Author & IllustratorOur chat with the lovely Lisa Stickley. What do you love most about kids books? I can’t get enough of them. Picture books are all kinds of wonderful. Starting with the basics, they offer all sorts of learning for little ones, and kids pick up on so much. From visual details that only small eyes can spot, telling the story through illustration and obviously great words to go with the pictures, essential in developing their communication skills, speech and vocabulary. Kids can understand so much before they are able to read or write, and books are absolutely key for this. I was always amazed when my girls started to finish the sentences in books from quite an early age, often correcting me if I wasn’t quite concentrating properly and read it slightly wrong! To fully reciting whole books before the phonics and abc’s kicked in at school. I love it when kids get really engrossed in a book. When it’s a goodie they want it to be read over and over again, so it’s great when it’s one that appeals to the grown ups too! A story with a twist at the end, repetitive bits, interactive elements (often creating much leaping about), anticipation and surprise is always going to engage them. At the moment we are reading Sam & Dave Dig A Hole (Mac Barnett & Jon Klassen), There’s A Shark In The Park (Nick Sharratt), and lucky for me The Wobbly Waitress (one of my latest books published by Tate Publishing). We’ve been lost in our own imaginations with the former, shouted the house down with the middle one and nailed our left and right with the latter from all of the wobbling the waitress does! To me there’s nothing better than curling up in a big armchair with the girls and a pile of books! Dreamy. Did you have a favourite childhood book? Lester And The Weeds, Angela Royston & Jill Coleman. I sadly don’t have the book anymore but can still remember the opening line (40 years later!) ‘Lester Squeak is a little great mouse...’ (I think! Don’t quote me!) and would LOVE to find a copy again to read to my girls so I’m on the lookout! What do you love most about drawing? I use a lot of different processes to draw and it’s great for bringing different characters to life by way of oil pastels, mono printed line combined with collaged pattern (often from my own stash of designs), pen and ink, paper cutting and paint. I quite like a blank sheet of paper and often doodle on older more worn out bits of paper I’ve collected over the years. It adds another element to the illustration I think. The first drawings of the day are always awful, and I’ll often make a number of drawings of any one thing until the right one comes along. At the moment I love drawing animals and have a particular penchant for drawing soft toys (old and new), building up layer upon layer of texture to give the right look and feel to the character. I love making them look a little bit wonky and odd, giving them their own unique personality. I’d always avoided drawing people in my work for years and years and only really started when I began illustrating for my books. It scared me to death! But with a little inspiration from favourite illustrators such as Mary Blair, Aliki and Saul Steinberg I plucked up the courage to have a go, and now find it fascinating that a tweak of a nostril here or a shift of an eyebrow there can completely transform the facial expression of a person. It’s hilarious! Drawing is so therapeutic. It’s a good day when it’s a drawing day. Does it take long to complete a book? Gosh, tricky question. Sometimes they can be fairly quick - just a few months from concept to finished if the mojo is with you (not including edits and tweaks of artwork). But mostly, ages! The Wobbly Waitress for example, was written in the autumn 2015, and went through a lot of revisits, tweaks and changes to the text before even pitching it to publishers or starting to build the initial visual concept. This was my first rhyming book and I LOVED writing it. It’s such a jigsaw puzzle to put together and really gets the cogs in the brain working. Once it was commissioned the text was tweaked again and again before being signed off (for this one I worked with the wonderful editor Holly Tonks/ Tate Publishing). I started on the artwork along side this stage focussing in character creation first (all painted for this book) and then roughs were made. Then onto the final artwork which working non stop on it (apart from dinner and the odd snooze) took around 3/4 weeks to complete. All in all the book was delivered ready for final tweaks and proofs in the winter 2017. It was published in September 2018. Sometimes I illustrate first and build a story around that, or sometimes the text comes first. I try not to be too prescriptive and just let the ideas happen when they want to happen (which writing wise is often when I’m walking along, or on the bus. I get a very sore head from lampposts if I’m really in the zone, as writing in ‘notes’ on my phone is my go to when out and about!). At the moment I have a number of different ideas whizzing around in my head and in various stages of writing (on blackboards, notebooks and iPhone notes). I never quite know which one is suddenly going to leap ahead to the ‘final’ written stage and be good enough to show to my agent for her advice! What was your favourite thing to do as a kid? Making things, be it cooking, colouring, sewing, painting, drawing... I’d always be creating something or another. Oh, and gymnastics! Are you friends with other authors? Yes, I’m very lucky to know some fab author folk including Fiona Lumbers, Lizzy Stewart, Jane Foster, Zehra Hicks and Becky Baur... it’s a very special world to be in. Have you ever read a book before, that you didn't like? Yes, a few! Rather not mention any names, that would be mean! What inspires you to draw? I have story ideas ticking away in my head most of the time which always inspires me to draw. Any chance I get to put pen to paper is most welcome. Even if it’s just 10 minutes! what do you love the most to draw? Hmmmmmm, I think dogs and funny looking horses. Although I did some deep sea divers last night and that was quite fun too! Pretty much anything really. Sometimes it takes AGES to make it look as I want it to look but that’s part of the creative journey. You never know when a happy accident might come along and give you a new angle to explore. Any new up coming titles coming out soon, that we should be looking out for? Yes yes, Bake Like Mummy (Boxer Books) has just been published, all about Poppy and her antics in the kitchen as she ‘helps’ make cakes and things with her mum! And my next book with Tate Publishing (another rhyming book) comes out in September 2019. It’s called Bernard Makes A Splash and it’s all about high diving dogs (of course!) and overcoming shyness. www.lisastickleystudio.com twitter @lisastickley_ instagram @lisastickley_studio pinterest @lisastickley_studio Giveaway.
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