Petr Horáček's Blog, page 2

I am reading ‘Elephant’

In my previous blog, I taught you how to draw an elephant, so I thought it would be good to show you the book as well.

So here I am reading my book ‘Elephant’

 

 

 

 

This is the same book, but in Czech.

 

And I think I can’t do too much damage if I publish “How to draw an elephant” once again. Here we go…

How to draw an Elephant

I recently did a live session on Zoom organised by Storystock and Riverside Studios.

Everything went well, without a major hiccup and I enjoyed it very much. I read my latest book ‘The Best Place in the World’.

We also learnt how to draw a hare. Here are some of the pictures!

This superhero hare is from Samuel age 5.  He then exhibited the picture in his window. I know that, because he lives down the road and I saw it!

This beautiful rabbit is from Etta who is 4 years old. It is a true masterpiece!

Here is Julie who is not yet 3 years old and she is painting already!

Here are Julia and her mum’s pictures. I I love them both and you can clearly see where Julia’s talent comes from!

Thank you for sending the pictures.

The second book I read was Elephant.

I promised to show on the blog, how to draw an elephant.  I keep promises, so here you are – ‘How to draw an Elephant’

Have a go. Have fun!

 

There you are! Excellent. Oh, Julie is doing something else. She is taking hare to the theatre – she said.

Painting with children

Self-isolation has worked fine for me over the last couple of weeks. I was finishing illustrations for a book written by the lovely Joyce Dunbar. I started working on the illustrations some time ago, but travelling and doing other things in between, kept me away from this lovely book. So now I have had time to enjoy working on the illustrations and finish off the book.

In the last couple of weeks I have also enjoyed watching illustrators and writers reading their books and inspiring children to draw. Lots of bad things have happened in the world recently, but we have also started to realise that lots of very good things are happening too. Families spend more time together. Time has stopped for a while and it allows people to do things they hadn’t got around to doing before. Some of these is playing more with their children and being creative.

I love going to schools and making art with children and I get lots of pictures to take home. Some pictures are also posted to me by email.

Here are paintings by children from St. George’s CE Primary School in Worcester. 

They were inspired by  ‘A First Book of Animals’ written by Nicola Davies and illustrated by me. This is a picture of a bird of paradise.

Here are the wolves from the same book.

 

And a sailfish. One of my favourites!

Looking at this amazing artwork I feel it should be me who should gets inspired by their work and who should do the copies of this gorgeous artwork.

In my previous blog I showed how to draw a mouse from my book. I received quite a few excellent drawings of mice. Here is one done by Vitek.

Here is Honzík being very busy.

And here is Paul and his stunningly beautiful elephant.

The elephants seem to be popular! This one from Miriam is also a master piece!

I was asked to do a colouring sheet. As a child I didn’t like colouring very much. I would prefer to draw a picture myself, but you can always take it as inspiration to draw your own jungle. So here is a colouring sheet. A garden with … an elephant.

Here are some colouring tips: the elephant could be blue – use as many different blue pencils as you can find and mix them together. Thinking of that, the elephant could also be also pink….or orange. Do the same for the grass – use as many greens as you have in your pencil case. Mix yellow and green to get a really bright spring grass colour. Mixing colours makes the picture bright. Have fun!  If you’d like to show me via instagram don’t forget to add #petrhoracek, or twitter @PHoracek, or send them to me by email through my website.

The Art of the Picture Book

“You’re too old for a picture book.” Is something I hear parents saying to their children from time to time. A common mistake. Nobody is too old for a picture book.

Last week I had an email from Sarah Balint, who is a librarian at the Kingston Frontenac Public Library in Canada. Sarah is running a six week project every year, introducing  children and adults to the art of picture books. Together they look and read picture books and discuss the artwork. They make art.

I am honoured to be one of the authors Sarah chose. She sent me a couple of pictures that the children made. The email made my day. Not just to see the lovely pictures inspired by my books, but also knowing that people like Sarah, librarians and teachers, are making an effort to introduce people to the art of picture books.

A good picture book doesn’t teach children only to be interested about reading. It is developing a child’s  imagination, encouraging their creativity, teaching them to be observant and investigative too and it makes them interested in visual art.

A good picture book slows time. It makes you think.

We are spending more time at home with children at this time of “corona”, so here are a couple of pictures illustrating how to paint a mouse. Why don’t you have a go?

all the best

Petr

The Best Place in the World

My latest book The Best Place in the World was published  on this year’s World Book Day: 5th March. I was so pleased to see the printed copy, since Walker Books once again did a great job. The book smells good, it is a nice format, the paper is thick and feels good and the colours came out very well too.  Thank you Walker Books!

The Best Place in the World is a book about belonging and friendship, and it is also a book about home. It is definitely not the first time this theme has appeared in my book.

I travel back to the Czech Republic every autumn to write some ideas for my books. I always stay in a cottage which belongs to my friends. They don’t live there. It is their summer cottage and I am allowed to stay as long as I wish.  To me this place is one of the nicest places in the world. I have woods and meadows all around me and from the small apple orchard I can see the whole country.

I was born in Czechoslovakia and I have now spent almost half my life living in England. My wife is English and my children were born in England. I have family and friends in both of these countries.

Being in this place on my own for some time brings to me lots of different thoughts. The question of where is home and where I belong is one of them. We all know the feeling when we are coming home after being away for some time. We know the feeling very well from our childhood. The strange feeling in the stomach when we appear in our street and then in front of our house. All the details we know so well, the colour of the door, the door handle, even the nice, familiar smell of our home.

The Best Place in the World is also very much a book about pictures.  As I was writing it I was already looking forward to getting out my paint and getting on with the art work.

I could see right in front of my eyes the hare running through the meadow

and walking through the orchard I know so well.

I wanted the book to be as visual as possible.

Working on the illustrations was great fun and I enjoyed it very much,  although I was quite surprised at how many times I wasn’t happy with a certain picture and ended up doing it again and again until I was happy and could show it to my editors.

The book is published now and I hope that those, who read it, will enjoy it as much as I enjoyed working on it.

Moppereend is Grumpy Duck

Joyce Dunbar and I have been in the Netherlands. We visited Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Breda, Heemstede, and Delft …We went to celebrate our book ‘Grumpy Duck’ which was awarded ‘Picture Book of the Year 2020′ in the Netherlands.

It was a rather overwhelming experience I must say.  ”You should write about it, because I can’t “, said Joyce. She is too nice and too modest to do so, but I think it’s important to celebrate books. Besides, as I’ve said many times before, behind every good and successful book is almost always a good team of people. From a good editor, a good designer to a good publisher.  In this case, also the good translator and the good Dutch publisher.

” Isn’t it a bit early in the year for the ‘Picture Book of the Year 2020′ ?”, you may ask. Well, actually we have known about the award since autumn 2019, but it all makes sense once you understand, that the ‘picture book of the year’ in the Netherlands, is a book which is celebrated throughout the whole year.  It’s a rather ‘Big Thing’ over there and it needs much preparation and organisation. Thousands of books were printed and distributed to bookshops, schools and libraries. On Wednesday 22nd January was the breakfast celebration with Grumpy Duck. Our book was read by many celebrities, teachers, librarians, children and booksellers all around the country. The book was discussed and read on the radio and national television and banners and posters were everywhere. What Joyce and I  liked the best was to see bookshop windows decorated by children from local schools. Grumpy Duck was looking at us from every corner.

Of course it’s nice to get an award, but what fascinates me the most was the fact, that something like this, on such a scale is possible. Here in England, once a year on World Book Day somebody talks about the importance of books and importance of reading. It’s all over in no time and everything is quiet for the rest of the year. Finding out from the official media what’s new in the world of children’s picture books is almost impossible, and every day, bookshops are closing down across the country.

So what is the difference? Why are books in Dutch bookshops beautifully displayed and why do people go to bookshops to have a look and buy books? One of the main things in the Netherlands is the fixed prices of books. Every picture book in the bookshop costs the same. It’s forbidden to change the price of a new book at least for a year. After that the book can be, in theory, sold with a discount, but the same discount must be offered to every seller and bookshop. Like this, it would be impossible and silly to completely fill up a bookshop with soft toys and discounted ” well selling” books, or with books by one author whose book is animated and appears on TV.

The simple rule of a fixed price makes business clear and transparent. Apart from many other advantages it gives authors a chance to make living and not being depressed that their books are continuously discounted by publishers in an attempt to get them into a bookshop.

The shop owner then, has a chance to do what every good bookshop owner likes the best, look for and order nice books, discover new good titles, talk to their clientele and turn their shop into a place where people love to come.

It allows shops to order and display books in hard back, with the covers facing out! In fact I heard many times in the Netherlands “We love hard backed books”. In England we also like hard backs, but Waterstones doesn’t take hardbacks, because they apparently take too much space on shelves! They would rather fill up shelves with soft toys of the Gruffalo and Peppa Pig and squeeze all the books onto a couple of shelves where it is impossible to find anything. They can do that, because with disappearing numbers of independent book shops, there is hardly any competition and no need to change a thing.

And what got us into such a muddle? As always, pure greed. Thinking that if I discount a book I will sell better than the publisher next door. It is very short sighted. I find it very sad, that fixed prices of books did exist, not a long time ago, in the UK.

Dutch publishers work together and it’s great to see that it works.

Now something I should have started with. Thank you Walker Books for publishing Grumpy Duck and for getting Joyce and me the chance to work together and a HUGE THANK YOU to my Dutch publisher Lemniscaat for publishing Moppereend: for doing such a great job to promote the book, for looking after us so well during our visit and for making us so welcome!

 

Long live Grumpy Duck!

Suzy Goose And The Christmas Star

The book was published some time ago. As a Christmas book it has a very short life time. It appears in bookshops at this time of the year and it’s taken down from the shelves as soon as Christmas is over. 

Whenever I am asked to sign a copy of “Suzy Goose and the Christmas Star” I know that it is time to start thinking about Christmas presents. CHRISTMAS IS COMING SOON!

Looking at the pictures from the book I remember 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 always carry a new idea for a book in my head for while before I start sketching it. It takes some time to make it ready to be presented to my publisher and even longer to persuade them that the book is a masterpiece, definitely worth being published.

So when I finely started to work on the pictures, it was summer. It’s a bit strange to paint snow when it is hot outside.But I love painting snow.

In fact I love snow full stop. Wouldn’t it be nice to have some this Christmas?

Happy Advent to Everyone!

Bring Me A Book

Not long after I returned from The Czech Republic I took off again. This time I went to Hong Kong, Shanghai and Hong Kong again.

I was invited by the nonprofit foundation  ‘Bring Me A Book’.

Two incredibly inspiring and lovely people, Su and James Chen founded ‘Bring Me A Book Hong Kong’ in 2006. The foundation brings high quality, age appropriate children’s books, in Chinese and English, to communities through nurseries, community centres, health clinics, kindergartens and schools. They do more than that and you can find out about their amazing work on the website – ‘Bring Me A Book Hong Kong’

I had no idea of what to expect from the trip. I have never been to Hong Kong before and neither have I been to Shanghai. Both of the places are fascinating and visiting Hong Kong at this time especially. Being in Shanghai and coming back to Hong Kong, seeing demonstrations on the streets of the city…it brought back memories from the time when I was a student in Prague 1989.

We also came to the streets and hit the point when was no way back. It was ‘now or never’. We knew that we had nothing to loose. I felt for the young people of Hong Kong and it made me cry to see some of the images on the street.

During the first couple of days in Hong Kong, I was working with Lauren Child. We did a few talks and panels together and in Shanghai we attended ‘The Feng Zikai Chinese Children’s Picture Book Award’

Here is a photo of the founder of ‘The Feng Zikai Chinese Children’s Picture Book Award’, the always smiling Mrs. Daisy Chen.

‘The Feng Zikai Chinese Children’s Picture Book Award’ is  a bi-annual award aimed at promoting original, quality Chinese children’s books and recognising the efforts of authors, illustrators and publishers. The award is named after one of China’s best-known illustrators, Feng Zikai (1898-1975) and it is the first international Chinese children’s picture book award.

It was a great pleasure working with Lauren (whose work I admire) and meeting so many talented and interesting illustrators, authors and publishers.  I was asked to do a two hour long presentation about my work and picture books at the festival. Ok, my talk and the translating took an hour and half and then it was time for questions, but it was still the longest time I have spent behind the microphone.

I learned later on, that parts of my talk in Shanghai were ‘lost in translation’. Especially when I was talking about my time growing up, studying and working in communistic Czechoslovakia. Words like ‘student revolution’ don’t exist in Chinese, but I know that many of the participants did understand English.

Over all, the time I spent in Shanghai was an amazing experience. I had the chance to talk to some of the winners and judges of the award. They were incredibly nice, humble and talented people.

And then it was Hong Kong again. I visited many international, public and state schools in Hong Kong and was told, that I talked to more than 3 000 children. I met and chatted to teachers, parents and fellow authors based in Hong Kong. All these people were so passionate about their work, picture books and literature generally. It was truly overwhelming.

My highlight was working with people from ‘Bring Me A Book”. It may have been a rather busy couple of weeks, but it was packed with great experiences and lots of fun. I met so many new friends.

Thank you ‘Bring Me A Book’ for inviting me to Hong Kong, but mainly thank you for the great job you are doing promoting picture books, reading and literature.

Looking for inspiration

I was working in Prague. With the brilliant author Nicola Davies we visited t International School in Prague and Lycée Français de Prague.

Working with Nicola is always fun, I love listening to her as I paint. Nicola is so engaging and entertaining. The audience was great and so were the people who organised our events. Thank you very much Tara from the International School and thank you Lenka from Lycée Français de Prague for your hospitality.

These lovely photos were taken by Vít Hofmann from Lycée Français de Prague.

As I was already in Prague I decided to stay a bit longer and went to the south of the Czech Republic. One of my friend’s lends me his summer cottage  every autumn to paint and write. I am on my own, away from phone calls and emails.

The cottage and its surroundings, is one of the most beautiful places I know. Being completely in charge of your day without any pressure, concentrating just for being creative is heaven.I say that, but every year I panic a bit. Will I bring home an idea for a new book?

At least this autumn I have an exciting new book on the table. It is written for me by the brilliant Joyce Dunbar. Our latest book ‘Grumpy Duck’ has been voted to be “The Picture Book of the Year 2020″ in Holland.So I was sketching Joyce’s new book. I can’t wait to start working on it in colour.

I spent lots of time painting in the orchard, in the woods or by the river.

Thoughts are going through my mind, but no new book. I randomly draw and sketch, rewrite some old ideas, try to pretend, that it doesn’t matter if nothing new happens. Secretly I know that I will be disappointed.

And then it happens. Just when you are least expecting it, an idea comes to you. It is as if somebody knocks on the door. You don’t know who it is,..you open it…

IT WAS A BEAR!

He looked lonely for a while.

I know, there are lots of books about bears around, but I haven’t done one yet!

I think I am going to do a book about bears!

 

Migrations book

I was very happy to be asked to do a drawing for this amazing collection of illustrations celebrating freedom and migration. I am also very proud to be one of the artists whose picture appears in the book.

 

When I was asked to contribute a drawing to the project, I was working on my latest picture book and to be honest, I did the very first thing that came to mind. A flying ostrich. A flying ostrich is not something you see every day.

A similar thing happened with the text for the picture. One sentence from a song by the great artist and musician Laurie Anderson, came to my head; “you were born free – so happy birthday ” she said.

On the card I wrote; “Everything is possible. You were born free”.

I was born in Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia, soon after the Second World War, became a communist country. In the sixties the political situation eased up a bit and things were looking better, more hopeful. But just a year after I was born, in 1968, Russian tanks drove into Prague and occupied my country. This time the Russians stayed in my country for a long 21 years.

 

So I grew up in communism. I grew up thinking that it’s normal not to be able to travel out of the country, to be told how and what to think, what to read and what not to read, what is good and what is bad and what is good art and what is unacceptable, I was even told by the authorities what to wear and what not to wear. I was used to open corruption and I was used to being bullied by the authorities and police. I was told that is perfectly OK to put those, who think differently into prisons, because they are enemies of the people (whoever the people were). As a young teenager I was used to it, because I was the generation of children who didn’t know any different. I was born into it.

And then I started to realise, that there is something fishy going on in the country I’m living in. Not everybody went with the flow. I realised, that there are people, who would rather go to a prison for freedom of speech. I was ten years old when a dissident group – Charter 77 – was founded. From today’s point of view this small group of people hadn’t done anything bad. All they did was that they wrote a manifesto asking the Czechoslovakian government to follow basic human rights. All these people, their families and their friends were badly persecuted for it. Many of them, including the future Czech president – Vaclav Havel – spent many years in prison. Some of these people had to emigrate to be able to save their lives and lives of their close ones.

 

And so it happened, that yet another wave of highly moral, well educated, talented and interesting people started to leave the country.

 

It makes me amazed to hear that some people believe that emigrants are just a dirty nuisance – who come to infest our beautiful flourishing country. People may be born in different circumstances, may experience different lives, but we all feel the same. We feel sadness, pain, loss and cruelty as well as joy and happiness and generosity. We all may look different, but inside we are the same.

To be able to leave behind everything you ever had, your family, parents, friends, your home, your culture, your language, your country, you need to have a hell of a good reason and for sure, you won’t be doing it for fun.

 

People were always migrating. It’s in human nature. We all try to move forward, move forward towards something better. Something better in the world, or in ourselves. And it is good.

 

I was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and I was on the strike committee for the Academy during the Velvet Revolution in 1989.  I was 22 years old and it was a very exciting time. The Velvet Revolution was called ‘ velvet’ because luckily nobody was shot or hung during that time. 1989 and the beginning of the 90s were times of huge changes and overwhelming happiness and the joy of freedom.

 

And after a couple of years of freedom, it became apparent, that some people misunderstood freedom. Some people were even frightened of it. They actually preferred being “so called” looked after and being told what to think and what is good and what is bad.

 

BECAUSE  these people suddenly realised, that freedom is also a responsibility.  Responsibility for your own actions. Freedom is very, very fragile and we should keep this in mind at all the time.  And these days more than ever.

 

I would like to thank everybody who participated on the project and also on the publication of the book. The list is long, starting with the hundreds of names of all the artists, finishing with the great involvement of Worcester University, especially the illustration department and people such as Piet Grobler and Tobias Hickey. And of course the publisher, who published the book  - Otter-Barry.

 

Otter-Barry is a young publisher, but it became very quickly apparent where they are heading. In a very short time Otter-Barry has published beautiful books by many well known authors and illustrators and they are not scared to take risks publishing titles which some other publishers would find a bit risky or, let’s say, difficult to sell.

 

More about the book in The Guardian – Children’s picture book artists tell migrants’ stories through postcards