Petr Horáček's Blog, page 4

Tiger again

I wanted to write a blog about a tiger. To be specific I wanted to write about how difficult I find it to draw a tiger.

Then I thought ” hang on a second, I’ve already written a blog about it some time ago” and yes indeed, here it is – One more Tiger

So this can mean only two things. First, I’m a moaner and second I still haven’t mastered the skill of drawing a perfect tiger.

Saying that, I actually like this tiger. He is from the book I did with Nicola Davies “A First Book of Animals”.

I have a couple of drawings in my little sketchbooks which are not too bad, but drawing a tiger for a picture book is more challenging. He must show emotion. He must look good from the front, from the side and from behind..

I am getting there.

I keep trying, but most importantly I am enjoying it!

The Shortlisted Book

As an author and illustrator I spend lots of time on my own with pencils and brushes. I like it this way, but sometimes you need somebody to come and say: ” Hey, I quite like what you’re doing”.

Being listed for an award is that moment. It’s nice to know that there is someone who knows your work and even likes it.

I am very excited and happy that ‘A First Book of Animals’, the book I did with Nicola Davies is shortlisted for CILIP The Kate Greenaway Medal.

I am very excited, because I know how much work was behind the book.

I am not talking about my illustrations, because although I did spend lots of time painting and drawing, I enjoyed every minute of it and it was just a long lasting joy. I am talking about the amazing, inspirational text done by Nicola Davies and the hard work of editors and designers, mainly Caroline Royds and Louise Jackson.

It would be naive to think that any good book can happen without a team of hard working enthusiasts and a good publisher.

It’s no coincidence that Walker Books has three out of seven books shortlisted for The Kate Greenaway Medal and two out of eight books for The Carnegie Medal this year.

Nicola Davies had four of her books long listed and she has now two of her books shortlisted for The Kate Greenaway medal!

Everybody who knows Nicola’s books would agree, that she is a very talented and inspirational writer and everybody who likes books would know, that a perfect picture book or nonfiction book is based on the perfect balance of the text and the illustrations.

Without Nicola’s poems there would not be “A First Book of Animals”.

Thank you to CILIP for their hard work and for putting these awards together and mainly thank you to the good enthusiastic librarians who make these books visible and deliver them into the right hands of our readers. 

 

 

Taking books to schools

We’ve  already had World Book Day, but for many authors and illustrators World Book Day starts early and finishes later. I’ve recently had a nice couple of weeks going around schools in England.

I visited a number of schools and I always felt welcome and had a good time. My experience is, that the schools which invite authors to visit are usually nice schools.

Inviting an author to school is not about celebrating the authors, it is about getting children inspired. Having the opportunity to meet  somebody who writes, or illustrates books the children will understand that authors are ordinary people who work and do a  job they like. Not dissimilar to what many of their parents do and that anybody can write and be creative. These children then become authors and artists themselves for at least a couple of days.

I would like to mention all the schools, the nice teachers and librarians I met over the last few weeks, but it would be impossible.  For all of them I will mention Ryefield Primary School in Uxbridge.

The Headteacher Colin Tucker drove me through snow and blizzard to his school, which remained open even when other schools in the country were closed. The school was full of excited children ready to have fun, listen to stories, learning about writing, illustrating and getting their hands dirty.

At the reception I was welcomed by Blue Penguin made of potato. I knew immediately that I am in the right place. The children knew my books and many of them had already written their own stories inspired by some of them. Children from the Reception class even performed ‘Silly Suzy Goose’ for me! I was truly honoured.

Imogen Elliot did this cover for her story called ‘Mice Can’t Dance’. The story is about a mouse who proved, that actually mice can dance when they overcome some obstacles. The mouse had a lovely name – Luna. I love the story.Annabelle Roberts did this copy of an illustration from my book Blue Penguin. Isn’t it amazing?

I got lots of pictures and sketches of characters for my new books.Some of the ideas were real poetry. I love this drawing and description.

This is another present for me. The poem by Raquel from Year 6. and it is so lovely that I have to share it. She also added drawings inspired by  ’A First Book of Animals’ that I illustrated for Nicola Davies.

Later in the day we did some painting and created new characters and made a big picture for the school hall.Working with children and meeting everybody at Ryefield School made my day. Thank you very much for making me so welcome.

A Blog about a Blog

I used to write a blog almost every week. It helped me get organised and summarised what I was doing.

I’ve  somehow got out of the habit recently. It’s partly because I can’t get organised and I am doing a little bit of everything at the moment.

I am sketching a book about a tiger.

When I am not sketching tigers I am sketching two board books.

One of them is about the universe and stars.The other one is about the sea and fish.

What I should be really doing is drawing and painting puffins.My problem is, that I want to do it all.

It looks that the only thing I am not doing is writing a blog. But that is not true either. Because my latest book ‘The Mouse Who Wasn’t Scared’ has just been published I was answering questions and writing blogs for other bloggers.

I was asked by Jake Hayes to answer some questions for his blog TYGERTALE.

Look at Jake’s previous blogs if you have time, because the blogs are brilliant and I can guarantee that you will want to read them all.

Jake does a great job. He corrected all my mistakes in the names of the Czech authors and illustrated his blog  with a good choice of pictures as well.  THANK YOU very much.

And the very last, but very important message – Enjoy WORLD BOOK DAY! I am off to a couple of schools and I am looking forward to it.

 

‘The Mouse Who Wasn’t Scared’ is published!

The day has come. ‘ The Mouse Who Wasn’t Scared’ is published.

It is the fourth book with the character of Little Mouse.

Four books is quite a lot considering that I had no ambition to do a series of books.

I wrote the second book ‘The Mouse Who Ate the Moon’ on holiday just sitting on the beach and looking at the moon. I think it was the time when I fell in love with the character of the dippy, child-like mouse, who makes me smile.

I was looking through the published books and I knew that the fourth book should be somehow different. It wasn’t worried about the story , but I wanted the artwork to stand out and to make the book look different from the others. I love woods. I like drawing and painting them as much as I like walking in them.

The inspiration for the book I found by going through my sketches and paintings from woods.

There is something appealing about the monochrome colour of the tree trunks and occasional colour of the leaves on the ground, the mushrooms, or even the colour of the Mouse’s stripy socks as a matter of fact.

Here are some of the first sketches for the illustrations.Painting the big animals was fun.I loved painting the moose.

The book is about the fact, that we all are sometimes scared of something and often different people are scared of different things.

Is the fluffy pussycat REALLY the most scary thing in the woods, or is it the wolf, or is it the bear…?

It usually takes at least a year from finishing working on the book to the moment when the book is published.

Looking at these sketches brings back memories.

I had a good time and enjoyed enormously illustrating ’The Mouse Who Wasn’t Scared’.  The book took me to the woods although it was at the time just in my imagination.

When I finally received the advance copy of the book I was thrilled. The colours were right, the book felt good in my hand and it smelled nice too. Nothing less than I would expect from my publisher, so thank you Walker Books! And thank you to my editors Louise and Denise for their hard work and support.I hope you will enjoy reading the book!

Drawing in the Woods

I love walking, mushroom picking, painting and drawing in woods. I LOVE woods!

Whenever I go back to the Czech Republic I spend as much time as I can in woods.

Woods smell good and they are quiet, peaceful places to be. I get lots of ideas for books just being there.

If it was just up to me I would have a picture of woods in every one of my books!

My publisher won’t allow me. Enough is enough they say.

O.k. …I can’t blame them.Here are a couple of illustrations and sketches that haven’t made it into the books….yet.

Oh, actually this one did make it. It is from my book called ‘Dlouhá cesta’ (The Long Journey).

Here is a sketch of a wooden shack.

And here is an illustration from the book which is coming ..very…very SOON! And you know what? Most of that story is happening…in the WOODS!

New Year, New Books

We are well into 2018 now. New resolutions, new plans were made…. no excuses. It’s time to get on with work. Here is my first blog of the year.

There is no doubt, that my highlight of 2017 was the publication of ‘Dlouhá cesta’: my very first book written in Czech and published by Czech publisher ‘Pinwheels’.

Publishing the book was a very humbling and exciting experience. I wrote about it here, in my previous blog.

I’m proud of the book and I’m very proud of everybody who participated and helped with the publication of ‘Dlouhá cesta’.

Since the book was published, I’ve received lots of nice emails and messages. I also received some very pretty pictures.

This garden gnome František was beautifully painted by Gaia, who is 4 years old.

Hugo Booth, age 10 also drew a portrait of František.

And here is František as he is leaving the studio of Hanka Vacková – Ptáčková.

Isn’t he gorgeous?

With the new year I started to work on a new book. It is written by Martin Jenkins. 

Here is the first pencil sketch

and here is the first spread in colour. The birds are flying in the early morning mist.

Oh, did I mention that the book is about puffins? I like drawing puffins and I like painting.

The illustrations need to be a bit more realistic than my usual picture books. It is something different and I love the challenge.

 

Ready for Christmas

I’ve finished illustrations for the latest book called Runaway Buddy written by Xiao Nan Zhang.  Although I have been illustrating books for many years, this was my first book about a dog. I had a really good time illustrating it.The book is now nicely wrapped and ready to be send to China. My table is clean and empty and I’m ready for Christmas!

I had even time to do a couple of pictures just for myself.When painting these budgies I thought about the painter Franz Kline.

One more bird.

Since it’s Christmas, I looked through my folders in an attempt to show some of my illustrations with a christmasy feel and I found this beautiful drawing done by my wife Claire.It is Worcester Festival Choral Society singing Handel’s Messiah in Worcester Cathedral.

These pictures are from my book Suzy Goose and the Christmas Star. It’s been some time since this book was published. I remember walking through the Somerset levels at christmas time and making up the story in my head. Seeing the illustrations again brings back the memories.

One more picture. This festive Chameleon is my early present from Eliška Fiedlerová. Thank you!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

Long Journey to Dlouhá cesta

Dlouhá cesta is published!

Dlouhá cesta (Long Journey) is my very first book written in Czech, published by an emerging Czech publisher pinwheels.

The publisher pinwheels is actually just a couple of enthusiastic ladies:  Tereza Booth and Alžběta Němcová. I met Tereza some time ago purely by chance.

I heard, that Tereza has a bookshop where she is selling only books for children, only books she likes and if you come there she will make you a coffee. Then, one day, it happened that I was in Prague and I was near the shop. I popped in.

Tereza and I  had a good chat about books. Tereza told me about her ambition to publish books. The next time we met, she asked me if I have anything I would like to be published in the Czech Republic.

I’ve been making books for decades, but my only books which were published in the Czech Republic so far were those, which were translated from English. It was time to change it.

We made a deal. I will deliver a book without asking for an advance and pinwheels will make a book in the best possible quality. It sounded rather crazy, but we both thought it is worth the risk.

To be honest I was expecting things to go wrong. Things often go wrong in the publishing world and often compromises need to be made. But…it never happened. I’m not saying that everything was easy, but we didn’t need to make any compromises.

As this Czech text in the book says: “Not everything went smoothly”

“But he never gave up and in the end everything worked well.”

Holding the beautifully printed book in my hands for the first time was a great moment. Over the years I’ve published lots of books and it’s always nice to see the final book, but this time was rather special.

Yes, it is my first Czech book published in my language. Yes, it’s beautifully produced, the format is great, the colours, the quality of the paper, but it’s not what makes me so happy.

What makes me SO happy are the circumstances in which the book was published. Pinwheels raised the money to publish the book with the help of crowd funding.

That means, that parents, book lovers, people who like picture books and art supported the project and raised the money themselves. That’s what makes me SO HAPPY and proud. That Dlouhá cesta is the product of people who love books. I had chance to say “Thank You” at least to some of the people at the book launch in Prague. The launch of Dlouhá cesta happened in Nerudova Street right in the centre of Prague and it was a very nice evening.

Here is a short interview I did at the book launch for the English section of Radio Praha.

THANK YOU to everybody who supported and helped us to publish Dlouhá cesta!

A special THANK YOU to pinwheels – Tereza and Alžběta. A big thank you to Martina Waclawicova for helping with the text. Thank you to Filip Blažek for the great work on the graphic design. Thank you to Ruth Fraňková and Lucie Truhelková-Hašová for their support and help with promoting the book. And thank you to Jitka Netušilová for her long time support and for introducing my books to Czech readers in the first place.

It is snowing outside!

So HAPPY ADVENT!

 

 

 

 

One more award and one more book!

It happened last Wednesday. Nicola Davies and I received the School Library Association Information Book Award for our book ‘A First Book of Animals’. Nicola also won the Hachette Children’s Group Award for Outstanding Contribution to Information Books, in a new category introduced this year. CONGRATULATIONS NICOLA!

You can read more about the SLA award here.

It was a nice evening and we celebrated with the lovely editors and designers who did such a great job and helped us to make the book a success.

Later, on my way home, I was thinking how nice it was to work on the book. I remembered how inspired I was at the time I read the Nicola’s text the very first time.  I was actually travelling on the same train.

When I got home, I looked at the old sketches.Some of the final illustrations differ very little from the first sketches.

Like this basking shark for example.

Or the weaver bird.

When you read Nicola’s poems, you can understand how inspired I felt working on the pictures.

The book is now getting published in other countries. Recently in Russia. In USA it’s called ‘Song of the Wild’ and has an orang-utan on the cover.

In Holland the cover has an illustration of a crocodile.

I’m now getting ready for my trip to Prague.

My very first book written exclusively for a Czech publisher is being published!The book is called ‘Dlouhá Cesta’ – Long Journey and it is published by a new publisher Pinwheels.

I’m very excited about it and I will write about the trip next time. This couple of spreads from the book can symbolise my trip to Prague quite well.

One more picture. This one is for me from Jaromir Zidek.Here is also a letter to Father Christmas. Jaromir’s wish is to get ‘The Long Journey’ for Christmas. I believe he will!