I am now a member of Carol Heyer’s fabulous
artist-foodie group, which meets once a month. The food and the discussions are
always different, always interesting, and always delicious!
On our new group blog, the Illustrator’s Table, I have just
posted about my love of artist inspiration boards. I have had boards in the
past, covered with whatever took my eye and made me happy. I knew I wanted to be
an artist since childhood and started early saving favorite art images from
magazines. This was during the heyday of great magazine story illustrators, and
my fashion-artist mother, my sisters and I all collected our favorite artists’ work
in a large black scrapbook. As a teenager I filled filing cabinets with
research ‘scrap’ in my mother’s studio.
Today I still save research material. As I work on a new
manuscript I begin collecting items and envisioning the way I will design the
dummy. I look for images to inspire setting, clothing and color palette. I fill
folders with what I find, each folder marked with the corresponding page in the
dummy or with general descriptions such as horses, carts, flowers or jugglers. And
the best items go up on the board.
The folders are vital -- but the inspiration
boards!They’re fun and make me happy and
excited about my project.They keep me
on target, and are an aid to sustaining the flavor of the story and the emotion
I wish to evoke with my illustrations.
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