Thomas Docherty
About Author
Thomas Docherty was born in New Zealand but has spent most of his life in England where he went to school and university.
He studied metalwork and sculpture at Art College and has always liked drawing, especially whilst on his travels, which have taken him to Africa, Asia and South America.
After leaving Art College, Thomas lived in Madrid for six years, where he wrote and illustrated his first book Pip and the Lost Dream which has been published in Taiwan, Spain and South Africa.
He now works mostly in the UK and continues to write his own children's stories, which have been nominated for various awards. He lives in Bristol with his wife and young daughter.
His first two picture books with Templar Publishing, Little Boat and To the Beach are widely acclaimed.
To the Beach was long-listed for the Big Picture Best New Illustrators awards 2008 and shortlisted for the 'Read it Again!' Cambridgeshire Children's Picture Book Award 2007.
To the Beach has been shortlisted for the Dundee Picture Book Award 2008.
Little Boat was shortlisted for the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal 2009.
He also illustrates other people's work, most recently the Scandinavian classic The Wonderful Adventures of Nils by Selma Lagerlf.
Big Scary Monster and Ruby Nettleship are his latest titles for Templar, introducing a bold and exciting new style of artwork.
You can find more information about Thomas on his website:
www.thomasdocherty.co.uk
Author link
www.thomasdocherty.co.uk; www.templarco.co.uk
Interview
CREATING A PICTURE BOOK
January 2011
Thomas Docherty talks to ReadingZone about creating picture books with pupils and students.
It can be quite hard to know where to start when youre making a picture book. I have a folder of ideas and I write down lots of ideas. Most things never get beyond the notebook but every now and again you get an idea that sticks and develop it. Sometimes it may begin in a visual way, for others its conceptual or verbal.
My picture book, Little Boat, started with a friend of mine whose life was going through a turbulent patch. She said she felt like a little boat on an ocean and that created a picture in my mind of being a boat and I remembered starting school and feeling quite small and alone in the playground.
Big Scary Monster came about because I was thinking of being very high and looking down and how small things look when youre on a mountain.
For Ruby Nettleship, I used to eat my sandwiches at a nearby playground and it seemed a bit run-down and sad. I always liked playgrounds when I was little and that's where I had the idea of a playground 'growing', but it took a long time to develop the story.
Words and pictures often develop at the same time for me, or I might write the text and make visual notes as I go along. Then I flesh out the rough idea using a storyboard, and think about the format and discuss the idea with the publisher. I will have the whole thing planned out very roughly.
With pictures, I enjoy the rough draft stage when youre free to make mistakes and the overview of the story, but the detail is harder for me. I also like to make sketchy, quick pictures to create the colour palate I'll use.
Most of the work has to go into structuring the story. Once you start your final illustrations, it's hard to make changes, and you need to know that what you are creating is going to work.
I recently worked with pupils at a school who created their own story and we spent a lot of time making sure we had everything where it was meant to be, before we went on to make the pictures. We had the words and some rough pictures and we made pages like a book. We stuck in the words and images using blue tack and could move things around the page to see if we needed to put in extra text or take things out. Thats a very visual way to see how your story is going to work what happens when you turn the page and what the reader will see and think.
When you are working with a group to make a picture book together, everyone can feel they have contributed to the final product. Once you have your rough book, you can divide up the work between different people.
In one project I worked with a small group of six children and we did the writing and illustration in three days; I have also created a picture book as a whole school project. You can do it in less time by making a shorter story or less finished illustrations.
When you begin working with a class, you need a certain amount of time to get beyond the most obvious or derivative ideas that children come up with. They often come up with things they see around them first of all on films or television and video games. You need to work with them to push them to come up with their own ideas.
The best way to do so is to talk about the children's own experiences. In one group I worked with, some of them were interested in pets and had their own, so you start with their world of experience. One child told us about a cat that had got into the library and that was the start of a story. We discussed what the cat was up to maybe it could read? In the final story, it was reading books to help its owner fix his farm.
You can work with many different ages in creating a book, from infants doing very visual sticking and cutting to secondary students. I really, really want to work with secondary pupils. You can get them thinking about younger siblings who they can make stories for, or they can draw ideas from their own childhood. They all have crazy stories about holidays that went wrong, things that are funny or exciting. These are starting points for stories.
Developing picture book ideas provides a good opportunity to look at the interaction between text and images and it can lead to interesting discussions. How many words do you need to make a story if it's illustrated? What will the picture say that the text isn't telling you?
All these issues feed into modern graphic design and visual communication like the web. If you are working with older students, you can talk about technique, style and what might be appropriate or not. Look at using different colours to convey feelings and atmosphere. These techniques can lead into other areas, including comics, graphic novels, animation and of course computer graphics.
If you have questions about starting your picture book project, are stuck for ideas or want to pick his brain about working with children and teenagers to create a picture book, email [email protected].
Pupils can also put their questions to Thomas Docherty via their teacher or librarian, using this email address.
