Aaron Becker's Blog, page 21
October 30, 2014
One month into our time here in Spain and we are still slowly...
One month into our time here in Spain and we are still slowly getting used to the rhythms of this wonderful and extremely friendly country. We’re over the initial hurdles of landing in a foreign land and have begun to travel a bit and I’m now deep into work on the paintings for RETURN. Enjoy the photos!
October 23, 2014
A Return to Painting
For those of you who wonder about the...
A Return to Painting
For those of you who wonder about the process of making a picture book, you might be curious to know that a lot of the time we illustrators are not actually making the artwork that goes into the books we’re known for. It’s different for every artist, but for me, I spend the bulk of my time crafting a story, sketching it out, designing the worlds and characters that will make them up, starting over again (and again) and getting ready for my final art with a series of final pencil drawings and detailed color studies. As I prepare to begin the final watercolors that will make up the pages of “Return”, I find myself nearly a year and a half away from the moment I finished my paintings for “Quest” (which some of you may be surprised to know were completed even before “Journey” was published!).
Needless to say, I always feel a bit rusty at this point with my brushes. The best solution is to just get out and paint. And I’m in a good place to do that. The coast of the Mediterranean offers daily sunrises and sunsets and an easy subject matter: the blending sky and sea. Today, after a long day of Spanish classes, painting prep, and family time (at yet another cave!), I found myself without my paints as I watched the clouds catch fire with the setting sun. Never again! In a couple weeks, we’ll head to the Alhambra in Granada where I’m hoping to do some paintings at dusk - there’s a big sequence in “Return” that takes place just after sunset.
More to come!
October 15, 2014
The cave
One week in to our time here in Spain and we are slowly...
The cave
One week in to our time here in Spain and we are slowly getting our feet wet. This, of course, in the most proverbial sense of the phrase. But also literally, as in we are living right by the sea and, it turns out, very close by some damp underground caves. Which is a very good thing.
When we left on our year long adventure, I had completed nearly all of my preparation for the work I’d be doing here in Spain: the paintings for the third JOURNEY book. My final sketches, my prepped watercolor paper, my color studies – they were all ready to ship. But the one thing that was nagging me was the cave.
You see, a good chunk of RETURN takes place in a cave by the ocean. I figure if I’m getting into the realm of Joseph Campbell with these books, I might as well go all the way. But I felt like I wasn’t quite ready to paint so many images of a cave if I hadn’t really studied one en plein air. And there aren’t too many good majestic caves to just hop down to in Massachusetts.
So you can imagine my thrill and surprise, when just a few days off the boat, we stumbled upon the Cuevas de Nerja – the Caves of Nerja - in a town just an hour south of our place here in Malága. We had planned to visit the coastal town of Nerja and while we were on the bus, an old woman got on and enquired towards the driver “Cuevas?”. Caves? This bus was going to a cave? Needless to say, we stayed on the bus past the town center and low and behold, there were these amazing caves to explore. With each turn down the staircase, the cave grew bigger and grander until it was all but unbelievable to behold.
I’ll be back with my sketchpad - if my art supplies ever arrive through Spanish customs. But that’s another story…
October 9, 2014
The Journey Continues…
My family and I have packed up the...
The Journey Continues…
My family and I have packed up the house, rented it, traveled across the Atlantic, and landed in Malága, Spain along the Costa del Sol. Our new home sits 200 feet up from the Mediterranean Sea. So how did we get here exactly?
The story, believe it or not, begins with a layoff. Mine. I had been working as an illustrator for a film company and the company was shut down overnight. With few job prospects in sight on the east coast where we’d recently settled, I figured it was now or never: time to write that children’s book I’d been wanting to write for a long, long time. It ended up being a wordless book called Journey.
Then another sudden layoff: my wife’s. And when the prospect of another year of preschool tuition hit our radar, we figured it was time to throw some darts at the proverbial map and pack our bags. After all, I could finish my paintings (for the final book in the Journey trilogy) from anywhere in the world. What better place than the southern coast of Spain, where the Moorish-influenced architecture could inspire my work and the climate would give us a rest from yet another New England winter.
So here we are. My packages of art supplies and paper are arriving this evening via courier. My Spanish is absolutely atrocious. But our daughter is a travelling champ and my wife (and her college Spanish) is getting our visa paperwork through the bureaucracy. Stay tuned to see how it all turns out! I’ll be posting regular updates on my paintings and our travels!
September 28, 2014
The tour is over. 2 weeks of school visits, bookstore...
The tour is over. 2 weeks of school visits, bookstore appearances, library readings, and catching up with both new and old friends. I will admit that I am exhausted. I will also admit that we authors and illustrators tend to be solitary beings and that being out in the world like this might be more exhausting than it might be for your average refrigerator salesman. But in the end, I will also admit this: it is unbelievably amazing to connect to the children that have found my books. There were moments during the tour when I would look out into the crowd, mid-tale, and realize that I have created something of real, substantial value in this world. A total privilege to have the opportunity to a) do this for my job and b) have parents, teachers, book publicists, and book sellers work so hard to get me out in front of these fantastic, captivated audiences. I thought of my own fifth grade self, and how the stories that influenced me back then REALLY influenced me. They set a course for my life. And here I am - potentially making that story for some kid out there. There were kids who knew my books backwards and forwards; kids who had questions about my stories that I had never considered; and kids who were picking up the books for the very first time who I had the honor of sharing in their wonder. It’s actually hard to believe. So thank you all for making this trip so memorable. Hope to see you all again soon!
August 21, 2014
The Society of Illustrators has chosen QUEST as one of its top...
The Society of Illustrators has chosen QUEST as one of its top 100 books of the year. The above piece, “The Great Celebration” will be on display in NYC at their annual Original Art show. For those interested, you can own a signed giclée of this piece by visiting my print shop.
August 14, 2014
July 11, 2014
One never knows how a second shot will go. Luckily, when I...
One never knows how a second shot will go. Luckily, when I finished the artwork for QUEST (out next month Aug. 26th), JOURNEY was yet to be released. No buzz, no pressure. To say that things have changed since last spring would be an understatement. So with the children’s book industry watching, I prepared myself for the worst as the reviews for this second book in the trilogy started to trickle in. Then I read these:
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/aaron-becker/quest/
(starred review)
http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-7636-6595-1
(starred review)
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=2292#m24881
and for booklist subscribers, another starred review:
http://www.booklistonline.com/ProductInfo.aspx?pid=6775671&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
For those interested, signed copies of QUEST are available for pre-order from my local indie, The Odyssey Bookshop, or you can pretend no one is watching and pre-order from the South American River behemoth.
http://www.odysseybks.com/aaron-becker-books
http://www.amazon.com/Quest-Aaron-Becker/dp/0763665959
July 1, 2014
This past Friday, a couple of days before the ALSC...
This past Friday, a couple of days before the ALSC Caldecott/Newbery banquet in Las Vegas, I had the opportunity to address the entire Caldecott Committee, the very people that had picked Journey as one of this year’s honor books. This is what I told them. That four years ago, when I started work on Journey, I was a recent father. A recent homeowner. We’d just gotten back from the car dealership, having put our deposit down on a new car to help cart our infant around town. And a friend called from California to say that the film studio I worked for was suddenly closing its doors. Having just moved back east, I was three thousand miles away from the industry that supported me. So I did what any sane, normal person would do. Over the next two years, I worked on a children’s book.
In retrospect, it’s easy to see that things worked out just fine. But at the time I had no idea. All I had was faith that it was the right thing to do. And in awarding Journey a Caldecott Honor, the committee has placed their faith now in me; the award gives me a foundation to stand on as I continue to pursue this dream of making stories. Thank you - to the committee, to my fans, and to my family for this amazing gift.
