SURPRISE PARTY

Last Saturday was Helen Craig’s 8oth birthday and a surprise party was thrown for her. Friends and family had been asked to arrive early and park their cars, out of sight, in the field, before waiting very quietly for Helen to arrive. Did she suspect?  Here’s her expression as she walked through the door. 

Despite repeatedly saying she didn’t want a surprise party, when it happened Helen was smiling.

 

 The remarkable thing about Helen Craig at 80 is that she is still having picture books published. She’s currently working on the illustrations of Snowy Sunday, eighteen years after doing the first book in the series, One Windy Wednesday, published by Walker Books in 1996. 

One Windy Wednesday is a story about the animals on Bonnie Bumble's farm having their voices blown away by the wind and all ending up with the wrong sounds. Here’s a link to it and the other books in the series:  One Windy Wednesday, Meow Monday, Turnover Tuesday, Thirsty Thursday, Foggy Friday and Soggy Saturday.  

Helen told me that she wanted the images for these books to be quite different from her Angelina Ballerina  books. She said she found it hard to draw in a bold manner and so she did the original line drawings very small - about 3 inches square for the single page and then enlarged on the photocopier to 8 inches square so the enlargement was quite great and the line ended up nice and chunky. She then dampened the picture and stretched it onto a board, before colouring it. 

“In Snowy Sunday,” she said, “it’s snowing snowflakes as big as balls of wool and all the animals are shivering, so Bonnie Bumble has to knit them coats and scarves, beak warmers and tail warmers. These stories are always whacky and fantastic but that's what makes them such fun to do.”

This must be the secret to Helen’s long illustrating career – the fun of it all and the sheer delight of drawing and painting.

HELEN CRAIG'S HORSES

Helen Craig, granddaughter of the theatrical designer, Edward Gordon Craig, is best known as the illustrator of Angelina Ballerina, written by Katharine Holabird. However, there are many other facets to Helen’s art and it is not just mice that she likes to draw.  As well as being an illustrator, Helen is a sculptor and print maker and she has a fascination for horses too, despite being petrified by them.

I spotted this little horse on her mantle piece when I visited her a couple of weeks ago.  

It was the horse that inspired these images in Amy's Three Best Things; a story written by Philippa Pearce (1920 –2006).  

 

  

 

Helen told me she was delighted when she was offered a chance to re-illustrate Amy's Three Best Things. And it was the little horse on the mantelpiece that helped bring about that strange metamorphosis illustrators can have when an object leads you into a story.

Suddenly, I spotted other horses that Helen had made out of clay -

 

– there was even one lurking in the flower borders of her garden.  

She showed some of her horse etchings – hauntingly surreal and very different from her Angelina Ballerina images.

I was beginning to understand now why it was a horse that was the catalyst for the images in Amy’s Three Best Things.  In the story, Amy brings her three best things with her when she goes to visit her Granny: a bedside mat, a little horse and a toy boat. At night, when she starts to miss her mother, Amy finds each of these things can take her back to her own home where she catches a glimpse of her family before returning, comforted, to her Granny’s house.

    I love seeing roughs so we went up to Helen’s studio where she showed me how she created the illustrations for this delightful book working with her son, Ben Norland, Art  Director at Walker Books. Here is the process from thumb nail sketch through to final illustration:

the thumbnail sketches,

the first layout with text,

the first rough in ink when the layout changed to a double page spread,

 

the first colour rough, photocopied and colour tested,

the final pencil drawing where the houses have been moved clear of the horse's hooves: half size (145mm height by 372mm width)

and the final piece of artwork which the publisher then enlarged to 215mm height by 530mm width.

By working with photocopied pencil drawings, Helen was able to achieve a lithographic effect which adds to the spontaneity and magic of these illustrations.

Copyright @ Helen Craig

ARTISTS' STUDIOS

Here is Helen Craig in her studio with a prunus subhirtella autumnalis blooming mid-winter just outside her window. Wonderful to work up among the branches of a tree along with the birds.

    Helen has illustrated many books besides Katherine Holabird's Angelina Ballerina stories. She's currently working on a posthumous picture book story by Philippa Pearce for Walker Books, Amy's Three Best Things which is coming out next year.  

 

She signed this box set of This is the Bear that she did with Sarah Hayes - perfect for my two very young grandsons, as the stories all have the nursery rhythm of This is the House that Jack Built and Helen's gentle, humorous pictures are just right for that age.