How illustrator Jill Calder built a long-lasting creative career (without losing her voice)

In this episode, our Tania chats with multi award-winning illustrator Jill Calder about 30+ years of illustration, and how she’s explored pretty much the entire “illustration atlas” without losing herself along the way.

Stuff we cover:

• Staying recognisably Jill across 30+ years of illustration
• Moving from editorial to corporate to heritage work
• Building a career with both illustration and hand lettering
• Big, bonkers corporate jobs (including handwriting as other people!)
• Making the leap into children’s books later in her career
• The reality of nonfiction vs fiction picture books (time, fees, and headspace)
• Colour palettes, maps and Google Earth “walks” for picture atlases
• Working with Jackie Kay on Coorie Doon and handling deeply emotional text
• Bringing wild, playful colour to I Love You Every Color
• Keeping energy and looseness in final artwork
• What Jill’s working on now – including a brand new picture book with Gecko Press

Rough Timestamps

00:00 – Tania introduces Jill and why she’s a Good Ship favourite
02:30 – Early days: art school, editorial work and the 90s newspaper scene
05:00 – “By chance, someone took a risk on me…” – moving into design & corporate jobs
07:30 – Becoming “the handwriting person”
11:30 – The wildest job ever
15:00 – Champagne, iPads and the very fancy side of ad agency work
16:30 – Exhibition days, analogue work and why looseness matters
18:00 – Stumbling into children’s nonfiction with Robert the Bruce
21:00 – Picture atlases, strict colour palettes and Google Earth walks
22:30 – Nonfiction vs fiction picture books – fees, length and workload
26:00 – Collaborating with Jackie Kay on Coorie Doon and illustrating big feelings
29:30 – I Love You Every Colour – an illustrator’s dream text
31:30 – Two very different books in one year: soft dreamland vs riot of colour
33:30 – Handling emotion, light and character across spreads
34:30 – New project: Cass and the Beast for Gecko Press
35:30 – Keeping rough energy in final artwork (and managing the stress of it!)
37:00 – Where Jill pops up inside Good Ship courses and Facebook groups

Stuff we mentioned

• Jill Calder – illustration, lettering and books
• Find Your Creative Voice – Fly Your Freak Flag (Good Ship course)
• The Picture Book Course (Good Ship course)
• Robert the Bruce – nonfiction picture book
• Coorie Doon – written by Jackie Kay, illustrated by Jill Calder
• I Love You Every Colour – written by Carolyn Rose, illustrated by Jill Calder
• Upcoming: Cass and the Beast – written by Clare Mabey, illustrated by Jill Calder (Gecko Press)

Byeeee for now!

x The Good Ship Illustration (Helen, Katie & Tania)

Come and say hello!

✏️ @thegoodshipillustration
🌏 www.thegoodshipillustration.com

p.s. We love answering your illustration questions. Click here to submit your question for The Good Ship Illustration Podcast 🎙

Transcript

November - Jill Calder
===

[00:00:00] 

Hello, it's Tanya here, and this week I'm gonna be interviewing multi award-winning Jill Calder, the illustrator. If you are on a picture book course or our Find Your Creative Voice course, you'll know Jill through the much loved films that she's made us about her work and her process, and generally the life of being an illustrator.

I would admit that I've always been a huge Jill Colder fan girl and aded her work when I first saw it in the nineties. So being on the good ship gave me the perfect excuse to chat to her. Jill's been illustrating for more than 30 [00:01:00] years, and she's worked across an impressive variety of industry sectors, yet amazingly throughout this her work.

Retains her own unmistakable voice, which was why she was perfect to invite onto find your Creative Voice course. And then when we ran our recent illustration Atlas workshop for the business course, which was looking at all the different areas that illustrators can work in. And make money in. It occurred to, to us that Jill is one of those rare illustrators who has experience across an incredible range of diverse areas because she illustrates she has, um, beautiful lettering as well.

So she's worked in advertising, in editorial, in illustration for design, illustration for branding, illustration for packaging murals, heritage. So many areas yet her work is still immediately recognizable. And recently she started to build a reputation as a uniquely gifted children's picture book illustrator in both nonfiction and now fiction.

You may have seen her recent [00:02:00] collaboration with the. Previous Scottish poet Laureate and Maca Jackie K on her book, Corey Dune, which is winning multiple awards and I don't think the awards have stopped yet. Jill represents everything the Good Ship is about, and she's the perfect person to listen to and we really hope you enjoy this chat.

Jill: Hi everyone. This is Tanya from The Good Ship and I'm here with Jill Calder, who is a big ~old ~friend of the Good ship because she's been sailing with us since our very first voyage, haven't you, Jill?

Tanya: Yes, absolutely. Since, ~what was it, ~May, 2020, I think.

Jill: ~I think, yeah, I think it wasn't it? ~That was our first outing. ~And really weirdly, ~Jill and I have been walking around either behind or in front of each other, over the past ~sort of ~30 years. ~Because ~I'd spot her name in Hong Kong and she'd be doing residencies in Hong Kong when I was there, or I'd see her work somewhere else.

And I was a huge fan of her work and ~of her ~lettering. ~And ~Jill also was up in Scotland, having been to two of the best Scottish art schools, Edinburgh School of Art, and Glasgow School of Art. ~And ~she's a veteran of the [00:03:00] illustration industry with ~more than, is it ~more than 30 years of

Tanya: Oh gosh, veteran. Yes, it is. It is more than 30 years.

Jill: Can we ~also, we can ~also add those other old favorites of award-winning

Tanya: Oh

Jill: Of awards, haven't you?

Tanya: ~yes. Oh yeah. ~But I haven't really gone in for any competitions recently, so I haven't really been winning awards recently. ~Oh no. ~For a couple of things maybe, but yeah.

Jill: Oh, I think it's time to get that competition thing going again. I haven't done much of that for years and you get a little older and you lose~ so much ~interest in it, but I think it's great now to start going in for these things. There's so many good awards of VNA awards out this year, isn't it?

Tanya: That's true. ~Yeah.~

Jill: the world illustration awards go from strength of strength and you've got so much great work recently. You've got a global client list of heavy weights. I was looking through your about section. Anyone listening to this, I would say go onto Jill's website, Jill with a j jill colder.com.

All about Jill. She's. In her editorial section, she's got the New Yorker Gardens Illustrated corporate and advertising [00:04:00] sections. ~What there's also, ~you've done some lovely work for heritage buildings and site specific work, haven't you?

Tanya: With English heritage. ~Yeah. Yeah.~

Jill: Also ~more laterally ~publishing ~and ~children's picture books and children's nonfiction, picture books as well.

And that's one of the reasons why we got you on the podcast because you've sailed your ship across the entire illustration atlas, as far as I can tell, because you've got your lettering as well as your illustration, and that's quite unusual to have someone who's explored so many different areas. And now you are you've mowed your boat in.

Children's Picture book. Sorry. Excuse it. Pardon? I'm over

Tanya: No. ~It's all good. It's all ~it's all good. I have definitely sailed across the illustration atlas and into choppy waters and also, doldrums and smooth sailing and all of that. Yeah, you suppose you have to expect that after ~thir ~30 plus years in the business~ yeah.~

Jill: ~I ~I wonder whether other illustrators of the same era. Have explored the huge variety that you have. A lot of people stay in a, [00:05:00] maybe a couple of areas that suit them. I'm thinking someone like Marion deShar, who's also doing picture books now, but did a lot of design and corporate as well.

And interestingly, actually, both of your work is so ~completely ~individual in style that it makes sense that it could be applicable to so many different ways of working because you've not. Hem yourself in by being traditional in any form. You've very much got ~your own ~your own creative voice, so to speak.

Tanya: Yeah, I think, it's interesting because, ~so what I started out, ~when I left art school in, ~when was that? 92. ~1992, ~not 1892. And I. ~I really only wanted to do editorial work then, and it was, completely different landscape back then and where newspapers, magazines were paying, they, they were first of all commissioning lots of illustration and, paying you pretty well for it, so I did that for a bit.

And then, really, if. But I'm absolutely honest, a lot of the kind of changes of directions in my work, going [00:06:00] from editorial work to, suddenly doing work that's a bit more, for design agencies and things and sort of corporate work. They've they've happened.

By chance, someone's taken a risk on me rather than me being massively proactive in trying to get work in that particular field. ~And, I made this so back, ~I think it was about 93, 94, ~I got a, ~you're talking about my lettering a minute ago, and when I sent out some postcards.

~I mean ~they were promo postcards I'd done for my degree show. And I just wanted to use them up ~really. And I ~I couldn't work out how to work a label printer ~thing. ~So I just hand wrote the addresses of these ~kind of group of ~designers and design agencies in Edinburgh, GLAS. And then, nothing happened.

And then I got a phone call from a design agency saying, oh, we want to use your calligraphy. And I gen, I genuinely was like, I think you've got the wrong person. I don't do calligraphy. And they were like, ~oh ~no, we got your postcard. So it's these chance things that happen and [00:07:00] that ~kind of ~set me on a course of doing a really lovely job for this agency.

It doesn't exist anymore, but it was their 40th anniversary, so they were. Spending lots of money on it. ~And ~I ~had ~suddenly had this beautiful job in my, physical portfolio. And then suddenly all other designers as Tanya, they jump on the bandwagon. They go, Ooh, that's a nice job.

And they suddenly start to commission you to do all sorts ~of kinds ~of work for brochures ~and ~corporate stuff ~and ~annual reports and things like that. So I went from doing editorial work to doing ~quite ~corporate work. ~Then of course, ~paid. Much better. And I went, oh yeah, this is lovely.

I like this. This is good fun. 

Jill: It's always nice as well because the editorial art directors have very good taste, but the design, the art directors in design groups are really nice to work with, aren't they? They're, yeah. They, there's a kind of attention to detail. There's a timescale involved in all of this as well, which allows work to be.

A little bit more considered and a bit more finished. ~You're not going by the flying by the seats of seat of your pants as you do in,~

Tanya: And editorial. ~Yeah.~

Jill: [00:08:00] Yeah. ~And ~how early on in your career did you get your first break into design? ~Because I think what you are saying is, ~what I remember is everyone does editorial for ages but desperately tries to work with some of the nicer British design agencies ~particularly.~

Tanya: ~I ~I seen that particular job, but I've just been talking about the 40th anniversary thing ~was, ~that was quite early on. That ~was, it ~was about 19, I think it might been 1994,

Jill: Yeah.

Tanya: ~and so that was great. ~So that saw ~me doing quite lot of work with lots of different.~

~Or started to see ~me doing a lot of work with different Scottish design agencies and ad agencies. Big wigs like Leaf and ~gosh ~McElroy Coats and they don't exist anymore, but they were a big wig at the time. ~T oh gosh, I've forgotten the name of them. But yeah, a lot, lots of them.~

And so I got known for doing that kind of work, but I was still doing editorial work ~and I what was it? ~I got a regular column in the Scotsman, or was it Scotland on Sunday? It was one of the Scottish newspapers for their ~kind of ~weekend magazine and that was a weekly thing. So that was brilliant and ~that was ~lots of freedom to ~just ~have ~a bit of ~fun illustrating this ~quite ~sort of daft column, written by a supermodel.

Owner [00:09:00] Fraser, he is like a mega sort of tunes a gallery. San Francisco now, or Los Angeles or something. She's pretty mega in the art world, but she was a supermodel back then, in the nineties. ~And ~I did that. And then on the back of that, I had loads of work. I went to London.

Physically went to London with a portfolio and ~I just ~made appointments with folk like, the Times, the Sunday Telegraph, various magazines, and then I literally there on then when the art directors, I think at the Telegraph gave me a job ~and it was a weekly, it was ~a weekly illustration ~and it was like, alright, okay.~

I was there in the right place at the right time and he liked my work ~and. And then ~that was me starting to get work from places like the Garden ~and everything ~as well. ~So I don't know, it was, it's, ~sometimes you have to take a chance ~and, go ~and show people your work, but it's no guarantee that people are actually gonna commission you.

But that, that to happen there and then, in, in the room while I'd gone down to London for a couple of days,

Jill: ~But ~it's great. ~Yeah ~that in real life thing used to be such a treat. It could be exhausting. And now ~I don't think ~with the low [00:10:00] rates of pay people. Just couldn't afford to ~go and ~do a week of portfolio visits with clients, which is ~such ~a shame because you learn so much from those face-to-face.

You understand what someone else is looking for. ~You understand ~how they perceive your work and what they see in it and the opportunities. But yeah, art directors don't have the time nor to illustrators, which is really sad 'cause that was a fantastic experience. ~But ~thinking about how your lettering works so beautifully and harmoniously with your illustrations, were you then encouraged by that first interest by a design group to start using them together in the same imagery or illustration jobs as much as possible?

Tanya: Yeah, I suppose I was, I think with my early illustrations, ~and ~these early ones, ~let. ~Let's remind the listeners that they were pre-digital. I was completely without computer from, ~from, let's, in ~1992 ~from ~when I graduated up to about 97, 98 ~and, ~so I was drawing on paper ~and all sorts of things ~and [00:11:00] literally gluing bits on ~and, ~cut and paste literally.

So I but lettering and things like that was always incorporated into my illustrations. And I think it played out that way until someone, someone actually said we'd really like you to do some book cover lettering, or, we'd like you to do some lettering for packaging ~and ~standalone without illustration.

And that kind of went that way for a while. ~And then ~hand lettering became really popular, didn't it? 

Jill: Yeah, ~it.~

Tanya: forwarding into whatever the kind of, ~Ooh, it ~I don't know, from about 2005 or something. I'm making a wild guess there. But ~it, ~there was loads of hand lettering around and I did some really nice, I did some mad jobs on that, that were lettering only.

~God, ~

Jill: can you remember your maddest

Tanya: The ~ma ~absolute maddest one, which actually was one of the best paying jobs I ever had. It came through my American agent friend in Johnston, who are fantastic. And it was about 10 years ago and it was a very big [00:12:00] financial company. And they were doing adverts like, proper big billboard advertising and online or every kind of advertising you ~think ~can think of.

And the brief basically was that they wanted handwriting, but in the style, like lots of different people, but I was to do all the handwriting. ~And the, but ~they were very specific briefs. ~So for, so basically I had to, ~one of them was ~like a, she was a, like ~a 9-year-old Korean girl. ~Or ~there was a 65-year-old German professor your male professor, and they were very specific and there was lots and lots of different ~sort of ~characters and I had to do, and these little bits of text, there was about four or five lines of text for each person and I just had to do it as handwriting.

And they wanted me to write in things like, Biro or pencil ~or whatever. ~So there wasn't any kind of calligraphy ink or anything like that. ~And ~it was a bonkers job. ~And I get, it was one of those one ~I was thinking, I don't know whether I'm doing this right or not. ~I don't know.~

Anyway it was great ~and I did ~I did manage to get [00:13:00] pictures of, billboards in New York ~and footnote ~with these kind of, big photographs just of normal people, the people that they're describing, but these little bits of handwriting on them. ~And ~that was very well paid.

~That job. That was ~that was ~one of my, ~one of my biggies, ~I would say. So ~it's amazing what you get asked to do ~for, ~

Jill: yeah, exactly. And people of our generation may also ~get, they'll be the only ones to ~get this, which is, you're ~obviously ~being asked to be the Mike Yarwood of handwriting ~there ~because you've got that lovely handwriting. ~But the big job wasn't asking you to be other people. But it, ~a lot of design and advertising work is like that where art directors have a preconceived idea about something and they need someone ~to be a thing for them to be, ~to act it out.

~And ~often those bigger jobs aren't where you are being asked to be yourself. ~But probably, but~

Tanya: ~true. This was, do you know what ~this, ~that ~was a really fun job. I really enjoyed it. It was a great ad agency, design ad agency. I think there was two agencies working on that job. And they were great. I really enjoyed working for them. ~And yeah, it was it was, it felt a bit like.~

It felt like being in the eighties. Do you know what I mean? It was like crazy corporate, money flying around.

Jill: Were you bathing in champagne and kicking up piles of 10 pound notes ~in your.~

Tanya: Let's just say, this is gonna [00:14:00] sound so grand, I was, at the time, ~I was ~talking ~to, to, ~to my American agents about it ~and ~thank God, ~the sort of, the, what was, she was an art, ~Hannah, I can't remember what you call them, but she wasn't an art director designer, but she managed all the art coming into the agency and she was great.

She was a proper New Yorker and ~she was ~absolutely brilliant to work with. ~And ~she really ~kinda ~listened to me and, fed it back ~and all this kind of thing. And ~she was great and I wanted to thank her ~and I was, there was me thinking, oh, like you say, maybe, can I.~

Send some wine or you know something, ~what can I do? ~She was really lovely to work with. I'd like to work with her again, and my agent at the time, he was in the New York office, he was going, Jill, I think you should buy her an iPad. I was like, what? This is, 10 or so years ago.

~What an iPad. ~And he was like, yeah, I'm serious. I think you should buy her an iPad. So I, that's what I did. I bought her an iPad and

Jill: no.

Tanya: I did honestly, and that was

Jill: so mad.

Tanya: ~bonkers. ~That was how bonkers the whole thing was. 

Jill: I hope you had an iPad at that point. ~new, shiny~

Tanya: ~Did I? I can't even remember. I was like, what? I actually, ~I do remember thinking, this is crazy.

I'm buying [00:15:00] someone something. I don't really have myself. But, let's take a little nod to your business course. Things like that are all expenses, and you could put them through your books as corporate gifts or whatever, that's what I did. And I worked with her a couple more times.

She was great. And there you go. It's one of these things.

Jill: The iPad paid off

Tanya: It paid

Jill: the advice that you got in that kind of highfalutin business society where gifts are not a box ~of after.~

Tanya: Be clear, she didn't ask for an iPad or anything. ~She wasn't, ~she didn't ask for anything. But it's that very American way, which, maybe is dying out a little bit now, I don't know of, ~you ~you thank someone and you give them a gift ~and, ~so I gave her something useful.

Jill: Yeah. Kate, I think Katie does send some gifts. She's mentioned that on particularly important jobs or, these unique lifetime project kind of things ~or one-off projects. ~It's always good to acknowledge it with a Thank you. I'm so glad Jill, that at least one of us has ~had, ~had the glitzy [00:16:00] experience.

~After we met up. ~After we saw your lovely exhibition that you had a blink of ink which was so exceptional. You had that beautiful film in the exhibition as well, and it was a chance to see your work from early days. Like you say, when it's all analog and it's just that fresh touch of work that you have, where the marks are really.

They're flamboyant and energetic, ~and if they're wrong. ~And that whole freedom and playfulness in your work and that risk ~is just, ~is what makes it so beautiful. ~But yeah, that, ~that exhibition was fantastic and the film was so good that I was like, this is someone talking about the realities of illustration and ~the re realities of ~an evolving career.

~And we, good shape. I was like, ~we have to get Jill into the course because the way you speak about making the work and the whole industry that you work in was so fresh and honest and you have a really good take on it. And now that's one of the most popular films in the course.

People really love that.

Tanya: I get lovely messages from people who have, are either new to the course or [00:17:00] coming round to it a second time, third time, fourth time, lifetime course at it is, and I just get lovely messages ~from people ~about the film ~and it's. It's re ~they're lovely to get and it's so nice that, that wonderful film that was, made by Cornelia ate wonderful Lithuanian filmmaker that I met, during my, when I was doing that for my exhibition.

She's brilliant. ~And yeah, it ~it's a lovely film. She brought out the best in me, ~I have to say. ~And it was nice to talk so honestly ~about, ~about a career in illustration really. So it's, and I'm glad that people. affected by it and respond to it in the way that they do and then it's helpful?

I think

Jill: Oh, ~I think it really is, ~I think it's inspiring. People say they ~just ~want to go and paint as soon as they've seen it, ~and they, ~and it gives them permission and freedom to make ~really ~spontaneous work and not aim for perfection and see the illustration, see the creativity that's in illustration rather than that kind of end product where you feel you have to come, you have to arrive fully formed, and that there's not that journey through.

Creativity and discovering, a very personal voice ~and ~you've always had a really strong [00:18:00] personal voice from the get go. And now it's it's led you to children's picture books, which is ~so interesting that it's a whole kind of ~a world of great tradition within itself. ~But your work.~

Being uniquely you is adaptable. It's a rule breaker for illustration in a way. ~Did you, ~do you think the industry has changed and is more open to different types of work than it used to be? Do you think this could have happened to you 20 years ago or not?

Tanya: Oh, ~that's a good question. Oh, it's funny, ~lots of people throughout my career have always said, ~oh, ~you do children's books, you do children's books. And I've never really, I never really was interested in that. Not because I don't love children's books. I've got a bookcase over there ~absolutely fooled, ~bursting with children's books and ~thing, ~books that I kept from my childhood, just 'cause they had illustration in them, ~but 20 years ago, I'm not sure. And ~actually, I did my first picture book, which was the Robert the Bruce, which is a nonfiction one. I stumbled into that as well, really. I hadn't been out looking to do children's books. I'd been teaching quite a lot as a lecturer at Edinburgh ~var.~

~Doing quite, gosh, yeah, so that was probably roundabout the same time as all the corporate stuff we've just been talking about, ~[00:19:00] doing quite a lot of big American, client jobs and, jim Hutchson, who's creative, or was the creative director at Berlin Books in Edinburgh, got in touch and said, we've got this idea for a ~book and you know this kind of ~picture book about the life of King Robert, the Bruce of Scotland from, 700 odd years ago.

Would you be interested in illustrating it? And he did have to persuade me a little bit because I was a bit like, oh, I've never done a boot before and I don't know anything about this history. And I was quite ~a bit ~anxious about it, but he was ~very persuasive and but not in a kind of, he was beautifully ~persuasive ~and ~I just thought, ~do you know what, ~why not?

It's something new and interesting and I went into it ~completely. This is gonna sound disingenuous, but I was ~completely naive about the way that ~children, ~the children's book world worked despite having been, an illustrator for so many years up to that point. ~So ~this was around about Robert Bruce got published in 2014 and I'd been working on it for a couple of years before that~ yeah.~

So yeah, I treated it as a sort of. Sequential editorial project and each spread, I treated ~as a, ~as an individual in its own right. Yeah. [00:20:00] And ~yeah, ~it was quite an, I loved it. I absolutely loved illustrating that book. I'm very proud of it. And it's still in print and it's in paperback now, so it does, that's over 10 years now.

~So ~it is amazing. ~Yeah. ~

Jill: ~Had you done, ~it was really interesting what you said there about you treated it as a series of sequential images. Had you done a body of work before that book? That was a series of images that had to be consistent, that you'd

Tanya: Not to

Jill: for.

Tanya: ~not that length. That was, so this, traditionally non I think it's all up in the air a bit now, but ~traditionally nonfiction picture books were. Double the length ~of kind ~of standard picture books. So they're about 64 pages. ~So it's much more work in them though.~

I think I've seen nonfiction, picture books that are even longer than that and so it's all, it depends on the subject matter I think. But this was 64 pages long, so there was a lot of work in it. ~And really I just yeah, ~I just remember creating the spreads, the files for the spreads and doing all the drawings.

All the drawings in ink and footnote, and then scanning everything. And just thinking about them as standalone images. 'cause I think the thought. ~Then of, oh my God, there's, how many 64 pages of illustration, with completely overwhelming. ~And I thought I just need to look at [00:21:00] them one at a time.

~And ~I had a very strict color palette for it that I created after doing a bit of research on kind of medieval. Art and all sorts of things like that, painting and things. And, had this very particular color palette. As soon as you ~open or ~see as you, soon as you look at the cover of the boot, you see the color palettes of these really strong blues, yellows, and reds with muddy in between colors, 

Jill: yeah.

Tanya: And I'd never really worked. With a color palette in that way before, and ~that, ~that was just my instinct to work that way to keep it simple.

Jill: Isn't it?

Tanya: Had something that linked all the different spreads together and ~then, somehow ~it worked.

Jill: I think we, ~we come ~as illustrators, ~we ~make stuff up ourselves as we're going along because ~partly ~we haven't got anyone to ask or ~we ~feel stupid asking about things, ~how do they work? ~So we come to a conclusion ourselves about ~it might be ~the best way to deal with it. And they always end up being the way everyone does it.

When you ask other people, it's, ~and I think, ~like you say, constructing a strict color palette. ~That's your biggest number, isn't it? You, ~your [00:22:00] drawing has such a strong identity, that's not gonna change anyway. So you just anchor it all in the color palette

Tanya: the color. ~Yeah.~

Jill: ~The characters.~

Can I ask, because our head is very much in the business course at the moment, the nitty gritty in terms of differences. ~Okay. It's a much longer book in nonfiction. ~How do the fees compare between nonfiction and fiction?

Tanya: ~Oh gosh. ~So ~I've done how many, no, ~I've done three nonfiction books. So I've done the picture atlas and the c as well, which were all 64 pages long. And those books were where well. Oh, actually hang on a bit. They'll all be slightly different fee wise. So the last two the picture atlas and the Sea were both with Bloomsbury

Jill: Yeah.

Tanya: ~and ~when I did the picture atlas, that was purely a flat fee.

There was no royalties or anything. It was seen as standard. Yeah,

Jill: interesting.

Tanya: nonfiction, you get offered a kind of fixed fee for that. ~But it tends to, ~it was quite a good fee for that. And then when they came back to me and asked to do the C [00:23:00] for me to do the CI thought, oh, okay. And I I negotiated that one myself 'cause I was slightly ~trying in not ~in between agents.

I was trying to shift my picture book. ~And I stuff to, ~because I wanted a literary agent, so I was trying to navigate that ~a little bit. And ~I joined the Society of Authors who are very good with their contract team, and they give you ~lots and ~lots of very good help as part of your membership. If anyone's, getting published or about to be published or is already published, I recommend joining them in the uk. ~And ~they really helped me with the contract for the sea, and I got quite a bit more money for the sea than I did for the picture Atlas, and I got better terms as well, 

Jill: and you did that without a literary agent ~helping yourself. ~Well done.

Tanya: ~Yeah. ~But I've ~got, I ~now got a literary agent ~and ~lovely Lindsay at Fraser Ross associates. ~And yeah, she basically, ~she negotiates all my contracts since then~ yeah.~

Jill: And does ~com ~comparing that to fiction books. ~So ~I wanted to talk, obviously ~I'm not, ~I don't want to ask you to reveal numbers, is it, there's a lot more work in nonfiction compared [00:24:00] to the shorter spreads in a fiction book.

Tanya: Yeah, I would say so. I think just 'cause of the sheer number really. And I think the other thing with nonfiction, particularly the ones that I've worked on, so the picture atlas was obviously lots of maps ~and then, but ~it was more the content that was going on top of the maps and the kind of in between pages.

~In between the maps was. ~I had loads of fun doing it, ~but ~there ~was lit, it ~was literally like a big list of things to look at, to research and I got quite ~a. ~A lot of free reign for what I put in the picture atlas. So I basically spent most of my time researching, looking at all sorts of weird and wonderful animals, or going for what I call ~Google walks.~

Google Earth walks, ~where~

Jill: ~Oh ~yes. ~Yeah.~

Tanya: ~in, ~you have ~the little, ~the little yellow figure now, and you ~to ~plop it down somewhere in ~the, ~the north of Finland and have a look around and see what's there. ~And ~I got quite a lot of inspiration from that ~just ~by drawing ~little ~incidental drawings that ended up in the maps ~and stuff.~

~So there's, there was low, but ~there is a ~sort of ~level of accuracy ~and that you have to do I think with. Or I feel ~that you have to do with nonfiction. ~And, ~things ~I think ~have to look like they actually are. ~So the way that I, ~the way I approached those [00:25:00] books and more of the picture atlas was I treated it like an observational drawing exercise where I was doing a lot of drawing with brush pans.

Rather than, 'cause ~I use quite, ~I use ink and with the little dropper, the little pipee thing that comes with it. I draw quite a lot with that and dip pen and stuff. But brush pens a little bit quicker and you could be a bit more I don't know. I felt it was a bit easier to draw things with that.

So you get a sketchbook feel. I think when you look at the picture atlas of these, a lot of the drawings that I did for that,

Jill: It's a beautiful book and I think map books, we were talking to Libby Vander Plague in the in the Picture book course, we have a nonfiction module, which is really interesting. And she showed us the books she did for Nosy Crow, which I think were the cities of the world. ~The work in it is for, ~the quantity and the level and the depth of research.

It's phenomenal. It's the same as yours. It's very it is just a huge amount of work. When you compare that to the spreads within a [00:26:00] children's picture book, ~so ~I'd imagine nonfiction takes a lot longer than fiction,

Tanya: ~Yeah. ~Yes.

Jill: ~that, ~are we wrong?

Tanya: It depends. Gosh, I'm trying to remember how long it ~took I ~took to illustrate ~the, I can't remember. ~It was probably about a year and a half, ~I think ~for each of those, the C and the picture Atlas. 

Jill: Not exclusively though. You're doing other jobs as well, ~but it's just.~

Tanya: ~Yeah. ~Yeah. That was, I think ~every, for me, ~everything's changed since, the pandemic ~and everything, ~and I think age related and

~yes. But ~it's all about being in the zone for me now, ~I think. And just having that, ~just being able to concentrate on one thing ~and yeah,~

Jill: And that leads us to your, the most recent books. You a wonderful co dune book with with Jackie the, oh,

Tanya: Superstar, Jackie Kay. Absolutely.

Jill: And it's a Scottish poet laureate ~and the, ~is it the Macca?

Tanya: ~She was ~she was a macker, I think from, ~is it, was it ~2016 to 2021? So for a good chunk of time, ~she was our, ~she was the Scottish national poet ~basically.~

Jill: what a joy to be on her first fiction book for children and the pair of you teamed up and it's been a huge success, hasn't it? You seem to have been ~being ~at [00:27:00] endless picture book festivals and lots of presentations ~and ~has it been a really big deal.

Tanya: ~It is, ~it has been quite a big deal. ~So ~it got published on ~some crazy date, I always think, but ~the 2nd of January this year. ~So it came out and then within within about, ~within three months, I think it was March, I got an email from Lovely Tanya Rosie, who's our editor at Walker. Who's a very brilliant picture book writer herself actually.

So Tanya got on the phone and said, ~oh, we are ~it's doing really well. We are reprinting it already. So it was like, oh my goodness, that's, wasn't expecting that. But it's a lovely book. It's absolutely Jackie Key 100% the way that she writes. ~So ~that kind of lovely ~kind of ~flowing.

There's a bit of humor in it. ~There's, it's, gosh, ~it makes people cry as well, this story ~really ~of this little girl Shona and her bedtime, being put to bed, being sung songs by her dad, by her mom. Then you just jump into this whole dreamland [00:28:00] of hers and ~then, the kind of ~halfway through the book, it ~just ~changes into Shona being 60 years old and her father, in my mind he was in his nineties and the ~kind of ~rules are reversed a little bit. So it's really a book for everyone. It was amazing to illustrate. It wasn't easy to illustrate~ just ~from, I'd never really done anything like that before.

For me, it was my first, 

Jill: I was looking at it today, ~actually. ~I'm watching.

Tanya: but yeah.

Jill: Watching Shona age in the book ~as well ~and you'd have lots of characters in your illustration. You've always worked with faces and people and different ages ~and, ~but it must have been quite a challenge to really bring the character of her as a young girl and imbue that in her ~older, the ~portrait ~of her ~as an older woman.

Tanya: ~Yeah. ~Yeah. That took quite a lot of work and I had to age the father as well, ~and. ~It was, ~there was lots of, paid, ~quite detailed for me ~actually. I don't, ~I never tended to do very detailed roughs, but there was a lot, this was going back and forth with, the team at Walker Books ~and, and ~obviously they were showing it to Jackie ~and ~it's ~a bit ~quite a personal book for [00:29:00] Jackie ~as well, ~because, it was inspired, and ~the book is ~dedicated to her mom and dad ~as well.~

~But yeah, ~so it was important to get the right that right the characters. And man, I had lots of fun aging Shona, though. She's quite a funky 60-year-old, with her D Dunes and ~her ~big boots ~and she's ~she's definitely not a little old lady.

Jill: Almost the perfect older character for a children's book and ~then it's, ~then it was back to all the fireworks and multiple images in an illustration when you did your new book, I Love You Every Color,

Tanya: Oh,

Jill: ~which is that. ~Can you tell us a little bit about that one?

Tanya: It's been an exciting year because I've had, after this sort of gap of not having anything published. And then I've had two books out this year~ so ~I Love You Every Color, ~which is ~written by the wonderful Welsh writer, Carol Lewis. And published by two Hoots ~Wonderful.~

~Two hoots at Pan in Pan Millan. They, ~that book came out in July and oh my goodness, that was just a wonderful book. To, I just really love doing that. I, it was color, I love color.

Jill: The person for it.

Tanya: It's just the story [00:30:00] really is, I think actually I heard Carol's just talking about it and she was saying the story itself is ~actually ~inspired by ~a, oh gosh, I think it's like 15th century or something.~

~It's ~a 15th century ~poem, ~Welsh poem. A father wrote to his 5-year-old son ~and it's, it's re ~and she's being inspired by that and adapted it. ~And really ~when you look at the text, it is like a poem ~again, I suppose very similar to, Jackie's work. ~Very poetic.

~But yeah. But ~it's all about color and I love you. I love you green. I love you purple. I love you silver. 

Jill: Oh, it's an illustrator's dream text, isn't it? ~Yeah.~

Tanya: I had an absolute ball illustrating. I absolutely loved it. ~And ~it was just wonderful to be so playful with color and look at it and all its different, shades and tones and and just, just have a bit of fun with it ~really.~

I really enjoyed

Jill: Yeah, it really looks fun. And looking at some of your earlier work~ whether ~even if it's your editorial work or work from 15 years ago, it's like you've gone through these very specific areas in children's publishing, like biography with. Robert, the Bruce, and then the maps and then the C, so subjects, specific nonfiction, and then [00:31:00] again the biography of Curry down ~or curry dune ~and now it's back to you.

~And you know ~that playful, vibrant multiplicity ~that ~you have in your work with so many things happening across the page, it's like it's a real, you book ~this, ~I love every color.

Tanya: Totally. ~I do feel like, ~when I look back at some of my ~early work, ~early editorial work ~that I was doing pre, ~before I was introducing Photoshop ~and things ~into my work. ~The, ~particularly the, I love you. Every color book was, ~I think that's ~almost giving a nod to that.

~And I'm working much more. ~A lot of the work I do, I draw in black and white ink, or I draw in a single color and it gets colored up in Photoshop ~and I just, it's almost, ~there's always something, and I'm sure I've heard Helen speak about this on previous podcasts and things. But there's always a pool to do something a bit.

Different after you've done a big project and ~you ~want to change things and just try something a bit different ~or, ~have a bit more freedom. ~And I think ~when I did, I love you Every color. Curdo had been very intense, ~quite, ~working on it for about ~two, ~two and a half years in total.

~And I think ~with, I love you every color. I wanted to do something very different. So I was working with actual [00:32:00] color and lots of color ink and everything, ~and ~still scanning things in ~and still applying ~and tweaking ~things ~in Photoshop. But I just wanted to ~just ~work with actual color for that book and be quite playful with it ~really.~

Jill: Yeah, it's got that sort of ~sign ~signature explosion of color and joy on the front of it. ~So yeah, it's, ~it feels like the perfect antidote to being very careful ~by being cons. ~With portrait and all the rest of it. It's like a kind of ~a ~playtime by comparison. Not that the the curry down is, it's just, it shows a different side to you, which is ~really ~considered ~a ~very beautiful

Tanya: ~that, which is quite, I quite that ~they're published in the same year because they ~really ~show, ~I think, ~different sides to me as an illustrator. Kuri ~doing this, it's ~is, ~its ~dreamland. ~It's, ~there's ~quite ~a lot of softness in it. ~Some ~I was using kind of tools and brushes and things in Photoshop that I've never used before.

Real airbrush type. Brushes and things like that and just layering up things almost like you are layering up sheets of texture ~that I'd created, ~washes and things and just playing around with them. All that like glas [00:33:00] basically. So it's got a real soft dreamlike feel to it, but it's a bedtime book, whereas I love you every color. It's an explosion of color and texture and marks and playfulness ~really. ~So they're very different. ~Yeah, definitely.~

Jill: Yeah, it's lovely the way those two books show your ability to handle emotion and character in illustration through, the composition of the pages ~you say, ~or the use of color ~or because those, ~some of those thoughtful pages in curry, dun of her sitting at the table playing with the polka, do.

I've got so much light and atmosphere and they capture a kind of cinematic moment. ~And ~you're inside the head of Shona and then back to, I love every Color, which is just that full on playfulness. ~And ~it's great that you get to show the whole range of your balance and kind of character and emotion in your work, both in children's picture books in a similar area at the same time.

But have you got any plans? What's next?

Tanya: Oh gosh. I'm working on another picture book at the [00:34:00] moment, so which is. I'm absolutely loving it though. I'm, I am in, in the thick of it at the moment. It's quite a quick book. It's for Gecko Press ~who are ~a New Zealand publisher. ~But ~they are ~they're ~in the fold of an American publisher.

~Oh my goodness. ~I've read a total brain learner books. ~That's right. But ~I worked directly with the team in New Zealand and it's a New Zealand writer, Claire Mabe, who's wonderful. I met her at Edinburgh Book Festival this year. We had 45 minutes to catch up with each other. We made the most of it.

~And ~she's written an absolute stormer of a story. It's called Cass and the Beast.

And it will come out next September. ~And it's brilliant. ~It's a really strong~ character, ~female character in it. And I love it. I'm having lots of fun with it. ~I've, it's been, it's quite a quick book. I literally got, oh my goodness, Tanya, ~I've got lots to do on it, but I've got to get it pretty much finished by the middle of December~ the final artwork and then.~

~And ~then we'll have another look at it again in sort of January, February with sort of final tweaks and additions and things. And then that will be [00:35:00] it. But it's really, it's been a wonderful process doing all the roughs and thumbnails ~and everything with it. ~I really enjoyed it and ~I ~wanted to keep that energy in the final artwork.

Jill: That's always the thing, isn't it? You are, you're a master at that. ~Now, I would say a mistress of that because you, ~your work always has so much energy. You must know exactly how to do that after so many beautiful, vibrant

Tanya: get stressed about it ~though. ~I get really anxious about it and procrastinate and chew my fingers ~and everything ~going, oh, I'm never going to do this, and how am I going to do this? So I get

Jill: you make lots of versions to keep that energy? ~I'm assuming this maybe have a completely different technique. ~Is it by doing lots of different versions all at the same time, hoping one of them will keep the feeling that you

Tanya: But there's a little bit of that I think. ~I think I am. ~It's interesting, ~so ~the spread I'm working on at the moment is ~I've treated it slightly differently 'cause it's ~a sort of interior view. ~And it would, ~most of this book of Cast and Beast is outside, but this is an interior scene and I've, and maybe 'cause of that, I've treated it differently and I've broken it down into [00:36:00] parts and ~I've ~drawn the ~sort of ~main interior of the room as ~a ~one.

And then there's bits and bulbs that are on the wall and I've drawn them all separately. ~But I've, but I I'm which makes it sound very painted by numbers, but I've ki ~they're almost like the building blocks. They're the line work in this particular illustration, ~and I've been, ~today, ~this morning, ~I've been putting them into place ~and then I ~I try not to overthink it ~and I want to, ~although I've done roughs and thumbnails ~and everything ~and they've all been approved, I'm not really showing ~them ~the color element because I like that bit to be the bit that surprises me. So I just have a bit of fun with it and I've been layering up these ~kind of ~layers of texture and ~kinda ~scribbly bits ~and, things like that.~

~So ~I'm hoping this is gonna be a spread that comes together quite quickly. ~But yeah, ~the ~kind of ~final artwork for it called Famous Last Words. ~That'll probably take you~

Jill: We mustn't whisper those curd words. It's a bit like, the actor's curse, isn't it? ~Final artwork. ~Once you start saying, I'm doing the final artwork today, that is the kiss of death.

Good luck with the new book, and it's great to speak to the, this side of your career having sailed right across the illustration atlas to the other side. It's so interesting to hear. So thanks for coming on and if anyone wants to see Jill's work, [00:37:00] go onto our website or you'll see her in PitchBook course and in the Flyer Freak Fag Find, find Your Creative Voice course as well.

~And you've been on calls with us lots of times, haven't you?~

Tanya: All brilliant. The courses are great. I pop up quite often in ~the in all ~the Facebook groups and, ~answer or just ~get involved in the discussions ~going on ~there. It's ~a ~brilliant, I love good ship illustration, 

Jill: oh, we love having you on board. ~You always, ~you've always got so many useful and interesting and experienced things to say. We love the wisdom. ~So ~thanks, Jill. Thanks so much

Tanya: Thank you.

Jill: hope to catch up with you at a Children's Picture Book Festival soon. On the next books.

Tanya: Absolutely, Tanya. It's been great ~and ~

Jill: to you ~as always.~

Tanya: ~absolutely. ~Take care.

Jill: Bye for now. [00:38:00]