Interview with children's author, Nancy Kelly Allen

Today, I have children’s author Nancy Kelly Allen as a guest.

ADL:  Welcome back to my blog. I know it's exciting to have TWO books released this spring. One is a folktale and the other is a middle grade novel. Tell us about your experience writing a folktale.

NKA: Hi Alison. Thanks for inviting me back to your wonderful blog. I’m a retired school librarian, so I’ve been exposed to numerous folktale retellings. These stories were originally told orally to explain the mysteries of the world. The child in me still loves a good mystery. Like kids, I’m curious. Storytelling is an intricate part of many cultures and each culture has its own tales. When I read the Cherokee folktale, First Fire, I was immediately captivated. My great-grandmother was a Cherokee so the story resonated with me on a personal level, but also on a storytelling level. The story has a problem to solve that seems impossible, a moment of high tension, an unlikely hero, and a satisfying conclusion. This creation story tells how animals captured fire for Earth, and in the meantime, each animal that tried to capture fire returned home with unique characteristics. The snake is black, owl has red eyes, etc.

ADL: Did you find that writing a folktale was different from writing a fictional or nonfictional picture book?

NKA: The basic story was already developed, but I wanted my imprint added. I did that by with details. As a writer, I was tempted to enhance the story with elements I invented, but the folklorist in me disagreed and demanded that I remain true to the original version. My folklorist side won the argument. I spent time studying the Cherokee culture and talking with members of the Cherokee Nation to give credence to the retelling and deliver accurate details. FIRST FIRE: A CHEROKEE FOLKTALE, was fun to write and I feel honored that I can pay tribute to my Cherokee heritage with this book. Sherry Roger’s illustrations added colorful realism. This book was published by Sylvan Dell Publishing. The publisher just changed names and is now Arbor Dale Publilshing. http://www.arbordalepublishing.com/

ADL: I, too, love folktales and look forward to reading FIRST FIRE.

Now about AMAZING GRACE, your first middle grade novel. Why did you choose to write this story?

NKA: AMAZING GRACE ( A KENTUCKY GIRL WITH GUMPTION DURING WWII), has a short title with a long subtitle. This book has been a 15-year-long project. The story began as a picture book. I sent it to some editors, and several recommended that I make it into a long story. I rewrote it as a chapter book and got basically the same feedback. The story stayed tucked away, and about three years ago, I decided to write my first middle grade novel. I remembered the feedback I’d received so I decided to revise the story once again.

ADL: Since the setting is during WWII, I imagine you had to do some, maybe a lot, of research.

NKA: I love research and it’s a good thing I do since AMAZING GRACE required a massive amount of it. I began the process by reading fiction and nonfiction books about WWII and life on the home front during the war. I tooled away at the keyboard bouncing between researching and writing. Much of my research was centered on D-Day and facts relating to the troops. Another even larger research effort was based on the Kentucky home front: what people ate, what they grew in Victory Gardens, common WWII phrases, newscasts, school activities, automobiles, and everyday life for families who were helping with the war effort.

My father and uncle both served in WWII. The book is dedicated to them.

ADL: Tell us about the story.

NKA: Eleven-year-old Grace Ann Brewer’s comfortable life is torn apart when her father joins the Army in 1944 during WWII. Her family moves from Hazard to Ashland, Kentucky, to live with her grandmother. Grace enrolls in a new school and is immediately forced to deal with a bully, but the greatest challenge is to keep a positive outlook as she fears that her father has been injured—or worse—when his letters stop arriving in the mail. Gumption, that’s what Grace’s grandmother tells her she must have,but gumption isn’t easy to grasp when she listens to the wireless, a radio, that keeps the home front updated with the frightening events of the war. Grace finds solace in writing letters to her father and even more comfort in talking with her dog, Spot. With amazing strength Grace fights her own battles on the home front. Meryl Shapiro’s black-and-white illustrations depict the characters and setting in small bursts of art scattered throughout the book in each chapter. This book was published by The History Press. http://historypress.net/

ADL: Congratulations, Nancy, on the publications of FIRST FIRE and AMAZING GRACE.

Nancy’s books are available in bookstores nationwide and on Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com

Thank you for visiting my blog and good luck with the books.

To learn more about Nancy, please visit her website http://www.nancykellyallen.com and blog http://nancykellyallen.blogspot.com/

Chubby Cheeks: A Colored Pencil Bright Spot

CHUBBY CHEEKS

8x10 inches Colored Pencil

I used as reference for this colored pencil piece, a photo taken by my husband Frank. Frank photographed this little guy while he was eating his breakfast of a sunflower seed.  I used another photo I'd taken of some fall leaves to draw the leaves that liven up the surrounding grass.

I had a ball doing this very intricate piece.  I've found that doing a complicated piece like this is  almost like doing a  jig saw puzzle.  As you can see from the  "work in progress" pic below, I usually finished each section/leaf almost fully before proceeding onto the next.  It was about at this stage that I decided it worked better as an oval than the originally intended rectangle.  It's fun to "go with the flow" of what the artwork wants to be!

Little Knitta Kitteh - Found Object Doodle

LITTLE KNITTA KITTEH

This is my just finished doodle in the "found object doodles" game started by  Debbie Ohi.  I saw on FB what cute doodles she and Hazel Mitchell  had come up with.....and I just had to try it out.

My Little Knitta Kitteh is busily knitting herself up.....from her tail up to her waist so far.....she's making herself up in rainbow colored yarn.

White on Black.....How do you get there?

This is a itty bitty blog post about the color white. As in how do you get a really good white base to work on, in the middle of a BIG black colored pencil board?

I've started another colored pencil piece using black illustration board as my base. It's sorta like the old Elvis prints on black velvet......an artist gets to take advantage of allllll that lovely black background to paint or draw on. Any colour we use will just POP! Right off the canvas.

My coloured pencil piece called for some areas of really brite colours and others need to be a bit more subdued . I figured a bit of experimentation was called for. I wanted to try a combination approach, but keep the piece mostly all in slightly to really subdued colours.

I took a waste piece of board and laid out three leaf shapes. The first was just a filled in outline of a white coloured pencil base coat. The second was a thin bristol board inlay. The third was a two very light layers of gesso. Gesso is an acrylic primer that painters use on their canvases to seal the fabric canvas and to make it extra white.

The white thin bristol board inlay was done by laying the bit of white bristol board over the black illustration board, and using an Xacto knife held perpendicular to the boards, cut out the entire leaf shape, thru both surfaces. When finished I had the white bristol board cutout EXACTLY the same shape as the shallow cutout in the black illustration board. On the black board, I took the knife and gently pulled up the top black layer of the illustration board, spread a bit of glue (in this case acrylic gel medium) and inserted the white bristol board in the hole. After a bit of burnishing around the edges, I had a lovely inlay of white bristol board in the sea of total black illustration board.

I then drew the yellow leaf with a bit of shadow, in coloured pencil, using the same colors on all three sample leaves.

The first coloured pencil leaf was the most subdued of the three, but just fine if you wanted to stay with coloured pencil throughout the entire piece.

The second leaf (with white paper inlay) ended up being both the brightest and the cleanest in shape. I don't know about the archival quality of this technique....but I have to assume it would be about the same as the entire piece. 'Bout the only drawback is I sometimes would run over the slight ridge of the inlay. Next time I might use a brayer to further flatten the surface and get it flush with the black illustration board.

The third leaf, with the gesso coating as a foundation fell somewhere in between in terms of brightness.

For the inlay technique, I wanted to give a hat tip to Rob Howard, who wrote the Illustrator's Bible. It was originally published all the way back in 1992, but many of the traditional media art techniques it gives still hold up today. This was waaaay before Photoshop saves of today. His index didn't even list computers! He gave the inlay technique as a way to save an illustration “gone bad”.  

How I am learning NOT to Draw ALL the Details

How I am learning NOT to Draw ALL the Details (with a big hat tip to Scott M Fischer)

OK.....the first Art Director that I showed my art to (waaaay back in the '90s) said: “Save your details for pen and ink......go bold and impressionistic with your colorwork.”. The most recent Art Director I showed my work to said: “Loose the details on your color illustrations......I like the details and modeling on your black and white work.” So I'm seeing a trend here......over 20+ years or so. I know....... it DOES take me a while to take advice.....but finally I'm working on adding less detailed styles to my repertoire.

After going back to basics in my sketching and drawing, I'm finding out that I don't HAVE to draw every little detail......I just like to! But I can change.....if I have to......I guess! (Hat tip to Red Green's the “Men's Prayer”.)

After a few years of experimenting I've come up with some neat ways to run end runs around my detailing obsession. After reading an article by Scott M. Fischer's in a 2011 issue of International Artist magazine, I became interested in his illustration technique of the moment.

 In that article he took a sketch and made multiple paper copies, and cut out stencils of each color component/block. He then lay down opaque color, whatever (often messy....) way he chose without fear of overlap or loss of form. He would then hardline outline his figures. His loose style allowed and encouraged “coloring outside the lines”......something I'm trying to learn to appreciate.

So my “style of the moment” is to also take multiple sketch copies and do paper cutouts, then apply colors with my sponge brush technique, in the various sections. Just right there I eliminate a LOT of detailing......I mean, you want to cut out as few of blocks of colour as possible......so's to avoid too much time spent “fussy cutting”. This also forces me to draw and plan my sketches with as many “broad colour blocks” as possible.

I use the stencils to apply transparent color washes, in my case acrylic glazes. Then, (as suggested in Scott Fischer's article)........

I put my master sketch under the bristol board with the colour washes, onto a light box. I can see thru the transparent colour washes on the thin bristol board to draw the few “location lines” I allow myself. 

After this step, it's onto refining the color washes to achieve a bit of depth. I prefer that kind of “detailing” rather than using a hardline outline. The softer finish seems to suit me better. I will often take the finished drawing into Photoshop for further refinement.

This technique allows me to side step the detail issue somewhat.....and hopefully find a new kind of freedom and lightness in my style. It's an ongoing learning experience......learning “how NOT to draw” the details.

 

The Art of Thinking Visually by Nancy Kelly Allen

Today I'm posting a “BlogCross Post” by the lovely PB writer Nancy Kelly Allen. Please enjoy “The Art of Thinking Visually”

Barreling Over Niagara Falls

written by Nancy Kelly Allen, illustrated by Lisa Fields

Pelican Publishing

  At first glance, writing a picture book seems easy. Even after a second or third glance, a picture book seems so simplistic that the text could be scripted in a matter of minutes. But glances can be deceiving. As a writer of 30+ picture books, I’ve learned that there are no rigid rules for writing these books. Every rule can be, and has been, broken. But there are guidelines for structure that benefit any writer.

  The hardest part of writing picture books for most writers, especially me, is the art of thinking visually. Writers are usually not geared to think in pictures; instead, we paint pictures with words. Writing picture books is a totally different set of guidelines. As writers, we have to “tell” enough of the story to get the point across, but leave out enough of the story so the illustrator can “show” the remainder. If that’s not complicated enough, the writer and illustrator usually don’t communicate until AFTER the book is published.

  Picture book text needs action, enough for 14-16 scenes. In “telling” these scenes, I use lyrical language and wordplay in tight writing. For me, tight writing means no excess of words. Picture books have concise text and every word must push the plot/story forward. In my book, BARRELING OVER NIAGARA FALLS, I used this wordplay: When the sizzle fizzled out of teaching music, and the fizzle sizzled out of teaching dance, sixty-two-year-old Annie had no job and little money. “Sizzle” was used first as a noun; then as a verb while “fizzle” was used as a verb and later as a noun. This wordplay has a rhythmic sound when read aloud and all picture book manuscripts should be read aloud just to determine how they will sound as books. After all, picture books are meant to be read aloud.

My goal in writing is to entertain and inspire the reader, but most of all I want to tell a story that children want to hear again and again with illustrations that they can look at over and over and find something new they had not noticed earlier. Text and illustrations work together in this “marriage” called a picture book.

I’m so happy to be a guest author on Alison’s blog. Thanks for the invite.

You can find out more about Nancy at: 

Writing Workshop blog: 

http://nancykellyallen.blogspot.com/

Website: www.nancykellyallen.com

http://www.smartbooksforsmartkids.com/smart-books-smart-kids-best-picture-books-list-picture-books/

BARRELING OVER NIAGARA FALLS recent listing on Smart Books for Smart Kids, Best Picture books list

Thanks SO much, Nancy, for playing BlogCross Post with me!

Ruffy: A Portrait

I recently finished this 8 x 10 inch mixed media portrait of Ruffy, a female rufus hummingbird that stayed with us from October thru the morning of December 31 1 2011. She was supposed to have flown to Mexico in the fall but showed up at our feeder on a bluff and blustery October day. She stayed with us through out the fall and early winter, up to December 31 very early in the morning. Which it turns out was just long enough to be counted in the Christmas Bird count that Frank was involved in that winter. She definitely earned her daily hummingbird sugar water!

Frank had taken loads of wonderful photos of Ruffy, and I just had to use one for a “mostly” colored pencil piece.

I started off doing a sketch of Ruffy which I combined with a sketch of my photo of some fall leaves backlit with morning sun. I sketched on bristol board with a light colored watercolor pencil.....so's I could erase the lines later with just a bit of water.

After that I decided I wanted the background to be pretty dark, to highlight the sunlight coming thru the leaves. I made a couple of paper “masks” of the shape of the leaves and of Ruffy, and sponge painted over the rest of the uncovered background with a bit of acrylic paints mixed with a lot of glazing medium. This covered the background quickly, with a surface I could still draw on with Prisma color (wax based) pencils.

The drawings of Ruffy and the backlit leaves are left pure white Bristol board to keep them the brightest part of the drawing. The outlines I “erased” with dabs of water as I got to them.

I started filling in the lovely colours of the backlit leaves and the form of Ruffy, with Prisma color pencils in multiple layers.

After the leaves and Ruffy were finally finished I went on to add “splashes” of colored pencils in the background. I especially wanted to darken (and make bluer) the areas around the golden leaves and orange tinged Ruffy, to provide color contrasts. I also added a lot more color bursts of muted colors in the background to subtly “activate” the background, but keep it “in the background.”

As a final grace note, on advice from Frank, I added a touch....literally.....of gold leaf to the Rufus hummingbird's gorget. The gold leaf is no bigger than the width of a colored pencil lead, but it catches the light just a little bit.....so very much like the reflective feathers on the hummingbird's throat. We were graced with watching (and watching out for) Ruffy for nearly 3 months.....and we learned so much, and enjoyed her stay greatly.