The Quiet Book Padded Board Book

I don't think we mentioned previously that The Quiet Book has been recently released as a padded board book. It's a cutely appropriate format I would say.

How Kids Book Are Made

Renata will be a part of a children's book illustration panel open to the public at the Alberta College of Art along with fellow alumni including Kim Smith, Jacqui Lee, Jacqueline Hudon Verrelli, Jessica Philips, Lincoln Agnew, and Joy Ang. Janine Vangool will also be on the panel talking about the children's book issue of UPPERCASE magazine.

How Kids Books Are Made

Thursday Oct 17 from 3-5 pm

at ACAD 1407 14 Ave NW, Calgary

Renata doodled this idea for the poster and I computerized it.

Colorful World

As Renata rushes to upload the final artwork for her book due this week, I thought it would be fun to take a leisurely stroll through one of her favorite books to read as a child - Colorful World or in Polish Kolorowy Świat.

This book came up last week during a discussion on reading books as a child. The truth is Renata (and myself as well) mostly looked at the pictures - and we still do! But for Renata this book was an exception. She can remember hauling out the book daily to read, and it was a really big book for a child to carry. She would sit on the floor of her bedroom with this big book on her little lap and escape into the colorful world of it's words.

Each chapter relates to a season and begins with a lovely illustration of a tree for that season. As we looked over the book, being careful not to further damage it's tattered binding, Renata has a memory and story for each image. Sometimes the images frightened her, others delighted, and some she couldn't figure out until now.

Kolorowy Świat was published in 1968 and features short stories from multiple authors. It was illustrated by Hanna Krajnik, Danuta Imielska-Gebethner, Zdislaw Witwicki, and Hanna Czajkowska.

This is Renata's favorite story from the book. It's titled Psie Smutki or Dog Blues written by Jan Brzechwa. It's a very short story about a sad little puppy sitting by a river.

Coming to (North) America

Is it too early to start talking about Renata's next book "Once Upon a Memory" written by Nina Laden. Maybe, it's not out until December 3rd after all ... but what the heck. This was one of Renata's favorite drawings for the book, however,  it's not in the finished picture book! 

Sometimes a drawing that makes perfect sense in your mind, isn't so clear for others. This drawing didn't quite work in the context of the story. Unfortunately this can happen more often than an artist would like. We try to bounce the ideas off each other but even then we are sometimes too close to those drawings and can't get the proper perspective - I guess that's what editors are for right?

As with all of Renata's drawings this image is more than a reflection of the text she is illustrating, it is also a reflection of her own experiences. Like many an old tale of immigrants coming to America, Renata came to North America with a few sentences in english, her life savings (exchanged for a couple of hundred Canadian dollars), and her hopes and dreams of course!

How to Begin?

How about we start with the beginning, or a beginning.

In the old days illustrators would do marker comps for ad agencies to pitch an idea to their client - you might have seen this on TV shows like Mad Men. In art college they used to teach us how to do these comps.

During our spring cleaning we found these old marker comp exercises done by Renata in her 2nd year in art college at ACAD.

These would have been created using markers and chalk. The trick was that they had to be done quickly, but photographic - the final ad would likely have used photography. The individual elements would often be drawn separately, cut out, and collaged together.

You can see that Renata is already exploring picture book themes such as mice. (a mouse is the star of the next book Renata will be illustrating)

This is an example of what the final presentation would look like. I think Renata did a pretty good job, of course she might have gotten docked a bit for not having an additional tracing paper flap!

Under New Management & Under Construction

As you may have noticed, Renata hasn't posted much lately. There is a good reason, she's been super busy this summer finishing up a book which is due next week! 

There's also good reason to believe that this will continue - she has a whole lot more books to do. But she also has lots of interesting things to blog about, including Once Upon a Memory written by Nina Laden which is coming this December.  

So the executive committee (Renata and myself) have given me the opportunity to fill the role as official blogger about all things Renata. It should be fun, as Renata's #1 fan I am excited to share the inside scoop - and Renata will stop by from time to time too. (note: the site may be a bit funky as I give it a tune up)