A few weeks ago, on hearing the news that Sam was planning to serialise a short story on this blog (31st October 2009), I decided to ask him if I could have a go at illustrating it. You see, being primarily the illustrator of picture books, I don’t usually get the chance to tackle something with a bit more ‘bite.’ And if there’s one thing you need to know about Sam Enthoven‘s writing – if you don’t already – is that it comes with just that.

And guess what? The man said ‘yes!’ Such faith!

Now, illustrating a story for an older readership, specifically fiction, is a different approach to a picture book. In a picture book, generally speaking, the aim of the illustrator is to produce a series of images that compliment the text rather than duplicate it. The words and pictures are being read simultaneously, hence the need for them to work together and not compete with each other. Of course this is true when illustrating fiction as well, but difference between the two is that, whilst a picture book illustrator is providing his or her vision of the story, the role of the illustrator of fiction, in my opinion, is to enhance the story through mood and atmosphere whilst at the same time allowing the text to breathe and allow the reader to imagine the authors details for him or herself. By it’s very nature a picture book author doesn’t spend much time describing a character, or the action, in detail. This is passed on to the illustrator whose job it is to tell his of her (additional), story with the pictures. An author of fiction will often spend some time describing a character in (hopefully), wonderfully lyrical prose. To illustrate the text too closely will render the text or the pictures redundant and, not unreasonably, quite possibly irritate the reader.

However, with all that said, I do tend to start a story in the same way!! That is to say, with some kind of storyboard. In this case, I produced a series of small thumbnails.

By starting off with a simple storyboard it helps me visualise all the illustrations at a glance. Here, I can judge the pace, the mood, the ebbs and flows of the text. My aim with this short story was to focus on the atmosphere and growing tension within the story. As I’ve already mentioned, Sam captured this brilliantly, so I was conscious not to crowd the words but try and add ‘flavour’ to this dark and disturbing story that is Jethro’s Ace of Hearts. I won’t go into the details of each image now because I don’t want to spoil the story. Perhaps I’ll come back this in a later post, once this ghastly tale has been told. I hope you enjoy it.

Look out for the first posting this weekend. Halloween…of course.

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