Tell us a little bit more about your artistic process?
I live in Northern California and have an office that
looks out on Mt. Tam. In the mornings I can watch the fog rolling in from
Point Reyes heading towards San Francisco. Before the pandemic I worked
like anyone else - drop the children off at school and work until it was time
to pick them up, Monday through Friday, with weekends off. Now I work in stolen
moments, naptime, late at night or early in the morning, as much as I can
on weekends. Six months in and this feels normal now, and I wonder what it will
feel like when my children are able to go back to school safely. This has been
incredibly hard, as I know it has been for everyone, but I also feel lucky
to have gotten to spend so much time with my children at such a young age.
As for my working method, I like to print the
manuscript so that I can doodle in the margins as I read through it, little
scribbled visual notes when something strikes me. If there's a moment that
evokes an emotional reaction I underline it and try to evoke that emotion in
my artwork. The sketches I send to Ben are done in photoshop, generally just
black and white, trying to get the design and composition right. The sketches
are never about drawing, or details - only whether the composition is working.
If the composition is working then I can get away with just having fun making
the finished artwork, trying different techniques and tools to get interesting
marks and effects. As long as I have the composition and value structure worked
out I know I have a safety net and can only fall so far, so I feel free to take
risks and make mistakes and discover new ways of working. All of the paintings
for this book were done with acrylic and ink on illustration board.
What was your favourite spread to
illustrate?
My goal is always to make every spread my favourite, to give 100% to each
painting. I want the reader to be propelled through the book by the words and
images, and each image needs to have an impact.
Which of the tales is your favourite and
why?
I think Kevin did something wonderful with this book, in that each tale builds
subtly one upon the next until we reach the end and he brings them all together
with the final tale. When I read the manuscript the first time I got teary-eyed
at the end. So if I had to pick just one, The Gift of Poetry. As a father now I
often think of what I want my books to pass on to my children, and what was
given to me by books in my childhood and in my life. The Gift of Poetry speaks
to that history, that heritage, all of us are links in a chain reaching back
through the years and that, we hope, will extend far into the future.
What is your favourite thing to draw?
I am drawn to knights and arrows and swords and King Arthur and Robin Hood
because, as a young child growing up in Germany, I spent my days running
through dark woods, up the hill from our village to a small castle. On weekends
we would go visit other castles, or walled cities, or ruins. I was surrounded
by the landscape of the tales my parents told me, of the picture books they
would buy me.
What was your favourite picture book
when you were a child?
Tales of King Arthur by James Riordan, illustrated by the
magnificent Victor Ambrus. My parents went to England and came back with that
book and I was hooked. I knew I wanted to write and draw as soon as I saw the
cover.
- Jeffrey Alan Love
A special thanks to our guest illustrator this week, Jeffrey Alan Love!
Norse Tales: Stories from Across the Rainbow Bridge is now available to buy from all good booksellers.
