Petr Horáček's Blog

Children’s Art

Throughout the year I do lots of school visits and festivals where I often draw and paint with children.

I never get tired of seeing children being absolutely absorbed with drawing, with art, being creative.

Give a child a pencil and they’re immediately in the world of fantasy and imagination. During my school visits I often create a huge painting with the children, when everyone is allowed to paint and draw anything they wish; from flying cats to bears on skateboards.

 After a day in school, I’m often rewarded by drawn presents from the children.

I keep some of them and occasionally I make copies of such drawings.

Here is a picture of a puffin inspired by my book Puffin Peter

and here is a painting of mine inspired by the drawing.

I also like this drawing of a bird riding a scooter.

 Here is my interpretation of the drawing.Another of my favourites is this tiger.

I copied it a couple times and perhaps as a result I later wrote a book called The Last Tiger.

Being creative is in our nature. Young children themselves never question their ability to be creative, the ability to draw and paint. It’s only later in life, when we start telling them “how things should be done properly” that they lose interest in art and creativity.

Being creative is not just about art. We live in a world when information can be easily accessed, but what is information and knowledge good for if we don’t know how to work with it, how to use it? This is the reason why we should always support children’s imagination, creativity and every form of art at schools and at home. Knowledge without creativity is useless.

Children’s imagination and children’s art should be a great source of inspiration to all of us.

How to draw a bear

My new book is about a bear.

Actually, my new book is about friendship and how complicated it may be to find a friend.

Actually, my new book is about how complicated it may be to find a friend and there is a bear in the book.

Actually there are two bears in the book.

Anyway, I think it would be best, if you read the book.

Meanwhile I can teach you how to draw a bear.

Take a sharp pencil…

If you’d like A Best Friend for Bear here is the best online place to buy it! Click

A Best Friend for Bear

Whenever I’m asked the question “What is your favourite animal?” I would say an elephant, because they are easy to draw. Sometimes I would say a bear, because I really like bears.

I do like drawing bears too and it’s surprising, that it took me twenty two years to write a book about a bear.

It’s not that I didn’t want to write a book about a bear earlier, I just couldn’t come up with a good idea.

Every autumn I spend a couple of weeks on my own at my friend’s cottage in the Czech countryside.

I paint and walk in the woods, thinking about new ideas for a book, trying to write them down in the evenings by the fire.

I don’t always come back to England with a finished book, but I always bring back enough material to work with through the year. I then spend months writing, sketching, rewriting and starting again…

The idea for this book came to me as I was walking in the woods.

This book was one of the books when the idea just pops out and you know exactly how to write it down.

Not every book is like this. Usually I rewrite the story many, many times before the publisher is happy.

This time it was easy. Well, let’s say…this time I thought it’s going to be easy.

Of course, to make the book work takes time and there are always some changes.

But from the beginning I knew I would like to write a book about friendship, also about the fact, that we are often unable to see things that are right in front of our noses. The book is also about how we can find friendship in places and situations where we least expect it.

The other thing that surprised me was also the process of illustrating the book. I thought that painting a bear shouldn’t be difficult, because I had done lots of drawings of bears before and whenever somebody says: “Draw me something” I would often draw a bear. Drawing bears should be easy, right?

I use collage for my illustrations, but bears are hairy and a cut out bear didn’t work.

I used acrylic paint, but the bears looked heavy and the texture wasn’t right either.

It took me some time until, probably out of frustration, I grabbed oil pastels and started colouring the bear with oil pastels. I mixed blue and black for the black bear and brown and orange for the brown bear. I scratched into the oil pastels and painted over…it worked.

Here are the first sketches of the bears.

Here are some other changes I made.

The first sketch

The first illustration, which I changed many times.

And the final picture as it is in the book.

If you look carefully, you can see the brown bear is already entering the scene. He’s walking on the right page, between the trees.

This is also one of the first illustrations before I started again and changed the whole book.

Writing the book was fun. I remember smiling a lot as I was writing it down.

Illustrating the book was more challenging than I expected, but I had fun experimenting with, for me, new materials.

Well, here is the book. I hope you will like it. It is published on 7th April. On sale everywhere including Bookshop.org.

Jan Pieńkowski – Here is a story

Jan Pieńkowski, one of the most important and most recognisable British illustrators, writers and designers of pop-up books, died on the 19th February 2022.

The Guardian published a nice obituary and you can read it - here. 

Here is my story about Jan Pieńkowski.

When I was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague I met my future wife Claire. She was a postgraduate student of fine art from England.

We fell in love, but we didn’t know anything about each other. Different cultures, different languages. Claire was learning to speak Czech and I couldn’t speak English. The communication was challenging, full of misunderstandings, surprises and fun.

And here is the interesting bit. The very first present I got from Claire was a mini version of  Jan Pieńkowski’s pop-up book Little Monsters. 

Yes, it was a sweet and lovely present, but why exactly a pop-up picture book?

I wasn’t interested in picture books or illustration at the time. I was going to be a painter whose abstract paintings were going to hung in the national galleries around the world. I never thought about moving out of the Czech Republic. Illustrating, designing books, not mentioning writing books for children, had never even crossed my mind.

Did Claire know something I didn’t know? 

Skip eight years. It was 2000 and I was living in England.

Mysteriously and perhaps by chance, my first two board books were about to be published by Walker Books Ltd.

I was at a meeting with my publisher and we went for lunch at the Walker canteen. I remember being worried about my deadline. I tried to explain that I may be a bit late with my book for a couple of days. I didn’t know how deadlines work then. It was my first book.

My publisher smiled. She nodded with her head towards the corner of the canteen: “Don’t worry about a couple of days. This lovely man promised me a book seven years ago.”

I don’t know if she was just trying to reassure me, or what the real deadline of the author was, but the guy with the long hair, old out of shape blue jumper, who was sitting in the corner, drawing something or reading,  probably waiting for his editor, was Mr.Jan Pieńkowski.

I never talked to Jan Pieńkowski personally. I wish I had, when I had the chance. I can only say, that his amazing work touched my life probably in a similar way as it touched the lives of many.

 

 

 

IMAGINE: ILLUSTRATING STORIES

Over the last two years we’ve got used to living with restrictions. We have got used to not going to concerts, museums, galleries..

Not enjoying art in any form, publicly, became normal.

 

I was so pleased when I got an invitation from The Vanner Gallery to participate in their exhibition.

Imagine: Illustrating Stories  is an exhibition of original artwork by many well-known illustrators.

Anybody who likes picture books, has children, or is interested in children’s book illustration will recognise these names:

Eric Carle, Raymond Briggs, Lauren Child, Shirley Hughes, Oliver Jeffers, Anita Jeram,

David McKee,

Jill Murphy, Helen Oxenbury, Axel Scheffler, Shaun Tan, Benedict Blathwayt, Anthony Browne, Robert Ingpen, Simon James, Anita Jeram, John Lawrence, Alice Lickens, Debra McFarlane, Jill Murphy, Neil Packer, Frann Preston, Korky Paul, Kristina Stephenson, Charlotte Voake.

These are two of my exhibited pictures.

Looking at and appreciating these beautiful illustrations in a book is one thing. Seeing the original artwork and understanding the artistic techniques, seeing the true colours and textures, it shifts your experience onto a different level.

I admired the detailed work of  Jill Murphy. Her illustrations are done with the finest and sharpest coloured pencils you can imagine. 

There are beautiful illustrations by Anthony Browne, David McKee and of course one of my favourite illustrators Eric Carl who was a master of drawing with a scalpel. Only seeing Eric Carle’s originals makes one fully understand what a great artist he was.

The exhibition is open until 9th April 2022, so if you can make it to Salisbury, don’t miss it!

Let the visiting of music venues, theatres, museums and galleries become a big part of our lives once again.

Mister Boo!

Mister Boo! is published! It is the latest book I’ve illustrated, and it is written by the lovely Joyce Dunbar.

Mister Boo! is the second book that Joyce has written for me. The first book ‘Grumpy Duck’ was awarded ‘Picture Book of the Year 2020′ in the Netherlands. I wrote a blog about it here.

I met Joyce almost five years ago at The Ted Hughes Arvon Centre, Lumb Bank where we were tutors. Over the week I worked with Joyce, and with the students had an amazing time. Seeing Joyce working, teaching, witnessing how creative she is, was a real life-enhancing experience and that week I learned so much from her. I would say, that Grumpy Duck was a natural result of our friendship and cooperation at the Arvon Center.

I must have done something good with the illustrations for ‘Grumpy Duck’, because a couple of years later Joyce wrote another book and asked me to illustrate it.

Mister Boo! is a story of a tom cat who is a bit mischievous, but he can’t help it. Many cats are like him.

One day, Mister Boo realises, that he is not as fast as he used to be and that things around him are slowly changing.

I loved the gentle, touching story straight away and although I consider cats to be rather difficult to draw (always challenging to draw a smiling cat), I couldn’t wait to start working on the book.

In an ideal world  I would start illustrating and keep going until the book is finished. It doesn’t always happen this way. I started working on Mister Boo! and then my work took me somewhere else a couple of times, but funnily enough, going back to the book was like coming home and meeting a cat who is waiting for you. I loved illustrating the book, painting the different seasons, seeing Mister Boo getting older.

I would like to say a big THANK YOU to my editors Denise Johnstone- Burt and Louise Jackson, who gave Joyce and me great support and and all the help we needed and THANK YOU to Walker Books who produced a book of great quality as always.

Thank you Joyce for the beautiful book and your friendship. It is a real joy working with you!

 

 

Eric Carle

As a child I did not know about Eric Carle and his beautiful books. I didn’t grow up in England and his books were not published in communist Czechoslovakia where I was born.

I remember the very first time I saw one of Eric Carle’s books. I was living in England and the book was called The Very Hungry Caterpillar. The book was a gift from a family friend to my newborn daughter.

I remember looking at the book in my hand with absolute amazement. I had never seen a book like this before. The colours, the beautiful collaged artwork, the story and the holes in the pages…I couldn’t believe The Very Hungry Caterpillar was published in 1969. It looked so modern, so fresh, so timeless.

I wished that one day I would make books like this.

Eighteen years later I was travelling with my family through New England and we visited the Eric Carle Museum in Amherst, MA. Seeing Eric Carle’s work was so exciting. To my amazement I realised, that they kept my books in the museum shop and I heard that Eric Carle had seen, and liked, my book Jonathan and Martha. I was so touched. I never met Mr Carle in person, but if I had, I would probably have just mumbled something like “You are the reason why I write and illustrate books for children…You are my hero”.  Something, which he had probably heard many times before. There must be thousands of people who started to write and illustrate because they were inspired by Eric Carle’s beautiful books.

I was sad when I heard that Eric Carle had past away. Then I realised, that just like the timeless The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle and his beautiful work will be with us for ever and ever. That makes me happy.

LOTS OF LOVE

Two Books and More

Over the years I used to say that I’m happiest in my studio, working on a book. How little I knew then.

I’ve been sitting in my studio for over a year now and I am really ready to see people, to have a change of scenery. I somehow know that I’m not the only one.

During the lock downs I started doing events for schools and libraries on Zoom. First I thought that it would never work, but it did and what’s more, I can proudly say, that I’ve mastered it and am actually enjoying these sessions. In a funny way you can still see your audience and although I can’t hear everybody, I can see their facial expressions. That helps.

Since the pandemic started I have finished two picture books. The first one is for Walker Books and it is  going to be called A Best Friend for a Bear.

The book is about two bears who are looking for a friend. First they are looking separately, but helping each other on this journey makes things much easier.

I love drawing bears and I thought illustrating this book was going to be easy.

Once again, I was wrong. Although I enjoyed working on the book enormously, I have changed the artwork many times.

Finishing the book took me a long time. But hey, time is something I have plenty of, so no worries.

The second picture book is about Tom and Mot and will be published by Otter-Barry.

They love each other so much, that they would give each other the whole world.

And that’s what they do!  Or kind of…

I had this book in my drawer for some time. I was so looking forward to doing the final illustrations.

Working on the book was pure joy.  Going to my studio to print, and cut and draw and paint…until it’s all done. Then change half of it. The usual, but it is O.K. because I have time… I’ve said that before.

Apart from these two books I still had time to draw and paint for other people, and to do lots of pictures for myself. Perhaps one day, when all this is over, I can have an exhibition! Oh, that would be nice.

How to Draw Puffin Peter

Puffin Peter  was published in 2011. Which was exactly ten years after my very first book was published. It was shortlisted for The Kate Greenaway Medal in 2012 and was later part of the Bookstart programme.  Here is a link to an older blog about Puffin Peter.

I read Puffin Peter in schools and festivals and I am often asked to teach children how to draw a puffin. So here we go. First, this is me reading  Puffin Peter in English.

Here is me again, this time I am reading Papuchalk Petr in Czech.

And here are the instructions for drawing Puffin Peter. Have fun!

 

 

How to draw Blue Penguin

I am writing this blog on 9th June 2020. Today is World Empathy Day and today, perhaps more than ever, we need to think about understanding and also sharing each others’ feelings.

None of us look the same, we may live and grow up in different circumstances, in different parts of the world, but we all see and feel in a very similar way. We all know how it feels to be sad, to be lonely, to be worried or even scared, …but we also know how it feels to be happy, to be loved,  to be appreciated… And that is the beauty of it. Trying to communicate with each other, listen to each other,  being interested about each others’ life, culture and heritage… This is what makes us human.

For today I will read one of my books – BLUE PENGUIN.

If you would like to learn how to draw Blue Penguin, please scroll down and have fun!