Loretta Schauer

Me and “corgis” author Sam Hay have been talking to BookTrust about our favourite Chrstmas animal stories.

A Very Corgi Christmas is published today!

One month to go until ‘A Very Corgi Christmas’ by Sam Hay and me, hits the festive bookshelves.

Look out for Foxy Loxy and the Gingerbread Boy on CBeebies tonight! The wonderful Celia Imrie will read Sky Private Eye and the Runaway Biscuit!

Sorry about the rather long gap between blogs! I’ve been super busy, so lots of book news and cover reveals coming up soon. But first, a few piccies from the half term Mini Picture Book and Character making workshops I lead at the V&A Museum in London.

The workshops were held in celebration of the V&As Winnie the Pooh exhibition (which is marvelous by the way!). Here’s a link to the V&A blog where they talk about the various events and have more pictures of me in action.

A super quick post from me this week - Here’s a peek at a little character from the picture book I’ve just finished illustrating. (You won’t guess the story from the image.. no really...it’s not THAT story!)  The latest ‘Sky Private Eye’ fairy-tale detective story will be revealed later in the year.

March can be a busy month for children’s authors, and this year amongst all the World Book Day week school visits I became involved in a longer project to create a children’s mural at Petts Wood Library in Bromley. I was introduced to Jenny Hawke, the Librarian who initiated the idea, through my work with CWISL, and the project was developed in partnership with year 5 students from Crofton Junior School, and with funding by the North Kent Decorative and Fine Arts Society.

It was the first time I’d planned and lead the creation of a mural like this, so it was a bit of an experiment. After talking extensively to Jenny, it was clear our main objective was to involve the children as much as possible in the process of creating the final artwork. As I wanted to use the children’s ideas directly, I came up with a cunning plan to use a combination of painting, printing and découpage to fix the final image onto a series of wooden boards that would be mounted on to the library wall.

The adventure began with a visit to the school, working with the children to create their own characters to appear in the mural. The children were part of a group who met regularly to read, and we approached the task as if creating characters that could star in a story. We talked about how to use facial expressions and body language, costume and props to make our characters unique. The photo above shows me demonstrating drawing expressions from a live model who volunteered her drama skills. The children were wonderfully enthusiastic and carried on drawing their characters the following week.

I then took the drawings home with me to scan, enlarge and enhance digitally, adding in a few digital textures and illustrating some bits and bobs, before getting the images professionally printed by Atom Gallery in North London. The prints looked amazingly rich and colourful, and the children were super excited to see their artwork blown up ready to be cut out and découpaged onto the mural.

The next task was to get the children to visit the Library to paint the background. We used acrylic paint and a combination of brushes, sponges, stencils and even some trusty old potato printing to create the scene on two very large wooden boards. We only had an hour to get the entire 4.5 metre long mural painted so it was all hands on deck! Getting all 12 children simultaneously painting was quite a feat of organisation, but they absolutely rose to the challenge and worked really hard to create all the fab textures and free-hand elements like the buildings and flowers.

The following week, we met up at the library again, this time to get stuck in with the very sticky glue, and decoupage the characters and other printed elements onto the scene.

Here are a few details from the mural including some potato-print shrubbery, complete with mini beasts, and a close up of Petts Wood Library.

I wanted to integrate the children’s artwork with my own as much as possible so here I’d drawn a flying saucer and added in one of the children’s robot characters as the pilot.

This bus was populated with the children’s self-portraits drawn on tissue paper so they could be cut out and pasted onto the windows. A coat of decoupage glue over the top ensured the tissue paper became transparent, and sealed the portraits in place.

This building was created by taking a scan of a pencil sketch from the background of one of the children’s pictures, enlarging it massively, and then adding in textures in Photoshop. It was reproduced as a fine art giclee print ready to be cut out and stuck onto the mural.

The final task was to carry the boards outside to be sprayed with acrylic sealant (tricky on a windy day!), and then leave them to dry before they could be mounted on the wall.

I think the result was well worth the hours put in, and the best thing was seeing the children and their proud parents at the grand unveiling, where the mural was officially presented to the community by the Mayor of Bromley. It was a lovely way to help forge closer links within the local community, and to remind people to love their local library!

The project got some great local press coverage, and there will be a permanent display in the library showing photos of the project in progress. Like many authors, school visits have become a big part of what I do and I really enjoy these kinds of projects. It’s been great fun working with the children, their teachers, and the librarians at Petts Wood.

Look at that fluorescent green glow!

A fortune telling Eel, a Neanderthal, singing Sirens, a dandruff-shedding Troll and a giant origami sea-serpent with metre long fangs: All in a day’s work for Class Six! (Oh and not forgetting Mr Ogersby, of course!)

‘Dougal Daley - It’s Not My Fault!’ has officially hit the bookshelves and Dougal has embarked upon his first blog tour.

There’s a little bit about how I illustrated Dougal Daley over on Bibliobeth Dougal’s tours dates are:

And here’s a piccie of me and Dougal author Jackie Marchant at the launch party.

Jackie also made a brilliant book trailer all about Dougal that features a few of my illustrations too. She’s very clever!

Almost forgot to pop a link up to my SCBWI “Words and Pictures” article about the Petts Wood Library mural. Lots of fun photos of the kids in action, getting stuck in with paint and glue :)

http://www.wordsandpics.org/2017/04/an-illustrated-mural-for-petts-wood.html

At last I can begin to share a few glimpses of the mural I’ve been creating with year 5 students from Crofton Junior School for Petts Wood Library in Bromley. The project was initiated by Librarian Jenny Hawke, with art materials funded by North Kent Decorative and Fine Arts Society.

I’ll be writing up a proper report of the project including some great pictures of the students in action, once the mural has been officially unveiled at the Library next Saturday (with the Mayor of Bromley in attendance!) – but until then, here are some details about the process and a few snippets of the final piece.

The key focus of the project was to involve the children as much as possible in creating the final artwork, and, as I hadn’t created a mural like this before, I came up with a cunning plan to use a combination of painting and découpage to fix the image onto a series of wooden boards that would be mounted on the library wall.

The project began with a visit to the school, working with the children to create their own characters to appear in the mural. The children were wonderfully enthusiastic and carried on drawing characters the following week. I then took the drawings home with me to scan, enlarge and enhance digitally, before getting the images professionally printed by Atom Gallery in North London. The prints looked amazingly rich and colourful, and the children was super excited to see their artwork blown up ready to be cut out and découpaged into the scene.

The next task was to get the children to visit the Library to paint the background of the mural. We used acrylic paint and a combination of brushes, sponges, stencils and even some trusty potato printing to create the scene. We only had an hour to get the entire 4.5 metre long mural painted so it was all hands on deck! Getting all 12 children simultaneously painting was quite a feat of organisation, but they absolutely rose to the challenge and worked really hard to create all the fab textures and free hand elements like the buildings and flowers.

Here is some potato-print shrubbery complete with mini beasts.

Here’s Petts Wood Library.

The following week, we met up at the library again, this time to get gluing, and decoupage the characters and other printed elements onto the scene.

This bus was populated with the children’s self-portraits drawn on tissue paper so they could be cut out and pasted onto the windows. A coat of decoupage glue over the top ensured the tissue paper became transparent, and sealed the portraits in place.

Here it is découpaged in place.

This building was created by taking a scan of a pencil doodle from one of the children’s pictures, then adding in textures and layers in Photoshop before enlarging it, ready to be produced as a fine art quality giclée print.

I illustrated a flying saucer and added in one of the children’s robot characters as the pilot.

The last task was to coat the all the boards in acrylic sealant and leave them to dry. The boards will be mounted to the library wall this week, ready for the grand presentation event on Saturday. It’s been great fun working with the children, their teachers, and the librarians at Petts Wood. If anyone’s near Orpington and Petts Wood on Saturday 25th between 11 and 12 noon, do pop in and join us for cake and refreshments, drawing and book signing.

Here are a few bits and bobs I’ve been illustrating for the fabulously funny Dougal Daley series by Jackie Marchant. ‘Dougal Daley - It’s NOT My Fault!’ will be out in April.

‘Sky Private Eye and the case of the Missing Grandma’, and ‘Sky Private Eye and the case of the Runaway Biscuit’ will be out in April!