Petr Horáček's Blog, page 10

Blue People

I was in Prague.  I met up with lots of friends and went to see a couple of very good exhibitions.

Two of those were exhibitions of two of my favourite artists - Květa Pacovska and Jiří  Salamoun.

Květa Pacovska is perhaps better known for her beautiful books, but seeing Pacovska’s paintings and installations was a real treat .

                         

I could spend hours in the gallery just getting inspired by the colours and playfulness of Pacovska’s work.

 The other artist was Jiří Salamoun. I’ve been a big admirer of his work for many years. 

You can imagine how excited I was when I found his monograph (also published in english) under the Christmas tree!

A small exhibition of his drawings and prints in the little gallery of Baobab publisher made my day.

Over the holidays I did a series of sketches and drawings inspired by both of these artists.

Here are some drawings from my little sketchbook.This one is called “Silly cow”.These are “Blue People”“Blue People at home”

“Singing to the Moon”

I also did some bigger drawings.Here is the cow again.

I call it “The Holy Cow”One more singer.

“Blue People and the Moon”

“Blue People in your Home”

“Blue People and three Birds”

In Prague I did a short interview for the foreign section of Czech radio. Here it is – click.

             HAPPY NEW YEAR!

..and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

There are only a few windows unopened in our advent calendar!

I’m in Prague at the moment. Czechs celebrate Christmas on the evening of 24th December. I’ll be still there just about to fly back that evening to get ready for turkey and mince pies here in England. This way I’m going to have two Christmases!

I’ll be traveling in the evening on the 24th, so I may even see Father Christmas in the sky (once again)! I already got a first Christmas present the other day. A picture from Bill, age 4. It’s a drawing of mouse. I love the brown fur and with the white background it looks as if the mouse is standing in the snow. Thank you Bill.

Here is another picture which made me happy. My younger daughter Cecilia design this Christmas card. I love it!

I looked through my folders trying to find some of mine winter pictures and found these very old illustrations.

A snowman with birds.

Here is one with a kingfisher.Snowman in conversation with a man.

Here they are again together.I’m not quite sure what is happening here, but it’s snowing.This man is happily cycling through the snowy countryside. He is being chased by hares.Well that is enough pictures for this year. Have a nice Christmas..and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

St. Nicholas and Elephants

Last week people in Czech Republic celebrated Saint Nicholas. I love the tradition when St. Nicholas, a Devil and an Angel visit children and bring them sweets. Children are excited and a bit scared at the same time. I was a couple of times St. Nicholas myself.  Here I am dressed as St. Nicholas with a rather scary devil.

Friend of mine Alex Holy, who is seven years old drew this lovely picture of St. Nicholas.

Last week was also about “Blue Penguin”.I had nice reviews in The Independent and The Daily Mail and was also asked to write an article about Blue Penguin for Elizabeth O. Dulemba blog.

It was also the christening of a lovely little boy called Gabriel. I wanted to give him a picture and since I was recently painting elephants, I did one for Gabriel too.I showed a couple of sketches of elephants in my previous blog.

There are two elephants with too many legs.

I did two bigger versions of them.I know that they do have too many legs.

Christmas is coming soon, so if you haven’t got all the presents yet, have a look at Children’s Book Illustration. There is so much to choose from! There are also some elephants.

Suzy

“Suzy Goose and the Christmas Star” was published some time ago. As a Christmas book it has a very short life time. It appears in the bookshops at this time of the year and it’s taken away as soon as Christmas is over. 

Whenever I’m asked to sign a copy of “Suzy Goose and the Christmas Star” I know that it is time to start thinking about Christmas presents. I signed quite a few copies last week. CHRISTMAS IS COMING SOON!

Looking at the pictures from the book I remembered the time when I was working on the book. The idea to write “Suzy Goose and the Christmas Star” came to me one Christmas as I was walking over the Somerset Levels.

I was then working on the pictures during the summer. It’s always a bit strange to paint snow when it is hot outside.But I love painting snow.

If you would like to buy somebody an original picture with Suzy Goose, just click here – Children’s Book Illustration.

Last week I finished “A FIRST BOOK OF ANIMALS” and started tiding up my studio. I knew it would take some time, but I had no idea how long it’d take.

I tried to throw away as much as I could, but in the end I’ve ended up just shifting things around. It wasn’t a wast of time though. I found old lost sketchbooks and diaries.  

Some of them had dreams and drawings in them. I haven’t written down a dream for some time.Here is a first page of my diary from 2004.

I also found a couple of elephants. What they have in common is the fact that they have too many legs.Tiding up can be fun, you know.

Final touch

This is a finished book!

“My First Book of Animals” has more than fifty double spread pictures. I’ve been working on it a whole year. Last week I finished the last illustration from the book and felt a kind of relief. I always fall for this. I think the book is finished as soon as I finish the last illustration, but it’s never like this. There are always little changes and adjustments and there are endpapers to be painted and a contents page and end of chapters…, so in the end it’s been a couple of busy weeks for me.

Here is the mentioned contents pageand some of the illustrations from the book.

“My First Book of Animals” is divided into five sections and each of the sections finishes with information about certain animals. I wanted these end chapters to be different. I wanted the drawings to look as if they had been taken out of somebody’s sketchbook.Some of the drawings were quite challenging.The book will have a sleeve cover.Sleeve covers are nice, but then you have to do one more cover for the actual book. Here is one of themand here are details of some other options.One of the butterflies?Or perhaps another beetle?Or an egg?

What about a hummingbird? I like the hummingbird.I got myself carried away. The truth is that I enjoyed painting these small images.

Tomorrow I will tidy up my studio. I do that every time I finish a book. If you imagine, that this book took me a year to work on you can imagine what my studio looks like.

I’ve already started throwing away some paper and cutouts. I found this drawing, which I quite like. It’s a sketch for a giraffe.

Here is one more drawing from my little sketchbook I wanted to show you.It’s a drawing I did this week when I heard on the radio that one of the last four white rhinos has died.  It’s sad, sad news.

Back home and home again

I’m back from my annual trip to the Czech Republic. I try to do this every year. Travel to my homeland, stay in my friends’ summer cottage, go for walks, paint in the woods, write new ideas for picture books, trying to chop wood and survive by cooking for myself.

I love this place so much. From the front door of the cottage you can see an apple orchard, hills and woods. The back door opens in to the wood.

The days there are almost always the same. A walk in the wood, counting mushrooms, painting in the afternoon and writing in the evening.

Some of the mushrooms look beautiful.I paint outside. I love the autumn landscape and the low light in woods is magical.Here is one of my paintings.If truth be told, I probably spend most of the time just sitting on a tree stump looking into the wood.

I also paint in the orchard (that’s when it gets too cold to be far away from the cottage).I love the evening. Playing music, sitting  by the fire and making up stories.This one is about a tiger.

 I tried to write about a frog as well.There may be also a story about a girl call Lucy.

Not everything I write there is usable, but I always come back with some ideas and material I can work with later in the year.Not far from this place I saw a white dear, honestly! I told my friend about it. He knew he lives there and he told me, that the first time people saw the white dear, they thought it’s an escaped goat who now lives with dear. Now, there’s an idea for a story, I thought.

I had an amazing time back in Czech Republic and it’s always very hard to come back and pick up working where I left it.

But it wasn’t just work for me. I had time to meet up with friends too.

I briefly met a little chap call Martin Hasa. He was only three years old, but just as his parents he likes books and he can paint. This picture is called “All the animals”.I like his picture very much.Since I came back I was busy finishing “My First Book of Animals” (still lots of work needs to be done in the next couple of weeks), did a window in a nice book shop “Jaffe and Neale” in Chipping Norton, popped into “Stream Festival” in South London and visited the really nice book shop “Alligator’s Mouth” in Richmond London.I’m now back in my studio. I’m learning how to draw a beaver so that it doesn’t look like a guinea pig. It’s not easy, you know.

I looked at my sketchbooks for a guinea pig, but haven’t found any. This animal is quite similar. It’s a bear though.

BLUE PENGUIN is released!

                                                                                             

My latest picture book is called “Blue Penguin”.

I got the idea for the book two years ago. It was a nice autumn evening and I was raking leaves in a beautiful apple orchard, thinking about one of my friends that I haven’t seen now for a longtime.

His name was Richard and he was very different from everybody else I know. He used to say and do exactly what ever he wanted to say and do at that moment. Behaviour like this could get him into a trouble from time to time, of course, but Richard didn’t mind. He was used to be different.

Richard was fun to be with and I liked being his friend.

So that day I got this idea to write a book about a penguin that was different from everybody else. I started to write the same evening.

The next day I fitted the story with thumbnail sketches.

Some books are difficult to write, some books just pop out. It felt as if the “Blue Penguin” is one of the books, which comes easily.

I really enjoyed sketching and writing the story and I couldn’t wait to show it to my publisher.

I’m very lucky to be published by Walker Books and I’m also lucky to work with two very good and nice editors. They nodded their heads as they were reading it and then they said: ” We like it, but it would need a little bit more work.” I’ve heard this many times before and I know what it means. The hard work started there.

We had to tidy up the story, make it shorter, simpler…. My editors and I worked on the text on and off for months. I must have about fifteen versions of the “Blue Penguin”. The book, which seemed to be at the beginning so easy to write, now turned into rather hard work.

To be honest I didn’t mind to rewrite the text and I liked the process of editing the story, but at the same time I couldn’t wait to start to illustrate it.

I could see the pictures in my dreams and I was so looking forward to getting on with the artwork.

Finally after a year we agreed that the story is now ready. I did the pictures in a month or two, almost in one go and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Even when the illustrations were done we still discussed the text. My editors are never happy until everything is just right.

I had to change some sentences and it meant that I had to change some pictures too.

We also took some of the finished illustrations out, so it all fitted with the changes.

Below is one of the illustrations that didn’t make it into the book.



Blue Penguin was probably one of my most challenging books to write and one of the most fun picture books to illustrate.

I hope it was worth all this work.

 

 

 

 

Beetles

The dummy of this book is currently being presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair.  I’m looking forward to hearing the feedback.

The book is almost finished but one of the most challenging illustrations I’ve kept to the end. It’s a picture of beetles. Here is the very first sketch for the picture.I talked to Nicola about the text and decided that in this case the picture itself should say the story. Here is the work in progress. I printed and painted each of the beetles separately. I spent lots of time looking at the variety, sizes and mainly the colours of beetles. The colours are just unbelievable. I wouldn’t have been able to make it up!I also looked at my little sketchbooks for more beetles and sure enough I found a couple.Here is a great stag beetle who just landed on a farmer’s head.A gardener attacked by a giant ladybird.This is Mr. Kafka just a moment before he wrote “Metamorphoses”.Two wrestling beetlesand one rather big beetle on the table.

My new book “Blue Penguin” is going to be published on the 5th November! For that reason my next blog is going to be about….BLUE PENGUIN! Here is a drawing of somebody who also loves penguins.

 

Frog and Frog

I started this week at the Cheltenham Literary Festival. The festival is always well organised and a great event to take part in.

I had a brilliant audience and I decided to read my new book “Blue Penguin” even though it’s not been officially published yet. I was quite surprised when during the book signing people had brought the book with them. Waterstones  in Cheltenham managed to get a couple of copies early. How exciting!

On Tuesday I was in London signing 200 copies of “Blue Penguin”. I always do a little drawing in to the book and it took me almost two hours. Together with a couple of meetings it was a rather busy day.

Since then it was just about painting frogs. I’m talking about the picture for Nicola Davies’s “My First Book of Animals”

Here is the original sketch. Very colourful poison frogs.

Since the first sketch the text has changed and we included another three species. Just doing the research and watching documentaries about frogs takes time. They are so fascinating!

Here is the final illustration (minus the text of course).The tadpoles of Poison Dart frogs stick to mucus on the backs of their parents. In the upper reaches of the rainforest trees, the parents deposit their young in pools of water that accumulate in plants.

I had a feeling that I must have drawings of frogs in my sketchbooks.

This frog is having lunch.This frog is reaching the moon.This one is a great swimmer.This one loves fish.This frog is being hunted and this one is jumping with a kangaroo.If you see a frog wearing a crown and you happen not to be already engaged or married, just kiss it.

Oh yes, look what my publisher did for me to promote the latest book “The Mouse Who Reached the Sky”. Isn’t it nice?

 

Birds, birds, birds

An illustration of birds of paradise is the latest addition to my pictures for Nicola Davies’ “A First Book of Animals”. I sketched the page like this, but Nicola reminded me that the birds of paradise live in the dense rainforest and therefore it would be good to show them in their natural habitat surrounded by leaves.

If you’ve never seen birds of paradise watch this documentary, because apart from the amazing colours the behaviour of the birds is fascinating.

Here is the finished picture.

I started a new picture for the book. It is a picture of a beaver making a dam, but although I did two pictures they didn’t look right.

Instead I thought I will show you some other pictures of birds from my little sketchbooks.

I was quite surprised by how many drawings I found. It was good fun to go through them all. Here are some.They are mostly made up birds like this one. Can you see the fly?

This one is also made up. I think it started as a duck.I have a picture of pigeons and a white crow on Trafalgar Square.This picture is a bit similar. Here are a few parrotsand more.

One very heavy woodpecker.

I call this picture a winter bird.Talking about winter, this is what I could see from my studio window.

More strange birds.One very brave bird.

This stork is also rather brave, but it’s because he’s never seen a gorilla before. Looking at the sketch it seems that I’ve never seen a gorilla before either, but it’s just a sketch.

This stork has incredibly long legs.This bird is in dangerand so is this duck.More crows in the rain (as I saw once walking on the Malvern Hills).Then I have some birds which are almost human.This bird looks definitely like somebody I once met on the train.

This one looks more like a nightmare. 

I don’t remember what this picture is about, but there is definitely a bird.

I like toucans…and cycling, as a matter of fact.And the last one is a bird in bed.