August 2, 2017 - Posted by Cara Lockhart Smith | Art, Illustration, Painting, Uncategorized | children's book, Moonwuzo Books, picture book, self-publishing, The Midnight Hare
I’m Cara, and I live in Coldstream, in the Scottish Borders As well as writing and illustrating books for children I have recently been painting on canvas, in my octagonal studio (aka The Tardis) which inhabits a corner of the vegetable garden. My work for children has been published in several countries, and translated into different languages. My favourite form at the moment is the picture book, but I have also had published poetry, children’s novels, and illustrations for the work of other authors, and have worked extensively on projects with children. I go out most days with my camera and create blog entries from the results. Some of the pictures I take will be used as background material for the picture book which I am working on at the moment. My son Matty set up this WordPress blog for me, and it has added a dimension to my life which surprises me. It is also interesting and inspiring to read the blogs of other people from different parts of the world, and to look at their sometimes fascinating pictures.
caralockhartsmith
It’s coming well Cara, is this the final rendering? Why is there a border on one but not the other? Just wish I could enlarge the images to view them better 🙂
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No, John, this is a print-out at 300dpi (final images 600dpi on pdf) that I am doing to set up a copy of the book for the printer’s information. Each page is slightly different, some have borders, some are to the edge of the page. This has been a difficult thing for me to sort out – I could still have borders on opposite pages, but I reduced the picture on the left – in this instance I wanted a break between the two images as they are rather similar, and I wanted the one on the left to recede. Does the mixture of styles worry your eye? I’m very interested in your comments. This page is in a sense a central image, so it is slightly different to other images in the book. The book is slightly eccentric in its format, but I have given it some thought, especially as my son said self-published books are inclined to have dodgy margins!
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Cara, I know nothing about book design. In fact I gave up trying to self-publish a book because it was all too complicated for my right brain. I understand you want to place a border (fence) around one image because it’s too similar to the other. You ask if it worries my eye, yes, it does. My instinct says to separate these two pages, which share so much, not with a border but with another image that acts like a pause, the sky above the action for instance, or an extreme close-up of Milo’s face, or just expressionistic colours indicating conflict. But anyway, just playing tennis with ideas…you know what you’re doing
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John – For some reason I have only just read this comment, but your earlier question must have sparked something in my mind, because just now I put the two images together, and I think they work much better (I have put the new version under the old version in the blog). I am really grateful to you for taking the trouble to come back to me about this, I am moving ideas around in my mind all the time – the bliss of computers – and so am able to contrast and compare continually. I agree with you about the border, though I am not sure I am going to do another complete image; however I do think putting more blue at the top of the left hand image would work to separate the two pictures. The other thing I hadn’t taken into account was that the division in the book itself would in any case separate the images sufficiently. I don’t have any close-ups in the book, I have looked at the pictures as if they were on a stage. Thank you so much for your considered comment, it was really good of you to take the time, I think you are absolutely right. PS Where you live sounds beautiful.
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You’re most welcome Cara. I know from experience that when one becomes utterly and completely absorbed in a creative project it sometimes helps to get feedback from ‘outside’.
Yes, it is beautiful on the north-west Pacific Coast of Canada. I feel lucky to have made a life here.
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Your comments were so useful, John, Yes, sometimes one is so close to something that it is difficult to see it! This project has fretted me more than any other, even though I am used to setting up images and print. I am enjoying your website, by the way….
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Thank you Cara
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