Scandal and Secrets

By Natalie Peterson 

​Actual Title: On Reference and Quentin Blake 

“Hi dearest ducklings”- is what Phoebe told me to write on her letter to her church friends and also what I am writing now 

To address you 

Dearest ducklings 

Does that make you feel really sweet and cute or do you not like it or both? 

This week/my whole life I’ve been thinking a lot about the way I use reference. 

I often feel like I use too much reference, but then again using reference is a good thing right? 

My picture book illustration process usually goes 

(after the meetings with the author and wrapping my head around what I’m supposed to do and getting the character designs down and approved)

Like this….. (these images are form a book called The Storyteller’s Bible illustrated by a whole bunch of different artists- me and Aedan were invited to do three illustrations each) 

Step 1: Pinterest mood board 

I gather up all the images that capture what I hope the illustrations “feel like” 

Step 2: Storyboard/thumbnail the book 

I take the whole thing in my hands and scribble it all out a hundred different ways and hopefully get some versions approved (for this example I’m just using a three picture project I did- so I don’t have a whole storyboard but you get the point- the scribble stage)

Step 3: REAL drawing 

For this step I use so much reference. 

I try to find the very best most specific pose reference and background reference and then collage it all together for each spread 

Step 4: Digital Color Studies

This is another step in which I use heavy reference from other people paintings or my own photos 

Step 5: painting and gettin it done 

I think this way of referencing is fine, however- the method gets frustrating when I feel like……

1. Finding the reference is taking up way too much time- specifically the pose reference or

2. The reliance on reference starts possibly hampering my own creative intuition (what if I may have had a better idea but I stopped it by jumping straight to Google)

Also, in my free drawing/life drawing time I feel like my heavy reliance on reference makes my drawing stiffer 

I am a weak improviser when the person is in a perfect pose and they move- sends me into a straight up tizzy 

In comes Quentin Blake 

At the flat here in Oxford (so hoidy toidy of me to say) 

I found a book called Michael Rosen’s Sad Book illustrated by Quentin Blake 

It’s a very sad book, but the illustrations made me realize how different my thinking is from Blake’s 

In Every picture of his- story is key 

Look at this one- are the backgrounds exceptionally specific or pretty?

do you care? 

no 

and neither does anyone else 

and he knows that 

Because what do you care about? 

The people- the story- the expressions- the poses- if that is all strong the rest fades away 

Now, I’m not saying I don’t love attention to detail, but I think I need to pay more attention to the details that serve the story- especially in kids book illustration 

Another thing I’m not saying is that reference is rubbish. On the contrare duckling! Everything is reference! We need real life reference to build up our imagination reference. The people who don't use reference but draw real good either once used a tooooon of reference or 

pay attention with their eyeballs and store up images in their imagination

 or both! 

Part of why I use so much reference is because I’m still in that part of being an artist where I feel like my imagination reference box is not full enough. 

BUT 

Sometimes I get so caught up in finding the perfect reference for say, Kensington Garden, that I waste hours on the internet looking for the right east facing angle up shot when I could be drawing, letting what little information I do have or find inform the story. 

Also- the internet- that’s the true time suck of reference. 

At Hutchmoot we heard a great talk from an artist named Catalina Echeverri. 

We also got to look in her sketchbooks which were so fascinating because she had so many random little details jotted down that she uses to inform her illustrations.

For example, she once saved a chopstick wrapper because she liked the wavy pattern on it then she ended up using that pattern to design Jesus’ robe. Then she painted the robe blue because he is the living water…. Genius….. I would’ve used red or purple or googled a pic of a different painting someone else did of his robe to inform the decision. 

Seeing her sketchbook made me realize my references can be more here and there and mish mash.

I can find little treasures in the real world and save them up for when I need/want to add special specific details. That feels a lot more fun to me than looking around on Pinterest or Google images for hours for the very perfect picture.

Not that I will stop using Google and Pinterest- I still neeeeeed it, but I want to supplement. 

So what am I saying here? 

I guess my main points are 

1. I would like to spend more time thinking about the story when I draw rather than how pretty the drawing is or how perfect the background looks 

2. It would be cool to build a library of reference as I go along in life- both with my own two eyes and my sketchbooks and even my own camera roll. I think it would be more engaging and special than purely googling 

In the spirit of focusing on story rather than pure reference here are some drawings I did this week

Sorry we don’t have a scanner here 

Phoebe said “draw dada saving us from a bear” like seriously this is what happens in my brain without reference- so scary 

I am the hunchback of Oxfordshire pushing around royalty 

All done! Let me know how you use reference or any tips or tricks you have when it comes to reference 

Have I said reference enough?