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Once upon a time... there was a young girl who had an eye for fine detail, a powerful need to collect three-dimensional objects, and a burgeoning talent for needlework. Not surprisingly, she grew up to become a children's book illustrator whose artwork simply enchants with its distinctive mix of fabrics, threads, handmade papers, stamps, sequins, buttons - and even rubbish.
'I collect everything and anything I can find, from beads and materials to rubbish on the streets,' says Rachel Griffin, whose books include The Fabrics of Fairy Tale and the new Twelve Days of Christmas.
As a child challenged by dyslexia, Griffin spent many hours poring over the pictures in her storybooks. 'It took me a long time to learn to read. Pictures were the main story for me.'
The artist from Bristol always knew she would illustrate children's books. A graduate in printed textiles from St Albans College of Art and Design, Griffin honed her craft freelancing for paper-product companies where she designed greetings cards, wrapping paper, calendars and other products. She also studied collage. And she continued amassing a cache of baubles and ephemera.
Rachel
Griffin
The Fabrics of Fairy Tale, page 69.
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Illustrating children's books seemed a natural way for Griffin to combine all her passions. She found that working her illustrations with embroidery gave her tremendous creative freedom in a format that utilised elements from her beloved collection of odds and ends. 'I love that you almost feel like picking the items off the illustrations,' she says.
To create her embroidered collage illustrations, Griffin begins by reading a storybook text over and over in order to get a feel for the sensibility of story and characters. She then decides on the colour scheme that best articulates the story. Finally, she hauls out her collection.
'I lay out my handmade papers, stamps, stickers, maps, buttons, beads and sequins, connecting them by colour scheme. The illustrations just seem to develop from combining all the bits and pieces.'
In The Fabrics of Fairy Tale, Griffin's whimsical, detail-oriented needlework virtually pops off the page. Minuscule skeins of embroidery thread, tiny shells and beads, diminutive animals carved of wood, wisps of feathers and bits of woven straw all draw the eye from one harmonious image to another in a tapestry of visual stimulation.
Leafing through Griffin's books, one feels inclined to reach for the true love's gifts in her Twelve Days of Christmas book. This is also true of the books of fellow embroidery illustrator Belinda Downes. A world-renowned embroidery artist, Downes' children's books include Silent Night: A Christmas Carol Sampler, A Stitch in Rhyme, Every Little Angel's Handbook, The Starlight Princess and, most recently, the charming and lavishly illustrated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Belinda
Downes
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, page 43.
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Downes, a former artist-in-residence at Hampton Court Palace, is an accomplished needlesmith whose work is exhibited all over the world. Her embroidery designs are characterised by their playfulness and diligence in detail, and the resulting story unfolds amidst a tapestry of colour, depth, energy and animation. As with Griffin's work, readers pageing through one of Downes' books may find themselves reaching out to pluck at the queen's sewing basket in Snow White, or at the silver-leafed trees in The Twelve Dancing Princesses.
Belinda
Downes
The Starlight Princess and Other Princess Stories,
page 103.
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Clare Beaton uses embroidery to create a folksy charm in her award-winning picture books. An author as well as an illustrator, Beaton's many children's books include How Big is a Pig?, There's a Cow in the Cabbage Patch and, coming in March, There's a Billy Goat in the Garden. Each scene is rich in colour, texture and narrative, the text accompanied by images hidden in the illustration that can be found by the child.
'I think reading to children when they are small is one of the best bits of parenting. I like to add extra, unmentioned bits in my illustrations, such as the ladybird in Never Say Boo to a Goose.'
In creating her patchwork of illustrations, Beaton begins with a rough pencil sketch of the page, drawing the outline of each shape onto tracing paper. She uses the paper patterns to cut out the felt. The pieces are then pinned to the background fabric and stitched into place. Buttons, beads and braids are added last.
Beaton says she gets inspiration for her work from naive art in paintings, patchwork and rugs, as well as folk art from all over the world. Readers will see these influences, as well as the illustrator's penchant for tucking surprises into each scene, in Mother Goose Remembers, a visually rich and harmonious romp through the world of cherished nursery rhymes.
For example, in 'This Little Pig Went to Market', one pig is pulling a sailboat behind him while another reads an ABC book from the comfort of an easy chair. In 'Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary', each pretty maid wears a different contemplative expression. And in 'There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe', two of the children are playing an old-fashioned game while the old woman clutches a ladle.
Clare
Beaton
How Loud is a Lion?, pages 18-19.
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A graduate of Hornsey College of Art, Beaton worked as an illustrator on children's programmes at the BBC for eight years before deciding to go freelance working on children's books. Like Griffin, this author-illustrator recycles her art supplies from vintage buttons and beads and old pieces of embroidered and patterned fabrics.
'I rarely buy anything new,' says the London-based artist. 'I add texture with frayed edges and fringed flowers, sparkle with sequins and depth with studs. It's something different from the more conventional paints and inks.'
Tatyana Tekkel of Devon entered the world of children's literature after studying sculpture at university, marrying a children's book illustrator who left the business to pursue an interest in automated toys, and raising her children. Following a process similar to that of Rachel Griffin in her designs, the creator of the appealing Jessie and the Dolphins compares her artistry to the process of collage, which includes fabric, beads, bits of embroidery and a miscellany of other items applied in various stages. She finds inspiration for her illustrations in American folk art, particularly as expressed through quilts.
'I went to the States and saw the wonderful quilts and they just bowled me over. I then came home and had a go at making a quilt and did it all wrong.'
Then an idea for a children's story came to her and Tekkel shared it with her husband. 'I told him I had thought of this wonderful children's story and that I thought I'd sew the pictures and embellish them and have a go at it.' The book, published by Bloomsbury, was Harry, Sidney and The Egg.
Next came Jessie and the Dolphins, a story about friendship, and a nostalgic nod to childhood adventures of yore. By this point, Tekkel found herself far more focused on marrying the text of the story to the pictures and underscoring the story with different pictorial elements to enliven and bolster the text.
'With Jessie, I wanted the decorations on the text page to also say something about the story.' For example, on one page of text, bits of embroidered fabric trimmed to look like seaweed and starfish surround the text along with stitched shells, so that the overall effect is one of a seafaring adventure expressed through nautical imagery. 'I really enjoyed matching the sewing to the text,' Tekkel says.
Tatyana
Tekkel
Jessie and the Dolphins, page 10.
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A self-described fabricaholic, Tekkel keeps a store of materials, including old and washed-out fabrics, that she regularly loots in illustrating her books. Occasionally, when she can find nothing suitable for the type of illustration she has in mind, the artist will print her own fabrics using the monoprint process. This is how Tekkel achieved the look of the multi-hued and layered bubbling sea on the book cover of Jessie and the Dolphins.
Like Griffin, Downes and Beaton, Tekkel (who is currently at work on Millie and the Bear Cub, a story about saying goodbye) is drawn to the accessibility and immediacy of embroidered illustrations.
'I love the idea of textiles, the sewing, the needle. To me, it's a very feminine thing. It's tactile. Even if you do flat pictures for reproductions, there's that wonderful warmth and immediacy of using fabric that I don't think you can get any other way. Fabric gives you that sort of three-dimensional depth.'
And, like her illustrating contemporaries, Tekkel hopes that readers will want to keep turning the pages of a story that is told on many different levels through text and textiles.
'I am always very interested when I show children the artwork in my books. Their reactions have really surprised me. They know the difference between drawn pictures and textiles. They respond to it. They recognise the immediacy and I find that very rewarding.
'I do hope the little boys and girls growing up won't lose the knowledge of what the needle is for. I hope to inspire this desire to know.'
The creator of Greasy Norman and the illustrated children's book, ABC, Lois Blackburn once won a commission from Manchester Art Galleries to work alongside writers Philip Davenport and Gary Parkinson.
'That started me off on a new journey of children's book illustrating. This is a fairly new area for me and I'm very excited about the possibilities. Working with writers takes me into areas and subject matters that I would not normally consider.'
Blackburn, whose illustrations combine textiles and computer-generated imagery, has been involved in a number of collaborations with authors and recently finished a book with Davenport.
Lois
Blackburn
With a Stride.
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'It's a beautiful short story called The Wish Arrow and it is currently being looked at by a publisher in Beverly Hills, California.' The multi-talented artist from Manchester has also embarked on a writing course and hopes to fill the roles of both author and illustrator on a future project.
A packager of popular culture, personal collections, kitsch and glamour, Blackburn studied embroidered textiles at Manchester Metropolitan University. After graduation, she started her own business making and designing rag rugs and wall hangings. These were exhibited internationally, which led to commissions and residencies. One residency, at Ashford Adult Education Centre in Kent, co-ordinated by Ruth Isset, returned Blackburn to an earlier artistic love: batik.
'Ruth set me up with a batik pot - I hadn't done any batik since school - and it was an instant hit for me. I started incorporating the technique into my designing for the rugs and wall hangings and gradually it became the dominant method of working.'
The artist has always had a passion for illustration, and getting her work published seemed a natural progression. She began with greetings cards and wrapping paper and then expanded into newspapers and magazines, counting The Times and The Big Issue among her clients. She then entered the highly competitive field of children's book publishing with The Problem with Pictures, commissioned by Bury Art Gallery.
Blackburn describes the process of creating illustrations: 'After reading the text, I break it down into bite-size sections. I start doing sketches, which are then translated into fabric. All the work is done on silk, using batik, and then scanned into the computer and manipulated.'
With several illustrated books under her belt, including The Wish Arrow, Mitten and Maisie and A Little Book of Shapes, Blackburn continues to be fascinated by details and the everyday objects that are often overlooked.
'I try and express this through my artwork. I love using colour and hope the readers will enjoy my use of it as much as I do using it.'
To see Lois Blackburn's animated books, visit www.loisblackburn.co.uk.
These illustrators all hope that their work will provide a feast of colour and light, pattern, humour and fun - at which the child (and adult) reader can keep looking and finding new elements.
'It's a bit like a treasure-trove,' adds Griffin. 'Keep looking and you will find.'
This article is from Embroidery, Volume 54 No.2, © Kathy Witt