Book Week 2020
Australian Children’s Book Week 2020 (Curious Creatures, Wild Minds) was delayed by Covid-19, but went ahead in late October. I mainly spent it actually creating books, but I did one school visit to Governor Stirling Senior High School, where I presented to year 10 English classes.
I started the day at lunchtime, presenting an informal session to any kids who happened to be in the library, while illustrating live. At it was almost Halloween, I drew The Bride of Frankenstein - having an image to work from allowed me to free up most of my brain so I could talk while I was drawing and answer any questions the kids had.
Lunch time was only 20 minutes, so I could only create a very quick illustration!
After lunch I had a double-class of Year 10 English students and I gave them a presentation about designing book covers, and six things to remember when designing (and reading) book covers (Symbolism, Intertextuality, Colour & Tone, Point of View, Omission and Text & Font.
Usually I present to primary school children, but it was a great experience presenting a more in-depth look at the topic with older kids (even if it was last thing on a hot Friday afternoon (sorry, kids! I don’t pick the time!)
After the talk we did an exercise, to timer, creating a book cover for for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. This was a book at least one of the classes had been studying (I was told the theme for the term had been ‘Monsters’, but as I showed them in my presentation, in many cases the illustrator does not get to read the book before they create the cover, so it didn’t matter if they hadn’t read the book themselves.)
The kids created three ugly thumbnail sketches of two minutes each, and then had 15 minutes to work their favourite up into a rough that could be presented to a client (i.e. Something more legible than those initial concept sketches). Some examples are to the left; didn’t they do a fabulous job?
Thanks to Governor Stirling Senior High School for hosting me!
If you would like to book a school visit, I’m available for live presentations in the Perth area, or Zoom presentations worldwide (time zones permitting) - just contact me via my website!