Work in Progress

This book is being created as a collaboration. The dropped capital from my last post will fit inside this border that I've designed. It features 23ct gold leaf and was painted and illuminated on vellum (calf skin). If anyone has a blank sheet of vellum, I'd be most grateful if you could scan it so that the image can be used for a unique page background. The aim is to have a different one for each page to make the finished book look truly like a medieval tome. The page numbers will go on the dragon's scroll.

This is a left-hand side page. You'll have to imagine the border flipped for the right-hand page of the spread. The inner border and illustrations will differ in size.


The text is written by hand using a different calligraphy style for each character in the children's story of the Queen of Hearts' Tarts, by Jennifer Poulter.

This is still a work in progress and the finished illustration(s) by Mandy Sinclair will actually be created using watercolours.She will surprise us with a detail that will go in the circle.

 

Now to complete the text calligraphy, including the page numbers to fit in the dragon's scroll:

 

It will be print-ready and 10 inches by 8 inches when it's finished, probably in July. Hoping that we can find the perfect traditional publisher...

Peter Taylor

Writing for Children

www.writing-for-children.com

Eggs, Eggs and a Border Design

There are noticeable differences between eggs from factory-farmed caged hens and from those kept in back yards and fed food scraps and allowed to forage and eat worms and insects. It surprised me to learn that medieval scribes and manuscript illuminators, who used egg yolk and egg white to help make gold and colours stick to the page, also had a preference for eggs from country hens for some purposes, and from town hens for other requirements.

Today I'm working on a border design to hopefully gain an editor's interest in a project. The boxes at the bottom still have to be completed. The design is a 'modernised hybrid of The Luttrell Psalter and the Macclesfield Psalter', and chosen to accompany a story set in the 14th century.

If I use 23ct gold, the finished work will look wonderful - but could it be satisfactorily photographed or scanned and reproduced in a children's book? Would its use impress or deter a publisher? Hmmm. I've been putting off that decision for a while. Maybe I'll have to do two versions...

Have fun being creative

Peter Taylor

www.writing-for-children.com 

Book Crossing – Children’s Books

Someone close to my home, whose house is next to a bus-stop, has fixed a book box to the fence. The label says ‘Give a book, take a book or swap a book’. I see they’ve sold the house – I hope the next owners keep the scheme going.

Book Crossing http://www.bookcrossing.com/  costs nothing to join. Members leave books on cafe tables, buses, park benches etcc for anyone to pick up, read and then release somewhere else. For preference a label is stuck inside, saying that the book is free to be picked up and read, and is travelling the world.

Those who register a book on the website, prior to leaving it somewhere, can generate a code for the label so that they and readers can track where it’s been – but no one ever knows the person who gave it or found it.

If you put ‘Book Crossing’ in Google ‘Images’ and do a search, you’ll get an idea of the labels and the places books are left. One picture shows children’s books in plastic bags hanging from a tree, in England, at the perfect height for children to take them. The picture was originally posted by Sally-Jayne Poyton, http://sallypoyton.blogspot.com/ on the SCBWI UK Ning website (which can only be joined by members who live there).

What a great idea!

I think I should start a book tree in the park opposite my house. Sally-Jayne has suggested ‘we should have SCBWI book trees up and down the UK’. Why not Australia and worldwide?

SCBWI stands for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators – http://www.scbwi.org/

Let's get children reading in every way we can!

Peter Taylor
http://www.writing-for-children.com/

The number '4'

Yes, it’s another new start. This really is the year of the blog. Well that’s the plan! Something for adults wanting to create books for children, and something for children who like to write, draw and be creative.

It’s pretty obvious last year was a write off for blogging for me – but not for book writing. GMC Publications, in the UK, is just putting the final touches to ‘Calligraphy for Greetings Cards and Scrapbooking’ and should send it to the printer on January 24. It will be out in June. Yipee! It was a very time consuming project – but I’m delighted with the colour proofs I’ve been sent.

Next project: This one’s for charity and organised by www.uTales.com . uTales allows authors and illustrators to use their enhancement tools to create and sell  books with basic animations without charge. A percentage of profits go to www.PencilsofPromise.com, a very worthy charity that helps communities in the developing world to establish schools and libraries. A group of creators are now collaborating to produce one spread each of an alphabet book, and a counting book, for which all profits will go to Pencils of Promise. I’ve composed the verse for the number ‘4’ and the wonderful Anil Tortop www.anilmation.com will illustrate it. I’m finding it incredibly hard to wait to see how she interprets it. I may write the words in calligraphy, if there’s room. We’ll see. I’ll let you peep when it’s done.

Four green frogs with big googly eyes

Eating wiggly worms and crispy crunchy flies

This one's for me, and here's one for you -

A special one for Mummy, and my Daddy, too.

Four full frogs with big googly eyes

And fat froggy tummies - just look at their size!

Special thanks to my ‘think-tank’ friends who helped refine the choice of words!

If you’d like to draw pictures yourself to go with the words, and send them as images, I’ll add them to this blog and to my website – Peter (at) writing-for-children.com. You could print out the words first and draw the frogs around them to make a picture or poster. Or you could imagine it was for an open 2 page spread in a book, and if you want to, have some lines of the verse on one page and some on the other, splitting them up as you like.

Book illustrators usually start by making rough sketches of where everything might fit. They try lots of ideas and then work more on the one they like best. One big wide picture could be drawn for a double page spread with a background to cover the whole area, but no important drawings where the words will be positioned. The words are usually created on a transparent layer that a computer can arrange over the top of the picture. This allows new replacement words to be used if the book gets published in a foreign country.