Interview with Illustrator Vincent Desjardins - Part Two

This is the second part of my interview with illustrator, Vincent Desjardins, the artist who did an amazing job illustrating my book Secrets of the Magic Ring (Now available for preorder. It would make a great gift for kids ages 7-10 and the holidays will be here before you know it!).

I'll give the floor to Vince now:

K.M. - Do you draw from memory?

V.P.D. - Not entirely. I usually do a rough layout sketch of where I want the figures placed and then I use various types of guides to help me flesh things out. For example, I will often Google images of plants and animals to use as drawing aids. Sometimes I will even Google things like women’s hairstyles. For the dog, Clem, in your book, Secrets of the Magic Ring, I looked at photographs of a breed of dog called an Otterhound. While I was working on the illustrations that featured Clem, I found several images on the internet that I kept open on my desktop while I worked.

Also, for reference, I used a program called “Poser,” * that allows you to pose and set up human and animal mannequins in three dimensional space. You can even change the lighting on them to use as an aid in creating your shadows. That program was an invaluable tool on this job, especially for the illustrations that required unusual perspectives, like the scene where Paul is climbing up the ladder and sees Henry standing above him. For filling in simple background details, for example, the objects you might see in a laundry room, I usually just use my imagination and memory.

K.M. - Can you tell us about some of your influences?

V.P.D. - I have a lot of favorite artists, all of whom I guess could be considered influences. For the black and white work I did in this book, I was heavily influenced by the works of Erik Blegvad, N.M. Bodecker and Louis Darling. Blegvad has illustrated tons of books including Mary Norton’s Bed-knob and Broomstick, Judith Viorst’s The Tenth Good Thing About Barney, and Marjorie Winslow’s Mud Pies and Other Recipes. As I mentioned before, Bodecker illustrated the Edward Eager Books, as well as other books that he himself wrote, like Hurry, Hurry Mary Dear, which is a wonderful book of his nonsense poems.

Louis Darling illustrated a number of children’s classics, including Beverly Cleary’s Henry Huggins and her Ramona Books. I was saddened to learn that Beverly Cleary recently gave the publisher of the Ramona books, permission to update the illustrations for that series, meaning that in new editions of the book, you’ll no longer be able to see Darling’s charming illustrations. Darling also illustrated one of my childhood favorites, Oliver Butterworth’s The Enormous Egg. I could go on talking about influences for pages. In closing, I’ll just mention that I have also been influenced by people like Mary Blair, Gustav Tenggren, J.P. Miller, Tibor Gergely, John Schoenherr, David Small and many more.

K.M. - How old were you when you knew you wanted to be an artist?

V.P.D. - I knew I wanted to be an artist from a very young age. I had asthma as a kid and my mother would often keep me inside. I was also somewhat sickly and would stay home from school a lot. My mom encouraged me to draw. She was a frustrated artist herself and had lots of talent which unfortunately, once she started raising a family, she didn’t get to use very often. Before she had my older brother, she had enrolled in the Famous Artists Correspondence school. As part of that course she was sent three large art instruction books. The books covered everything from drawing basic forms, to human anatomy. Even though she never finished the course, she kept the books and when I showed an interest in drawing, she gave them to me. I spent a lot of time looking at those books, which I still have by the way, and would often copy images out of them. I guess I’d have to say that those books were my first drawing teachers.

K.M. - You took a drawing I’d thought was perfect, redid the scene from a different angle and made it even better. Can you show us the before and after, and explain what you did and why?”

First version of a drawing of the kids watching the pool being dug. I'd thought it was perfect and couldn't imagine that the scene could be depicted any better than this.

V.P.D. - This image was somewhat of a challenge. I had to try and figure out a way to show the two children, Paul and Celia, and the dog Clem while they were sitting inside their house watching a swimming pool being dug outside their window. I know that kids, especially little boys, seem to like pictures of digging equipment and trucks. Because of that, I wanted to make the backhoe somewhat prominent. Because the children were sitting in the house I had two choices: I could show the children from behind and have the backhoe in the background, or I could have the backhoe in the foreground and the two children could be seen inside the house in the background.

Because I didn’t want to show the backs of the children, I decided to go for the second option. But since they were going to be in the background, that option meant the children were going to be quite small. I completed that illustration, which I think was perfectly fine, but after showing it to my critique group, they pointed out to me that since this was to be the first illustration in the book, the children should be the main focus. So I went back and redid the illustration from a different point of view. I did end up showing the children from the back, but instead of having them looking out the window, which would have meant you’d only see the backs of their heads, I had them looking toward one another which allowed me to show their faces in profile. It was a perfect compromise. I was really happy that I decided to re-do it, because I think it turned out to be a much stronger illustration.

Final version of an illustration of the same scene. I have to agree with Vince that this one is a big improvement. Lesson learned: alway defer to the artist. He knows best.

Thanks for the interview, Vincent! I loved hearing about your life and work.

* Here's a link to a blog post where Vincent shows how Poser, a 3D modeling computer program, aids artists in creating drawings. As someone who is hopeless in the visual arts, I found it fascinating.

Vincent’s website: http://www.vincentdesjardins.com/

Vincent’s blog: http://vinpauld.blogspot.com/


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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