1/2 Shirley Hughes - What Do Artists Do All Day ?

their shoes have loved all your books that I have ever bought but healthy ones are my best I like them because they are funny and nice to read I'm going to a book review of arctic CA which I can read to other children to encourage them to read your book oh good I write half of the bed and a half on the table where do you I numb them big blesses me please write more I pride myself most on the letters I get saying we we liked your books or you know I remember dogger when I was a little girl and now read it to my kids that's lovely cuz of course I've gone through a generation younger was a one-off story of course about the terrible moment when daughter is lost at bedtime I don't use real models for my children in my books but I do use real models from toys and dogger is very old I mean he is he is an absent I called dr. I mean he's been he's been on show in museums he's but he's retired now from these sick of the celebrity circuit he just lives quietly in this box but as you see he belong to my oldest song he was a given by when he had company was about three and when he first arrived his this year his ears were correct like that but he was slipped because as one does pressed against so this year got forced upwards and there it is eze dog my working day begins I get up do a few exercises have some breakfast and then I go upstairs to my work home to get ready for the day's work so starting off at the drawing board it's um how would I always look forward to in drawing apron on and I use gouache color it's got quite a lot of body in it it's in so fragile as watercolor this is quite fun squeezing out you know the moment will promise really when you think this is going to be the color for the day you know array so it's a lot of fun very tactile this you know and then I'm ready to start this is an alpha book of course which I'm working on them I do it you know there are many alpha books out there what I'm doing is translating a rough into the finished artwork and I think one of the great challenges is to get that freedom of the rough which you've done it great speed in at high state of excitement and here of course I'm slowing down and I've got to do this very meticulously this is the very last illustration of a book I'm just finishing and it's all about Alfie and dad they have a very close relationship and this one is about a little lost cat and they taking this little lost cat and their cat Jesse gets very jealous and growth it's all about him and dad and how they resolve the situation if you have a character that everybody knows already it's a great help and Alfie you be what 24 years old now if he was in real time but of course he's still a perennial preschooler up against the terrible battles that very serious things that they have to battle with which mean a lot like getting your shoes on the right feet going to a birthday party without your security blanket all that kind of thing it's very important for small job I'm checking the color of his of his sweater and the fact he's got a check collar I've got to remember that when I put you keep repeating it you see we're going to have continuity it's like a little play you can't come out in a different costume here's the catch SC looking very very upset that was done with paint all the skill of the storytelling is in the drawing and I was taught to draw I did a lot of life drawing at my time thank God we know the way I hand works you know the way little fingers and the source of everything is keeping a sketchbook the text says I think Dilys is a much better name than table said Alfie I wonder she'll ever come back and visit us again but she never did I get a lot of inspiration of course from things that happened in my own family at that age we did have a dealers who went she was terrible she kept disappearing and hearts were broken and then she turn up again and she got true people on the go she got two homes on yeah that's where this story came from I always have with a picture and I will have the final bit of text will be up there little bit of conversation just to depart there right I think I'm gonna have a breather huh it's a lovely light today marvelous we came here in 1954 I think it was we moved here when on my eldest son was a baby tiny baby and my other two children were born while we were here and they've been here ever since it's a lovely place to work very quiet you see being terribly happy here you know all the time John and I worked on the saliva and now here you know I'd hate to go anywhere else hate anywhere I love it hope if I pop my clogs I knew that my own books were going to be rooted in reality because I had this feel for drawing young children as with Alfie has a mom and a dad and a little baby sister who's only just beginning to walk and talk annie rose and he's perfectly ordinary family he's got a best friend bernhard who's a pretty cool really somebody once said to me of course when they're sixteen Bernhard's going to get the girl poor Alfie will be a bit more this is about in a moment went Alfie gives the door a big slam just like that open at all Alfie said mum now if he didn't know how to open the door he couldn't reach the catch a lot of the time you're trying to pretend that that gutter where the sowing is down the middle isn't there you'll flow across it but in this case I used it as part of the story of course I was thinking of the old silent movie trick you know where they had a split screen and with this Marx Brothers films and everything you know you could see one person on inside and the other person outside I mean a book is a wonderful piece of technology absolutely superb I mean you can do anything with it and even the tiniest chart knows that this is outside here and he's inside and all I had to do was draw that line there they could look at pictures long before they learn to read and that's what's so nice about being an illustrator the thing about a picture book of course is it is a little theater except you're you've got complete control over everything you're the lighting costume designer stage director the lot I want children to learn how to look how to linger over a picture and not rush through flicking from page to page they have a lot to cope with in the terms of having to be quick reactors and I think the enjoyment of art is something that you enjoy just by looking carefully and looking as long as you like one of my great heroes of was Arthur Rackham he was one of the classic illustrator from another era of course and I really poured over these these these were color plates you never had the text and then you turn this tissue paper there was this lovely colorful a wonderful illustrator he was very classic I mean there's Peter Pan he's flown off out of the window and he's gone into kazran Gardens and having a conversation with a crow sitting in a tree and there's some ice down below complete contrast would be able do like fairy tales Cinderella look at that beautiful illustration you read the text and then you came to this wonderful note you've got the color plate it's a lot to look at I mean you're looking at the main scene and you're also looking at all these people aghast in the background I used to try and learn something from them a tremendous influence on me cause war comics we had a very nice little comics you know Tiger Tim the brewing boys and all that and then suddenly the moment came when I was in the Second World War and the GI is arrived in Liverpool with them came the American comics and of course these were for adults I was in my late teens really started to look at art it's an amazingly funny but look at that I mean just one picture with this little silhouette of the city below and there's somebody floating off in a bathtub then they're all coming out and woke up in bed it's a dream of course well there were such good artists full of ideas you learn about line but most of all you learn about telling a story which is what I'm doing in a different sort of way of course the whole emphasis in this picture is that alphys legs are too short he said his legs are just dangling cliff digs his still next step reached the ground that dad got to look maybe next mm-hmm oh we got his mug don't have the old tribe blue and white stripes name then we got a bit of a glow I go bit of shine on the mark so there's dad's cuppa and of course all the interest of the story and I love the story is told to Cleveland own reader is any expression on the faces this has got to their faces have got to express I saw

Channel: Art Documentaries

Views: 61,979

Rating: 4.9580908 out of 5

Keywords: Shirley Hughes - What Do Artists Do All Day ?

Id: jdhx7D66lXc

Length: 15min 0sec (900 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 26 2016