{"id":3744,"date":"2015-05-19T00:01:14","date_gmt":"2015-05-19T06:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=3744"},"modified":"2015-05-19T21:05:29","modified_gmt":"2015-05-20T03:05:29","slug":"a-visit-with-author-illustrator-william-bee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=3744","title":{"rendered":"A Visit with Author-Illustrator William Bee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Where is Stanley going over there? COME BACK, STANLEY. Ah well. He has some mail to deliver, so he’s off. <\/p>\n

British author-illustrator and commercial designer William Bee<\/a><\/strong> visits 7-Imp today to share some images from two of his 2015 picture books. (Bee visited 7-Imp back in the day<\/a><\/strong> for one of my favorite “breakfast” interviews.) <\/p>\n

Migloo’s Day<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, released by Candlewick earlier this year (March), is a search-and-find adventure for young children. Migloo is a dog, and readers follow him throughout a day and busy, detailed spreads, as he explores his community. “There\u2019s definitely a new ‘Busytown’ in town,” writes the Kirkus<\/em> review. Yes, it’s Richard Scarry-esque and a lot like Busytown on stimulants. It’s good stuff, rendered in Bee’s signature style. <\/p>\n

Also, from Peachtree, Bee has his Stanley<\/em> series<\/strong><\/a> for very young readers. Stanley (pictured above, ready to deliver that mail) is a hamster — and the star of this series, which explores occupations in sweet, but never cloying, stories that emphasize friendship and hard work. <\/p>\n

Today, William shares some images from the books, including some process shots. I thank him for sharing. <\/p>\n


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Art from the Stanley<\/em> books:<\/font><\/strong><\/center>
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William: “[These are] early roughs. Goodness, some of these are ugly. I drew Stanley, as he became, and his friends with the computer mouse. I do not use a tablet. My earlier children’s books were all drawn on paper with a pen. … My team at Jonathan Cape are Sue Buswell, the boss; Andrea MacDonald, editor; and Helen Chapman, designer. Kids’ books are a team effort!
(Audrey Keri-Nagy and Maria Tunney worked on <\/em>Migloo.)”<\/em><\/center>
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William: “Shamus and Little Woo are meant to be shrew-like creatures. Once the hamster was working, I used him as a starting point. They got darker, and the child shrew had the extra bit of colour. A lot of young animals have markings
they lose as they get older.”<\/em><\/center>
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William: “We found that our original name ‘Harry’ had already been used for a hamster, so here are a few names we tried. [It’s] important to see what they look like.”<\/em><\/center>
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William: “In <\/em>Stanley the Builder, we have a cement mixer. As you can see, it changed quite a bit. The last one (blue) is the actual artwork.”<\/em><\/center>
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William: “In each book, preceding the title page,
we have what we call the ‘tool pages.’ For the cafe, shop, and post books,
we do not actually have any tools, of course.”<\/em><\/center>
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William: “Stanley has a different job in each book. Garage mechanic, builder, chef, farmer, postie, shopkeeper. We are working on <\/em>Stanley’s School,
followed (I think) by <\/em>Stanley’s Train.”<\/em><\/center>
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William: “Here is a finished cover — and the various rough ones.
Things develop quite quickly.”<\/em><\/center>
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(Released in 2014)<\/em><\/center>
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(Released in March 2015)<\/em><\/center>
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(Coming later this year)<\/em><\/center>
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Art from Migloo’s Day<\/em>:<\/font><\/strong><\/center>
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(Click to enlarge)<\/em><\/center>
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At the Market<\/em>
(Click to enlarge)<\/center>
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At the Factory<\/em>
(Click each to enlarge)<\/center>
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(Click to enlarge)<\/em><\/center>
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Taxi reference<\/em>
(Click to enlarge)<\/center>
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Test spread lay-out<\/em>
(Click to enlarge)<\/center>
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* * * * * * *<\/center><\/p>\n

All images here are used by permission of William Bee.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Where is Stanley going over there? COME BACK, STANLEY. Ah well. He has some mail to deliver, so he’s off. British author-illustrator and commercial designer William Bee visits 7-Imp today to share some images from two of his 2015 picture books. (Bee visited 7-Imp back in the day for one of my favorite “breakfast” interviews.) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-picture-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3744\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}