Tim Warnes
About Author
Tim Warnes grew up drawing, writing and making stories on an old typewriter, later moving on to making comics.
He studied Graphic Design at Kingston University before studying for his degree at Brighton University, where he focused on illustration.
After university, he spent four years working in telecoms before deciding to take his portfolio to publishers and started to make picture books. The first book he illustrated was I Don't Want to go to Bed, published by Little Tiger Press. Since then he has written and illustrated more than 70 picture books, including the Boris books (OUP).
Tim lives in Dorset with his illustrator and author wife, Jane Chapman. They have two sons.
Author link
Interview
DANGEROUS!
PUBLISHED BY STRIPES PUBLISHING
FEBRUARY 2015
DANGEROUS! is a new picture book from Tim Warnes in which we meet Mole, who likes to label things, and a large crocodile that Mole struggles to identify. Instead of labelling Croc with a noun, Mole has to use lots of descriptive words to try to understand what is this 'lumpy-bumpy thing with snippy snappy teeth'. One of the words he uses is, of course, Dangerous!
We asked TIM WARNES to tell us more about his work and his latest picture book:
Q: You have now created more than 70 picture books, but where was the starting point for you in illustration?
A: I grew up drawing and writing. I remember when I was quite young, six or seven, sitting at this big old typewriter, creating stories and stapling little books together. Later I went on to make comics.
When I left school I did a year's Foundation Course at Kingston Polytechnic thinking I would do graphic design but I realised during the course that I liked illustration, so I did a course at Brighton that included illustration. For me it was natural to move into children's books - despite the college telling us, during our last few days, that we'd never get any work and wouldn't be able to make a career out of illustration!
It took me four years before I plucked up the courage to take my portfolio to publishers and I was soon taken on by Little Tiger Press. The first book I illustrated was I Don't Want to go to Bed and it's still in print; my 'little tiger' character was adapted to be the logo for Little Tiger Press. I have now been making picture books for 20 years, which is something to celebrate.
Q: Why are do so many of your picture books, including your latest one, use animal characters?
A: Most of my characters are animals and that's partly because it's easier to draw animals than people and I think we automatically warm to more cuddly animal characters. Publishers also seem to prefer animal characters because they are easier for children to relate to and they are inclusive.
I decided on the Mole and Croc characters for Dangerous! because I really wanted to do a picture book featuring a mole and a crocodile. Publishers tend to choose safer options of bears, rabbits or mice but I wanted to do something a bit different. I had thought of putting a crocodile into an earlier picture book, where a creature comes out of an egg and causes havoc, but the publisher wanted a duckling.
I came up with this character, Mole, who likes to know what things are and who finds it comforting to label things he has come across, it makes him feel safe. But then he sees something - Croc - that he can't label because he doesn't know what it is. Instead of being able to label it with a noun he has to use descriptive words like 'spikey', 'sharp' and 'bumpy' for Croc.
Q: Was it hard to find all the words you needed to describe Croc?
A: I got the descriptive words by looking out the window and imagining what it would feel like to run your hands over certain lumpy, bumpy things. My sons also contributed words like 'pine-coney' and 'mossy'. I didn't use any made-up words in the end, although I was tempted to do so! Frustratingly, I've thought of lots more adjectives I could have used since the book was published.
Because Mole and Croc are so different in size, I found I could use perspective to show how small and vulnerable Mole is while on other spreads I could zoom in on Mole and show parts of Croc, those huge 'lumpy-bumpy' bits of him without his head or tail that Mole was trying to describe.
Q: Do you have any ideas for how schools could work with DANGEROUS!?
A: It wasn't until I saw the proof of the book that I realised that teachers might like the book to explore nouns and adjectives; there are lots of nouns in the first half of the book and in the second part of the story, Mole uses adjectives to label Croc. I'm writing a follow-up book that will feature Mole and Croc again. It will also involve lots of rabbits and many more labels.
For Dangerous!, I'd suggest drawing a huge croc-like creature drawn on a large roll of wallpaper and getting children to write descriptive words on post-it notes that can be stuck to it.
But I've also had a lot of ideas from schools about how they would like to work with the book, including getting children to make models of 'lumpy-bumpy things' that other children then label with descriptive words. You could also take one of the things that Mole has labelled, like the snail, and attach describing words to it. Or take children on a nature trail and pick up things that they can attach describing labels to when they are back in the classroom.
Q: Just how dangerous does Croc turn out to be?
A: This book is called 'Dangerous!' because Mole suddenly realises that Croc is just that, dangerous, but that part is over very quickly. I don't like to scare children and I don't necessarily agree with the notion that children like to be scared. I think that children have to grow up too quickly anyway, the world is not a safe place, so in a book like this there is an element of danger but at the end, the emphasis is on the lumpy-bumpy thing's feelings, that it's been misjudged and feels hurt.
Q: How do you descide how each of your characters and settings will look?
A: I have a separate sketchbook for each project I'm working on where I'll doodle ideas and characters. I love creating characters. I use a sketchbook and make a lot of sketches of different characters and gradually they evolve.
For the backgrounds, I visited some woods nearby where we live and took some photographs of nature to use as the background for some of the spreads in Dangerous! We live in a really beautiful part of Dorset and I've always loved nature and wildlife and used to do a lot of bird watching.
I took a lot of photos but when it comes to creating a backdrop for a picture in the book, you have to limit what you do on the page because you've still got to fit in the characters and the text. So you have to take what inspired you in the woods and really pare it down for the picture book and make it really simple.
Q: What is the process for you in creating the final picture book?
A: I will make two or three sketches for each spread before I decide which works best, then I'll do the rough drawings in pencil and send the draft picture book to the publisher.
I use a lightbox to draw the artwork from the approved spreads onto watercolour paper and then I build up the picture using watercolours and water soluble crayons for texture, as well as acrylics and ink.
For Dangerous!, it was really fun doing the lumpy-bumpy crocodile. I needed lots of different techniques to get it lumpy and bumpy, at one stage I was dropping blobs of ink onto the page with a pippet to get that effect.
Q: Where do you do your work?
A: My wife, Jane Chapman, and I work in the same studio but we've just bought a house where we'll each have a designated space to work in - so we'll finally be able to choose our own music to listen to!
It's fantastic being married to another illustrator because, if you're really struggling with something, there's always someone you can ask. I find doing perspective really hard and I'll quite often hand a picture over to Jane to draw the lines for me!
Q: Can you give us some tips for children who want to draw their own animal characters for stories?
A: I would suggest looking at what other people are doing, go to the library or to bookshops and see how illustrators are tackling the same subject, for example bears. See how many different ways there are to draw bears and how different they all look.
When I was a child I used to copy a lot of things, especially Disney characters, and copying is a really good way to learn how someone constructs a drawing, it shows you how they have distilled an element down so that you have the essence of the animal. You can also look at photographic reference books to find pictures of the actual animal.
And finally - just be happy to make mistakes. Don't worry about it needing to be perfect.
