Interview with Illustrator Vincent Desjardins - Part One

This past summer, my publisher hired the very talented artist, Vincent Desjardins, to do the illustrations for my kids' book, Secrets of the Magic Ring (due to be released November 8th).  I was doubly excited about this because Vincent was kind enough to let me weigh in during the process, something that is rarely done in the publishing business. Our exchanges consisted mostly of him sending sketches via email, and me emailing back to say I LOVED them and couldn't believe a human being could create such perfect visual representations of my story. For instance, the first illustration I saw was this one of Paul and his dog Clem in the garage after opening the box containing the magic ring:

I loved the way he depicted Paul and all the little details too--the spider web in the background, and the dog wagging his tail. My daughter commented that he'd drawn the dog, Clem, exactly the way she'd pictured him, which is just what I'd been thinking. An amazing likeness.

I interviewed Vincent for the book page on the Amazon site, but unfortunately they had space issues and couldn't post the whole thing. My blog has no such issues, so I'm sharing the interview in its entirety, but doing it in two parts.

Today I give you part one:

K.M. - True confession—before I knew for sure that you’d be doing the artwork for my book, I secretly stalked your website and blog and was so impressed! The examples of your work show very diverse styles. How did you become so versatile?

V.P.D. - First off, thanks for the compliment. I’m always thrilled when someone tells me that they were impressed by my work. As far as my versatility goes, I think in order to compete in today’s competitive illustration market, an illustrator needs to be versatile. But actually I think any versatility that I may have achieved is probably due to my career-long search for a style. As an aspiring children’s book illustrator, I’ve heard over and over again how important it is to develop a personal style. I’ve always worried that my work was too “all over the map” and that I didn’t have a style. I’ve been doing my work digitally for over twenty years, and in the digital realm it’s much easier to explore and take risks. If you make a mistake you can “undo” it and you can save multiple versions of the same image. I also have so many different illustrators that have influenced me that I often find myself creating challenges to see if I can do something in their style. I suppose I could say that’s how I stumbled upon any versatility that you may or may not see in my work.

K.M. - When my editor told me you were available to do the illustrations for Secrets of the Magic Ring I was over-the-moon thrilled. How did you prepare for the project?

V.P.D. - Well, first off I read the manuscript straight through. Then I went back over it for a second pass and underlined all of the passages that I felt had visual potential. When Terry Goodman, your editor, forwarded me one of your emails where you said you were a fan of N. M. Bodecker, the illustrator of Edward Eager’s books, I went to our public library and checked out all of his books so I could study the illustrations. Bodecker has a wonderful style, he was especially good at using patterns and stylizing things like trees and plants, but the one thing I didn’t particularly like about his illustrations, at least in the Eager books, were that almost every person that he drew was done in profile. But I did learn a lot from looking at his work, especially when it came to drawing backgrounds - trees, plant detail and that sort of thing.

K.M. - With publishers tightening their belts, fewer middle grade books are now illustrated. What are your thoughts on this?

V.P.D. - Of course as an illustrator this is something that directly affects my profession so it makes me sad. As an avid reader of children’s middle grade fiction, it also makes me sad, especially when I browse the books in our library’s children’s classics section and I see the beautiful pen and ink illustrations that filled so many of the books from the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. I know that when I was a child, I would always go for the books that had pictures in them. When starting to read a book, I would find and look at all of the pictures first because then I found it fun to search for the accompanying text while I was reading. When I would get to the text that was being illustrated, I would always go back and forth between the picture and the text to see how the artist interpreted the author’s words. I still do that.

K.M. - We had a fun back and forth via email while you were working on this project. At one point, you showed me a preliminary drawing of Aunt Vicky falling into a pool. I realized then that I hadn’t done a very good job describing her appearance. After explaining that Vicky was a glamorous aunt, I added more description to the text, and you made changes to the illustration. Are you willing to share the initial sketch and the final illustration?

V.P.D. - I’d be happy to share the original sketch. I was glad that you commented on my original drawing of Vicky because looking at my original drawing now, I can see that I made her look too generic. When you mentioned the name of a particular celebrity as an idea for how you imagined she should look, that was a big help. I even Googled that celebrity to see how she wore her hair, so that I could give Vicky a more glamorous looking hairstyle.
 





Original sketch





Final illustration with glamorous Vicky



(Note from Karen: I'd mentioned that I pictured Vicky as an Angelina Jolie type, and I think Vincent definitely captured that.)

Stay tuned for part two!

Thanks,

Karen

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My books: A Scattered Life / Easily Amused

For teens: Favorite / Life On Hold

For kids: Celia and the Fairies / Secrets of the Magic Ring