was quite anxious about it. But he was persuasive. I just thought why not? It's something new and interesting. And I went into it completely naive about the way that the children's books world worked despite having been an illustrator for so many years up to that point. This was around about Robert the Bruce got published in 2014 and I'd been working on it for a couple of years before that. So yeah, I treated it as a sort of sequential editorial project on each spread. I treated as an individual in its own right. Yeah. And it was quite. I loved it. I absolutely loved illustrating that book. I. I'm very proud of it. And it's still in print and it's in paperback now, so it does last over 10 years now. It is amazing.

[Tanya]

It was really interesting what you said there about you treated it as a series of sequential images. Had you done a body of work before that book that was a series of images that had to be consistent.

[Jill Calder]

That you'd have palette for or Traditionally non fiction picture books were double the length of standard picture books. So they're about 64 pages. I think I've seen non fiction picture books that are even longer than that and yeah, so it's all depends on the subject matter, I think. But this was 64 pages long, so there was a lot of work in it. I just remember creating the spreads the files for the spreads and doing all the drawings, all the drawings in ink and whatnot. And then scanning everything and just thinking about them as standalone images. Because I think the thought. And I thought I just need to look at them one at a time. I had a very strict color palette for it that I created after doing a bit of research on kind of medieval art and all sorts of things like that painting and things. And I had this very particular color palette. As soon as you see. As you. Soon you look at the COVID of the book, you see the color palettes of these really strong, strong blues, yellows and reds with muddy in between colors.

[Tanya]

Yeah.

[Jill Calder]

And I'd never really worked with a color palette in that way before. And that was just my instinct to work that way, to keep it simple. So I kind of had something that linked all the different spreads together and how it worked.

[Tanya]

I think we as illustrators make stuff up ourselves as we're going along because we haven't got anyone to ask or feel stupid asking about things. So we come to a conclusion ourselves about the best way to deal with it. And they always end up being the way everyone does it. When you ask other people. It's like you say, constructing a strict color palette. Your drawing has such a strong identity that's not going to change anyway. So you just anchor it all in the color palette. Can I ask, because our head is very much in the business course at the moment. The nitty gritty. In terms of differences, how do the fees compare between nonfiction and fiction?

[Jill Calder]

So I've done three non fiction books. So I've done the Picture Atlas and the Sea as well, which were all 64 pages long. And those books were. Well, actually, hang on a minute. They've all been slightly different fee wise. So the last two, the Picture Atlas and the Sea, were both with Bloomsbury.

[Tanya]

Yeah.

[Jill Calder]

When I did the Picture Atlas, that was purely a flat fee. There was no royalties or anything. It was seen as standard. Interesting non fiction, you get offered a kind of fixed fee for that. It was quite a good fee for that. And then when they came back to me and asked to do the C for me to do the C, I thought, okay, I negotiated that one myself because I was slightly in between agents. I was trying to shoot shift my picture book because I wanted a literary agent. So I was trying to navigate that. I joined the Society of Authors who are very good with their contract team and they give you lots of very good help as part of your membership. If anyone's getting published or about to be published or is already published. I recommend joining them in the uk. They really helped me with the contract for the Sea and I got quite a bit more money for the Sea than I did for the Picture Atlas And I got better terms as well.

[Tanya]

And you did that without a literary agent.

[Jill Calder]

But I've now got a literary agent. Lovely Lindsay at Fraser Ross Associates. She negotiates all my contracts since then.

[Tanya]

And there's comparing that to fiction books. I wanted to talk. Obviously I don't want to ask you to reveal numbers. Is it? There's a lot more work in non fiction compared to the shorter spreads in a fiction book.

[Jill Calder]

Yeah, I would say so. I think just because of the sheer number really. And I think the other thing with non fiction particularly the ones that I've worked on. So the Picture Atlas was obviously lots of maps. It was more the content that was going on top of the maps and the kind of in between pages. I had loads of fun doing it. There was literally like a big list of things to look at to research and I got quite a lot of free reign for what I put in the Picture Atlas. So I basically spent most of my time researching looking at all sorts of weird and wonderful animals or going for what I call Google Earth walks. You have the little yellow figure and you plop it down somewhere in the north of Finland and have a look around and see what's there. I got quite a lot of inspiration from that by drawing incidental drawings that ended up in the maps. There is a level of accuracy that you have to. To do with non fiction. Things have to look like they actually are. The way I approached those books I. More the Picture Atlas was. I've treated it like an observational drawing exercise where I was doing a lot of drawing with brush pens rather than. I use ink and with the little dropper little pipette thing that comes with it. I draw quite a lot with that and dip pen and stuff. But brush pens a little bit quicker and you could be a bit more. I don't know. I felt it was a bit easier to draw things with that. So you get a sketchbook feel. I think when you look at the Picture Atlas of these. A lot of the drawings that I did for that.

[Tanya]

It's a beautiful book and I think Matt books. We were talking to Libby van der Ploeg in the. In the Picture Book course. We have a non fiction module which is really interesting and she showed us the books she did for Nosy Crow which I think were Cities of the World. The Quantity and the Level and the Depth of research. It's phenomenal. It's the same as yours. It's very. It's just a huge amount of work. When you compare that to the spreads within a children's picture book, I'd imagine non fiction takes a lot longer than fiction.

[Jill Calder]

Yes. Depends. Gosh. I'm trying to remember how long it took to illustrate. It's probably about a year and a half for each of those. The sea and the picture atlas.

[Tanya]

Not exclusively, though. You're doing other jobs as well.

[Jill Calder]

Yeah, that was. I think everything's changed since the pandemic and I think age related. And it's all about being in the zone for me now, just being able to concentrate on one thing.

[Tanya]

And that leads us to your. The most recent books, your wonderful Corey Doon book with. With Jackie the superstar.

[Jill Calder]

Jackie Key. Absolutely.

[Tanya]

It's a Scottish poet laureate. Is it the Macca.

[Jill Calder]

Yes. She was a master, I think, from 2016 to 2021. So for a good chunk of time she was the Scottish national poet.

[Tanya]

What a joy to be on her first fiction book for children.

[Jill Calder]

Absolutely.

[Tanya]

The pair of you teamed up and it's been a huge success, hasn't it? You seem to have been at endless picture book festivals and lots of presentations. Has it been a really big deal?

[Jill Calder]

It has been quite a big deal. It got published on the 2nd of January this year. Year. Within three months. I think it was March. I got an email from lovely Tanya Rosie, who's our editor at Walker, who's a very brilliant picture book writer herself, actually. So Tanya got on phone and said, it's doing really well, we're reprinting it already. So I was like, oh, my goodness, that's. I wasn't expecting that. But it's a lovely book. It's absolutely Jackie key.

[Tanya]

Yeah.

[Jill Calder]

100%. The way that she writes, that kind of lovely flowing. There's a bit of humor in it. It makes people cry as well. This story of this little girl, Shona and her bedtime being put to bed, being sung songs by her dad, by her mum. Then you just jump into this whole dreamland of hers and halfway through the book it changes into to Shona being 60 years old and her father. In my mind, he was in his 90s and the rules are reversed a little bit. So it's really a book for everyone. It was amazing to illustrate. It wasn't easy to illustrate from. I'd never really done anything like that before. For me, it was my first.

[Tanya]

I was looking at it today, actually.

[Jill Calder]

Yeah.

[Tanya]

Watching Shona age in the book. And you'd have lots of characters in your illustration. You've always worked with faces and people and different ages, but it must have, must have been quite a challenge to really bring the character of her as a young girl and imbue that in her portrait as an older woman.

[Jill Calder]

Yeah, that took quite a lot of work and I had to age the father as well. It was quite detailed for me. I never tended to do very detailed roughs, but there was a lot of this was going back and forth with the team at Walker Books. Obviously they were showing it to Jackie. This is quite a personal book for Jackie because it was inspired and dedicated to her mum and dad. So it was important to get the right that right the characters. And I had lots of fun aging Shona, though. She's Quite a funky 60 year old with her dungarees and her big boots. She's definitely not a little old lady.

[Tanya]

Almost the perfect older character for a children's book.

[Jill Calder]

Yeah.

[Tanya]

And then it was back to all the fireworks and multiple images in an illustration when you did your new book. I love you every color. Can you tell us a little bit about that one?

[Jill Calder]

It's been an exciting year because I've had after this sort of gap of not having anything published. And then I've had two books out this year. I love you Every Colour, written by the wonderful Welsh writer Carol Lewis and published by Too Hoot. That book came out in July and oh my goodness, that was just a wonderful book. I just really love doing that. It was color. I love colour.

[Tanya]

Yeah, she's the perfect person for it.

[Jill Calder]

It's just the story really is. I think actually I heard Carol's just talking about it and she was saying the story itself is inspired by a 15th century Welsh poem a father wrote to his five year old son. And she's been inspired by that and adapted it. When you look at the text, it is like a poem, very poetic. It's all about color. And I love you. I love you green. I love you purple. I love you silver.

[Tanya]

Oh, it's an illustrator's dream, isn't it?

[Jill Calder]

I had an absolute ball illustrating. I absolutely loved it. It was just wonderful to be so playful with colour and look at it and all its different shades and tones and just, just have a bit of fun with it. I really enjoyed it.

[Tanya]

Yeah, it really looks fun. And looking at some of your earlier work, even if it's your editorial work or work from 15 years ago, it's like you've gone through these very specific areas in children's Publishing like Biography with Robert the Bruce and then the maps and then the sea. So subject specific nonfiction and then again the biography of Koori down. And now it's back to you. That playful, vibrant multiplicity you have in your work with so many things happening across the page, it's like it's a real you book. I love every colour totally.

[Jill Calder]

When I look back at some of my early editorial work, before I was introducing Photoshop into my work, particularly the I love you every colour book was almost giving a nod to that. A lot of the work I do, I draw in black and white ink, or I draw in a single color and it gets coloured up. In Photoshop, there's always something, and I'm sure I've heard Helen speak about this on previous podcasts and things, but there's always a pool to do something a bit different after you've done a big project. I'd want to change things and just try something a bit different, have a bit more freedom. When I did I love you every colour Cooridoon had been very intense working on it for about two and a half years in total. With I love you Every colour, I wanted to do something very different. So I was working with actual color and lots of colour ink and everything, still scanning things in, tweaking in Photoshop, but I just wanted to work with actual color for that and be quite playful with it.

[Tanya]

It's got that sort of Signet signature explosion of color and joy on the front of it. It feels like the perfect antidote to being very careful with portraiture and all the rest of it. It's like a kind of playtime by comparison. Not that the curry down is. It's just. It shows a different side to you.

[Jill Calder]

They're published in the same year because they show different sides. To me as an illustrator, Coorie, it is dreamland. There's a lot of softness in it and I was using kind of tools and brushes and things in Photoshop that I've never used before, real airbrushy type brushes and things like that. Just layering up things, almost like you're layering up sheets of texture washes and things and just playing around with them, like glazes, basically. So it's got a real soft, dreamlike feel to it. And it's a bedtime book. Whereas I love you every colour, it's an explosion of colour and texture and marks and playfulness. So they're very different.

[Tanya]

Yeah. It's lovely the way those two books show your ability to handle emotion and character in Illustration through the composition of the pages or the use of colour. Some of those thoughtful pages in Khoridhun of her sitting at the table playing with the pulpit. A dot cup. I've got so much light and atmosphere and they capture a kind of cinematic moment. You're inside the head of Shona and then back to. I love every color, which is just that full on playfulness. It's great that you get to show the whole range of your balance and kind of character and emotion in your work, both in children's picture books in a similar area at the same time. But have you got any plans? What's next?

[Jill Calder]

Oh, gosh. I'm working on another picture book at the moment, which is. I'm absolutely loving it, though I am in the thick of it at the moment. It's quite a quick book. It's for Gecko Press, a New Zealand publisher. They are in the fold of an American publisher. Total Brain Learner Books. I work directly with the team in New Zealand and it's a New Zealand writer, Claire Mabie, who's wonderful. I met her at Edinburgh Book Festival this year. We had 45 minutes to catch up with each other. We made the most of it. She's written an absolute stormer of a story. It's called Cass and the Beast and it will come out next September. It's a really strong female character in it and I love it. I'm having lots of fun with it. I've got lots to do on it, but I've got to get it pretty much finished by the middle of December. Then we'll have another look at it again in sort of January, February, with sort of final tweaks and additions and things, and then that will be it. But it's really. It's been a wonderful process, doing all the roughs and thumbnails. I really enjoyed it and I wanted to keep that energy in the final artwork.

[Tanya]

That's always the thing, isn't it? You're. You're a master at that. Your work always has so much energy. You must know exactly how to do that. After so many beautiful, vibrant.

[Jill Calder]

I still get stressed about it. I get really anxious about it and procrastinate and chew my fingers. Oh, I'm never going to do this. And how am I going to do this? So I get.

[Tanya]

Do you need lots of versions to keep that energy? Is it by doing lots of different versions all at the same time, hoping one of them will keep the feeling that you want?

[Jill Calder]

There's a little bit of that. I think it's interesting. The spread I'm working on at the moment is a sort of interior view that most of this book of cast and the beast is outside. But this is an interior scene and I've. And maybe because of that, I've treated it differently and I've broken it down into parts and I've drawn the main interior of the room as a oner. And then there's bits and bobs that are on the wall and I've drawn them all separately. They're almost like the building blocks. They're the line work. In this particular illustration today, I've been putting them into place. I try not to overthink it. Although I've done roughs and thumbnails and they've all been approved. I'm not really showing the colour element because I like that bit to be the bit that surprises me. So I just have a bit of fun with it. And I've been layering up these layers of texture and scribbly bits. I'm hoping this is going to be a spread that comes together quite quickly. The final artwork for it called Famous Last Words.

[Tanya]

We mustn't whisper those cursed words. It's a bit like the actor's curse, isn't it? Once you start saying, I'm doing final artwork today, that is the kiss of death. Good luck with the new book and it's great to speak to this side of your career, having sailed right across the illustration atlas to the other side. It's so interesting to hear. So thanks for coming on and if anyone wants to see Jill's work, go onto her website or you'll see her in Pitchbook course and in the Fly youy Freak Flag, find your Creative Voice course as well.

[Jill Calder]

Oh, brilliant. Courses are great. I pop up quite often in the Facebook groups and get involved in the discussions there. It's brilliant. I love good ship illustration.

[Tanya]

Oh, we love having you on board. You've always got so many useful and interesting and experienced things to say. We love the wisdom. Thanks, Jill. Thanks so much.

[Jill Calder]

Thank you.

[Tanya]

Hope to catch up with you at a children's picture book festival soon on the next Books.

[Jill Calder]

Absolutely. Tanya, it's been great. Take care.

[Tanya]

And you. Bye for now.

[Jill Calder]

Bye.