Drawing Lots

Garry Parsons takes a closer look at how illustrators render the eyes of their characters.  Julia Sarda from  The Liszts  written by Kyo Maclear. R ecent conversations about characters' eyes have left me in a spin.  It’s clear that some people have a preference for how characters' eyes are rendered - and why wouldn’t they? You may have a preference yourself. You may prefer just dots, or you might prefer ovals with dots.  This Is the Way to the Moon  by M.Sasek There are dots, then dots within circles, then circles with dashes, then ovals with dots, and ovals with dashes, then almonds with lids and lids with lashes and lashes with dots and a lot more variations too tricky to describe. But the closer I looked the more compelling it became.   But it is not only individuals who have preferences.  Gentleman Jim  by Raymond Briggs Apparently, book markets across the world have differing collective p...

I t’s  winter and the weather is pretty miserable outside. It’s dark when you wake up and dark before the afternoon is out. The joys of Christmas are a long way off and there have been more than a couple of days in the past few weeks where I haven’t left the house at all except to fetch milk from the doorstep.  At least we have passed the third Monday of the year, which, according to some media, is officially the UK’s most cheerless day in the calendar  and we are no longer in the  middle  of January but right at the end, which is  almost  February, a comparatively  short  month anyway, which leads into March when things start growing in the garden,  the clocks change, eggs hatch, birds sing and it’s SPRING! So I had thought this post would be about picture books that look at the optimistic joys of Spring!  " I Am A Bunny"  By Richard Scarry A closer inspection revealed that Spring in the UK doesn’t start...