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Know how 7-Imp loves to feature illustrators on Sundays<\/strong><\/a>? Well, sometimes I just can’t wait. <\/p>\n Introducing “twenty-something” author\/illustrator Julian Hector<\/strong><\/a>, whose first book, The Little Matador<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, was released by Hyperion in July. Julian stopped by to say a few words and share some of his art work: <\/p>\n “<\/font>My name is Julian Hector, and I’m a 25 year old author\/Illustrator from Austin, Texas. I went to Parsons The New School for Design<\/strong><\/a> in New York City, where I still live. The second I entered the Illustration department at Parsons, I realized that children’s publishing was the place for me, and I quickly became friends with Pat Cummings (she’s easily one of the greatest people I know), who taught the Children’s Book-making class there. From Pat, I learned all about the thirty-two-page picture book format and by my Junior year (2005), I had my first dummy put together. Pat decided to send me out into the business and gave me the contact information to about twelve editors, spread across all the major publishing houses in New York. Initially, only one editor (at Hyperion) replied back to me and agreed to set up a meeting. She and I hit it off immediately, and (after a couple revisions) my first dummy eventually made it to a Hyperion acquisitions meeting where it was denied. At our first meeting though, while looking through my portfolio, my editor was really drawn to an image of a ‘little’ matador giving a bull a flower. She made it clear in several passing emails that she would love to see a story for that character, and after the first dummy was rejected, I got to work writing The Little Matador<\/em><\/font>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My medium right now is watercolor with charcoal shading and outlines. I’m really into antique prints, and charcoal seems to mimic the black layer of ink found in old lithographs. My influences are Kate Greenaway<\/strong><\/a>, Beatrix Potter<\/strong><\/a>, Edith Brown (The Cheerful Cricket<\/strong><\/a><\/em>), and Jean Jacques Grandville<\/strong><\/a> — anyone who illustrated animals wearing 19th-century clothing. I’m invoking this tradition for my next book, The Gentleman Bug<\/em>.<\/p>\n One of my goals is to illustrate a cover for The New Yorker<\/strong><\/a><\/em>, so I painted the Rabbit in his ‘Egg Room’ with that in mind. I didn’t finish it in time for Easter, though, and Peter de S\u00e8ve’s<\/strong><\/a> cover was better anyways.<\/p>\n I drew ‘The Three Witches’ as a Halloween card last year. I’m in love with the literary idea of using three, generally sister witches in a story. Whether it’s the three witches from Macbeth<\/em>, the Three Fates from Greek mythology, the Gray Sisters who shared one eye between them in the story of Perseus, The Weird Sisters in Harry Potter<\/em>, and even Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, & Kathy Najimy from ‘Hocus Pocus’! <\/p>\n {This} Unicorns and Griffins piece was a textile design I made — I wanted to do an update on one of my favorite medieval tapestries.<\/p>\n The map ‘Mythlandia’ was my senior thesis at Parsons. I tried to collect as many characters and gods as possible and group them in a way that compared their cross-cultural similarities. They’re spread out, across the Isles of Adventure, Utopia, and Dystopia.”<\/font> <\/p>\n (The “Mythlandia” image is hard to see in detail here below, but no worries: Go here<\/a><\/strong> for the map.)<\/p>\n Many thanks to Julian for stopping by 7-Imp and sharing these illustrations. We’ll close with The Three Pigs. <\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/jules\/practice1.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe original idea was that the Little Matador would be nice to animals, but I couldn’t tell a story about a card-carrying PETA member with animal-rights tendencies. So, I drew from an experience I had in the third grade, where my father forced me to play Little League baseball (my father, his father, and everyone else in Central Texas all played baseball, too). My father was also a biologist, so drawing his birds of prey, lizards, snakes, spiders, pigeons, and ferrets was all I really wanted to do. In the story, the Little Matador comes from a long line of proud bullfighters, but he (like me) would rather draw animals then fight them and spends most of the book trying to convince his father that this is acceptable. I put the dummy together that Fall, and was offered a book deal the following February! <\/p>\n
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