Helen Stephens's Blog, page 2

Gerry Turley's Drawings of a Dead Whale

Yesterday we heard the desperately sad news that a humpback whale had been beached near the Torness nuclear power station in Scotland. My partner, Gerry Turley who has a passion for drawing whales, jumped in the car and got there just as the veterinary pathologist from the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme had finished their necropsy.

An excerpt from BBC Scotland News:

‘A humpback whale was entangled in rope for "weeks, if not months" before it drowned off the coast of East Lothian, a post-mortem examination has found.

The young male, which was about nine metres long (30ft), was found at John Muir Country Park, near Tyningham.

Experts said the marine mammal had become very weak and had the most parasites they had ever seen. The whale was towed out to sea and moved to another beach for the five-hour necropsy on Wednesday

Gerry had about half an hour to sketch before the whale was taken away to be incinerated.

Dr Andrew Brownlow, veterinary pathologist for the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme, told the BBC Scotland news website he had found nothing in the whale's stomach. He said:

"This was an entanglement case and from the tissue lesions it had been like this for weeks, if not months.

Gerry made all of these drawngs in a short space of time, maybe three minutes a sketch. Being a natural history illustrator is not easy!

"It stops the animal from being able to feed properly or exhibit normal behaviour, which weakens the animal and then it drowns.’

"It's a real eye opener for us on the effect we can have on animals."

Moving whale parts to the skip

He added: "Its lesions were very chronic and its parasite burden was the most I have ever seen in an animal of this size.

"It had become weak because it could not feed which, in turn, meant its immune system weakened, which meant its parasite burden increased.

"So the poor animal was fighting the ropes and a heavy burden of parasites."

Torness Nuclear Power Station in the background.

He said he was pleased at least to find no plastic in the whale's stomach.

Dr Brownlow said fishermen's ropes were often longer than the distance from the surface of the sea to the bottom so they formed coils, which was a trap for anything that swam through it.

He added: "In evolutionary terms a whale has learned to spin around to avoid an attachment but this strategy is the worst thing it could do when it's entangled as it makes the situation worse.

The skip containing the humpback being towed from the beach.

"It then has caught something else on the ropes around it which has made it a higher weight and it's actually drowned. It was pretty horrific."

Humpback whales breed in warmer waters in the Azores before moving to more northern waters to take advantage of the food stocks during the summer months. East Lothian Council has now removed the whale for incineration.’

BBC Scotland News

Gerry also drew a beached whale at Beadnell Bay a few years ago, and we visited Iceland to draw whales in the wild last year, see those drawing here. You probably know, Gerry makes beautiful screen prints of whales on to vintage sea charts (here). He sells them a few times a year in an online private view to newsletter subscribers. For news on his next set of prints join the newsletter below. Don’t forget to tick your preference for whale prints when prompted.

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March Illustrator's Newsletter Highlights

Tom Froese wrote an article: The Empowered Creative. 'Creatives tend to think of themselves as vulnerable and perpetuate the starving artist myth. People we work for may also believe this and underestimate our role as equals and collaborators, instead imagining we feel lucky just to be able to draw for a living. We are not lucky to draw for a living. We are capable enough to make art matter to businesses.'

Liza Dimbleby is a member of the Royal Drawing School's Senior Faculty. She talks here about drawing outside in the city. 

My friend Alice Wood pointed out this article to me: Our Lost World in Watercolours. 'Hot in the footsteps of Art UK’s ambitious attempt to document every publicly owned artwork in Britain on a single website, a new online project has launched to repeat the project for the world’s watercolours – in particular those that, accidentally or on purpose, documented that world. The value – and excitement – of the Watercolour World project, is that it views these historic paintings as documents, not aesthetic objects: visual records of the world at large, in colour, spanning a full 150 years before photography took over as our primary documentary medium.' Here is the collection, search for any town or subject, it is fascinating. Like a historic #walktosee!

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#marchmeetthemaker

I have been taking part in Joanne Hawker’s #marchmeetthemaker. It is a month of prompts for Instagram, I thoroughly recommend it, it helps shake us out of our insta habits. I am at Day 20, very proud I haven’t missed a day yet. You can see the rest as I post them on my insta feed here.

How to hide a Lion by Helen Stephens

Day 1. Favourite to make

My favourite thing to do it write and illustrate picture books. Honing a book into its perfect shape, making words and pictures sing together is difficult and thrilling in equal measures. It can take aaaages, and many failed attempts... but when it all comes together, it is so satisfying.

How to Hide a Lion was a delight to make. It started when I left London and moved here, to the windy Northumberland coast. I saw the beautiful sea haars that fill the town with a silvery mist, and imagined a bright yellow lion walking into the silvery grey town. And that was it, the tiny fragile beginnings of an idea.
It has now sold in nearly twenty languages, won lots of fancy pants awards, and been adapted for stage. I would never have imagined that would happen when I started making it at home with my toddler banging on my work room door asking me to come out! (Working from home with a toddler in the house was tricky!)

Veronica by Roger Duvoisin

Day 2. How you started

I studied illustration at Glasgow School of Art. I used to trawl the charity shops for good vintage clothes (I had a fab 1960’s M & S anorak) and old books. This is one of the books I bought back then. #rogerduvoisin is one of my favourite illustrators. I love the books of the 1950’s and 60’s printed in limited colours, usually two or three colours and black.

I liked picture books, but didn’t really know what I would do when I left art school. My favourite thing was to draw from life, and I always struggled to cross the bridge from drawing to illustration. I had no idea how I would go about Illustrating a book.

When I left art school I moved to London because that is where the publishers were, and there was no internet then. Strange to think of that now. I would sit on my bedsit floor and ring the publishers on my landline (no mobiles then) and ask if I could show them my folio.

I had postcards made of my work and would send them out to anyone and everyone in the Writers and Artists Yearbook. I had a part time job at the Science Museum and worked on my folio every evening. I would arrange meetings on my days off. One of those meetings was with Dorling Kindersley, who liked my work and asked me if I could write a picture book text. I said yes, although I had no idea how to do it! Each night after work I scribbled away, and the next week I turned up with a text. That book was my first picture book, it was called I’m Too Busy, and published in 1998. Lovely @janecabreraillustration was my designer.

Day 3. Flatlay

Nibs, nibs, nibs, nibs.

Five Interesting Titbits for Illustrator Types

Here we are, January nearly finished already! I am illustrating a big book of Fairy Tales for the very young at the moment, being a bit of a hermit. I can't wait to show you how it's looking, but have to keep it under wraps for now... anyway, here are my five interesting titbits for illustrator types:

1. Did you catch these gems on BBC iplayer? Raymond Briggs: Snowmen, Bogeymen and Milkmen and Ethel and Ernest.  There are only six days left to watch, so be quick.

2. We got this beautiful book for Christmas: Robert the Bruce, text by James Robertson and wonderful illustrations by Jill Calder. There is a great blog post with an interview with Jill Calder here.

Robert the Bruce, illustrated by Jill calder.

3. Are you going to The Bologna Children's Book Fair this year? It is a great place to get an inside look at the world of children's book publishing. We (my partner, Gerry Turley and I) were there last year and enjoyed this event celebrating the 65th anniversary of the New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Book Award. You can see us in the audience if you look closely. This year we won't be there, but would have loved to see this: Fifty Years Of Illustrators

Gerry and I far right, me in my specs, G with the dashing white hair.

4. My podcast choice this month is this episode of Creative Playdate: Four Starts with an F for a Reason with Tom and Amanda Froese. They talk about Tom's illustration career, and the highs and lows of working from home with small children. Also, I have spoken about this before I am sure, but I find this book on audible very inspiring: On Writing by Stephens King.

5. Pictures and words can change the world: here's how to help save whales. Join in with Nicola Davies campaign #waveofwhales by sending your pictures and poems of whales and sending them to the Japanese Ambassador in London.

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The making of How to Hide a Lion at Christmas

I first wrote this blog post as a tweet here, and after getting many, many lovely messages in response, I decided I would transcribe it here:

Look! I've been dying to show you this great wee film my publisher made for my new book How to Hide a Lion at Christmas & I thought I'd share with you some of the process of making the book...

It started with this sketch... I knew I wanted Iris and her lion to be torn appart for Christmas... Here they are being sad and lonely. My books usually start with one one very clear image like this.

Another early sketch: Lion lost and looking for Iris. I fill lots of notebooks with sketches like this when I am trying to work out the story. It's nearly all visual at first.

I knew that at the end of the story they would be reunited. Like ‘Home Alone’, only with a lion. By the way, this is pretty much my ideal Christmas day. Food, sofa, telly, lion... OK, maybe not the lion...

Then thumbnails. I was trying to work out how Iris and the lion would reunite, and wondered if Iris might find a snowman in the morning, and it turns out it is Lion. Like in my favourite Christmas telly, 'The Snowman', only in my version Iris GETS a snowman at the end.

At about this stage I went to see my amazing publisher Alison Green and my designer Zoe Tucker. I love these meetings, magic happenes when we are all in the same room. They were very excited and had some great ideas about where Iris might hide her lion at Christmas.

After our meeting I head home to the windy Northumberland coast and get back to work. I feel a bit like a hermit while I am making a book, and wrap up in thermals, winter woollies and a dressing gown over eveything to stay warm at my desk. The glamour!

Now, this idea threw me into one of those whirlpools of overthinking... I thought Lion might eat all the Christmas dinner & that Iris might have pizza instead. I spent AAAAGES researching whether you could order pizza on Christmas day.

In the end I decided that it didn't matter whether you could order a pizza on Christmas day or not (surely you can't... ) She would have pizza regardless (maybe from the freezer?) Jeez, sometimes I do overthink...

Once I have the plot vaguely in place I start to make dummies. My designer, Zoe Tucker, makes them for me too, and we think about whether everything is working: are the page turns in the right place? Are the words and pics singing together? We make lots of these...

The full sized roughs look like this. I glue patches of paper over the bits of drawings that aren't working & draw over the top to save me redrawing the whole image. I try very hard not to do the roughs too many times or the drawings lose their spontaneity.

When I do the final artwork I become a FULL-ON-ILLUSTRATOR-HERMIT. I wear piles of clothes to keep me warm, dog at my feet, and don't do anything else, except a brisk walk on the beach each day until the artwork is done.

I tick off each piece of artwork as I do it, to give myself a sense of achievement.

And finally we think about the cover... These are a couple of rough drawings.

And after all that work: piles and piles of notebooks, stacks piled high of rough drawings, dummy books coming out of my ears, blood, sweat and tears: it all comes down to a small pile of finished artwork.

Then, like a favourite child leaving home, I send it out into the world. 'Good luck out there! Stay safe! Find lots of nice homes!'

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My Work Wall, Roger Duvoisin and Drawing from Life

Hello there! Here is a list five things that have inspired me or taught me something new over the past month. Hopefully these little nuggets will inspire you too.

1. A blog post about one of my favourite illustrators: Roger Duvoisin

2. People I like to follow on instagram: Mique_moriuchi. Her Ninja Mum series of drawings about being a mum are so funny- and true to life.

3. I started the hashtag #myworkwall ages ago for pictures of people’s work spaces, and all the stuff they have pinned to their walls: postcards, shopping lists, rough drawings... I am nosy! But I sort of lost interest when I noticed there were barely any pictures of work walls any more, it took on a life of its own. I see it has 5800 contributions now, amazing! What do you have on your work wall? Let’s see if we can populate the feed with actual work walls again! Don’t forget to use the hashtag #myworkwall and tag me in too. I am helenstephenslion over there.

4. Did you hear the latest Louis Theroux chat on the Adam Buxton Podcast? The chat about the writing process is great.

5. I stumbled across this gem of video about the value of drawing from life by Chloe Regan, Rachel Gannon and Fumie Kamijo.

p.s. My partner Gerry Turley has made a new set of whale prints. The next online private view starts on 29th November. We'll keep you posted.

Taking the Leap, Knickers Showing, and Reportage Illustration

Whale Screen print by Gerry Turley

Hi there. This is a list of five things that have inspired me, or taught me something new over the past month. Hopefully these little nuggets will inspire you too.

1. My podcast choice is: Letters From a Hopeful Creative: How do you Know When you are Ready to Take the Leap? In this episode Sara Tasker and Jen Carrington receive a letter from an illustrator who can't decide whether to leave her part time job.

2. Ted Talk: Do Schools Kill Creativity? Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

3. This video on youtube: Veronika Lawlor, Caught in the Act. She is a reportage illustrator who happened to be there when the twin towers came down. She says, 'Drawing is an experience, and if you look at your paper you miss it.'

4. I read this book in a day, couldn't put it down: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys by Viv Albertine the guitarist for the punk band the Slits.

'Albertine's words are naive and in-your-face. Above all they talk about what it is not to be a Typical Girl.’

‘All underarm hair and knickers showing' - this frank, feminist memoir from the Slits guitarist captures the importance of punk ' The Guardian.

5. My partner Gerry Turley is having an online private view of his whale prints this week. Join our newsletter to get your invite. The doors open at 9am on Thurs 4th Oct. Sign up for the newsletter below.

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Fresh air, white noise, reportage illustration

Here's a list of five things that have inspired me, or taught me something new over the past month. Hopefully these little nuggets will inspire you too.

Helen Stephens #walktosee Burnmouth Harbour 2018

1. This book: Reportage Illustration. This youtube video: Tim King, who has documented his entire year through reportage illustration.

2. People I like to follow on instagram: Sanae_sugimoto.

3. This month's podcast choice is: Fresh Air, especially the David Sedaris and Stephen King interviews.

4. White noise apps and writing / drawing. I heard Grethen Rubin talking about how White Noise Apps help people sleep in noisy hotels. My ears pricked up... Could I use this app to help me write? I often go and sit in the swimming pool cafe surrounded by the white noise of cafe customers chatting, and the shouts and splashes of the swimming pool. Maybe I can stay at home with the white noise app on my ear phones... I'll give it a try and keep you posted. I found a blog post about this subject here.

5. Community is exciting: I started a hashtag on instagram called #walktosee. It's for drawings of our daily walks. There's a broad mixture of people taking part, from established illustrators to people who have never drawn before, talking about their struggles and moments of inspiration with drawing. Why not join in?

P.S. I will be signing books at the New Wimbledon Theatre for the first show of How to Hide a Lion the stage tour, on Sat 8th Sept, the 4pm showing. Hopefully I'll see you there! It will be touring the UK for the rest of the year. Get your tickets here.

Nuts and Bolts and Plastics in our Oceans.

This is a collection of things that I have read this month, or have found inspiring. A bit newsletter, a bit reading list...

Above are notes for the talk I gave at The Nuts and Bolts Illustration Symposium held at Cambridge Art School over the Summer, I am thinking of making a zine of these tips for my shop. Would that be useful? Let me know here.

1. After our recent visit to Iceland we were disturbed by stories of plastic pollution in our oceans, and how it effects whales. 'A whale washed up in southern Thailand has died after swallowing more than 80 plastic bags.' So when we launch our next whale poster in October, we are excited to announce that 10% of proceeds will go to the WDC.

2. I started a hastag project #walktosee for sketchbook drawings of our daily walks. Join in on instagram and twitter. My #walktosee sketchbookzine is back in stock.

3. This episode of Dear Sugars on Surviving the Critics, 'Lots of great writers have written less than great books.'

4. I read The 100 year life - Living and Working in an Age of Longevity by Lynda Gratton & Andrew Scott and The Multi Hyphen Method by Emma Gannon. Both books talk about modern careers taking many turns instead of one straight path. 

5. One extra nugget of information I had to share because I can't contain my excitement: My book, 'How to Hide a Lion' was adapted for stage, and tours this summer! See tour dates here.

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Art Schools, Antonia White and Whales

This is an interesting discussion between Adam Buxton and Bob Mortimer. At one point they talk about how everyone Bob loves, and enjoys being around, went to art school. He has come to believe that, like a kind of national service, there should be an enforced time in art school. Ha! I love this idea!

Gerry Turley and I met while studying at Glasgow School of Art and feel bereft at the news of a second fire in the Macintosh building. Elaine C. Smith, a local resident and actor spoke brilliantly about the art school and what it means to the people of Glasgow on radio 4's Broadcasting House. (it is about 33 minutes in.)

Baby faced me at Glasgow School of Art 1993

I have recently reread the entire works of Antonia White. Her novels are some of my favourites, Frost in May is up there with Jane Eyre for me.

[Antonia White] ' suffered from chronic writer's block she claimed had its roots in her expulsion from a Catholic boarding school. While at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, White had embarked on her first novel: a tale about the lives of several "wicked" people who "indulged in nameless vices" until they finally saw the error of their ways and became devout Catholics.

Unfortunately, the nuns confiscated the book before White got round to the last bit. In the incomplete draft they read, there was no redemption, only strumpets dancing at the Trocadero - and White was made to pack her bags before she had chance to explain. This led to a disastrous coupling: a lifelong compulsion to write, and a crippling phobia of doing so.' Eloise Millar

I read this article by Austin Kleon: The Tools Matter and the Tools Matter where he thinks about how the 'mechanics' of writing the story can break writers block. Lynda Barry decided to write the first draft of her novel Cruddy by hand with Tuscan red watercolour to distract herself from sentence structure.

Wherever we travel we always seek out a local bookshop and buy a pile of books. It's always interesting to see how other countries make books for children. On our recent drawing trip to Iceland we found this beauty. 'Örleifur og Hvalurinn' by Julian Tuwim.

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