Lynne Chapman
Lynne Chapman
The prolific writer and illustrator Lynne Chapman reveals her route into the publishing world, her thoughts on her nomination awards and some of the things she got up to as a youngster.
What inspired you to become a writer?
I have always loved language and written for fun in my spare time. When I started to illustrate children’s books, it seemed the obvious thing to try and write the stories too.
Where did you learn to illustrate?
I learned to draw by practising all the time from when I was very little. When I left school, I went to Art College, which helped me to get better still (although I studied printed textiles not illustration). It wasn’t until later that I taught myself to draw purely from my imagination, and it’s from this time on that I think I truly became an Illustrator.
What was your favourite game as a child?
This sounds terrible, but I can’t remember!
Who was your favourite author as a teenager?
Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie.
What is the first thing you do in the morning?
I can’t even think straight until I have had a lovely hot shower. Then I have breakfast. I can’t think why lots of people skip breakfast: there’s nothing like sitting down with the radio, toast and marmalade and a big, steaming mug of coffee to start the day!
What would be your ideal day?
It would start with a cliff-top walk (after breakfast of course!) on a very sunny morning, with rabbits jumping about in the fields and lots of birds nesting on the cliffs. Then I would meet good friends for a picnic lunch on the beach, followed by a bit of a paddle. We might even spot some seals in the sea. The afternoon would be spent pottering around a small coastal town full of twisty cobbled streets lined with all sorts of interesting second-hand bookshops, little art galleries and those antique shops jam-packed with all sorts of everything and nothing, half of which you can’t identify. In the evening I would go with my friends to see something really funny at the theatre and we would eat fish and chips as we walked home.
Who is your favourite Illustrator of all time?
I have always loved the work of Ralph Steadman. His scratchy, edgy pen and ink drawings are exactly my sort of thing. One of my favourites of his is a very funny and beautifully drawn picture book biography of Leonardo da Vinci called ‘I Leonardo’.
What inspired you to write the book ‘When You’re Not Looking’?
I was on holiday in Centre Parcs with friends. Their little girls wanted to feed the squirrels that lived in the tree outside our chalet, but we hadn’t got any nuts, so they raided the fridge and put out a strawberry yoghurt and a slice of bread and jam. I told them that the squirrels would not be the slightest bit interested in these offerings, but to my surprise one did come and have a brief nibble on the bread and jam. For some reason I can’t remember, I changed the squirrel to a gerbil and in the book he eats marmalade on toast, but that was the starting point of me thinking up what other unlikely things animals might get up to, particularly when you weren’t looking!
Do you like savoury or sweet treats?
Savoury – cheese in particular.
What makes a good writer great?
Being able to paint such real pictures with their words that you forget that you are not really there.
Are you planning on writing and illustrating any chapter books in the near future?
I am working on three different books at the moment. Firstly a flap book, ‘A Lark in the Ark’, where the animals are bored so they decide to play hide and seek, dressing up in Noah and Mrs Noah’s clothes and hiding in all the nooks and crannies in their bedroom. The thing that makes it really silly though, is that they all rhyme, like llamas in pyjamas and wombats in combats! Then there is ‘Stinky’, about a baby warthog who is very smelly and gets into trouble because of all the flies that follow him around all the time. I’m really enjoying drawing him as warthogs are one of my favourite animals. Lastly, I am half way through ‘Class Three all at Sea’ (a sequel to ‘Class Two at the Zoo’, that is due out any day) with a school boat trip that goes horribly wrong when they are attacked by pirates. The children have to persuade the octopuses to help them escape, and my favourite illustration is of all the pirates being whirled in the air twisted up in the octopuses’ tentacles!
Was your first commission as a writer or as an illustrator?
My very first commission was as an illustrator: I was asked to design and illustrate a range of greetings cards. My first book though was ‘The Show at Rickety Barn’. I have been illustrating professionally since I left art college over twenty year’s ago; the commission for ‘When You’re Not Looking! ’ came much later.
How did you get into drawing for picture books?
Ten years ago I used to illustrate mainly for magazines and newspapers, but I felt in need of a change. I don’t have children, so had not looked at picture books for a while, but when I did, they had got so exciting I knew they were definitely what I wanted to do next. I spent several months producing new work to show to book publishers. I also wrote a couple of picture book stories and illustrated them. When I felt my new portfolio was strong enough, I took it to London and showed it to various different publishers. One day not long after that, I got a phone call from Gullane Children’s Books asking if I wanted to illustrate ‘The Show at Rickety Barn’. Fortunately they were really pleased with what I did and so gave me more books to do, and the rest is history. If anybody out there would like to know more about getting into book illustration, there is a section on my website to help, at www.lynnechapman.co.uk/faq.htm
What kinds of stories do you like illustrating best?
They have to be funny, and I try to use my illustrations to make them funnier still. I also enjoy mean and nasty characters. I get a lot of animals to draw, but I always prefer it if they are a bit ugly or a bit evil, rather than just cute.
What was the best advice you gave someone?
That’s difficult to say, as it’s the person you give the advice to that generally finds out if it was good advice or not. One bit of advice I always give to would-be illustrators is to carry a tiny sketch pad in their pocket at all times and use it to draw all sorts of little things they come across whenever they have a spare moment. It is great practise and you will find that you build up a really interesting visual diary of where you’ve been and what you’ve seen. I have loads of these books that I’ve carried all over the world, and they are my most treasured possessions.
Are animal drawings easier to do than humans?
In some ways. The difficult thing I find with creating human characters is continually coming up with new personalities to make each one a unique individual. Although people are different to one another, they are nowhere near as different as say a tortoise and a lion or a gorilla and a crocodile. The difficult thing about animal picture book illustrations is that they generally have to do human things in a human style world. This can be a bit tricky to pull off sometimes as they are not always built right!
Where do you get your inspiration from?
I find that if a story is right for me, pictures automatically pop into my head as I read it. Then as I start sketching, new additions keep coming along. Like, ‘wouldn’t it be silly if that mouse who’s a detective had a waxed moustache like Hercules Poirot.’
You’ve been nominated for the Red House Children’s and the Nottingham Book Award two years running. How did that make you feel?
Fantastic! It’s especially nice to be nominated for an award where the voting is done by children.
Who would you most like to set loose in a lion’s cage?
Margaret Thatcher. It’s a long time now since she was Prime Minister and I would really have liked to have put her in there at the time, but better late than never I reckon.
Did you ever think that you would be a writer and illustrator when you were growing up?
Not as such. I knew I was going to be some sort of artist though from quite early on, and I was lucky that my Mum and Dad were always right behind me. In those days though, authors and illustrators didn’t come into school and visit like they do now, so I didn’t think of being an illustrator until much later. But I never dreamed I would have a book I’d written published.
Who would you like to share your last Rolo with?
I’d have to share it with my husband John or I’d be in real trouble – he is a total choc-o-holic!
Your website is really cool. There is so much to see and do. Who came up with the concept and the ideas?
I did it all by myself and I am really proud of it! As I was creating it, I kept coming up with more and more ideas and I got really carried away. One day soon I would like to teach myself how to do little animations to put on it – it would be so cool to have lots of emu's cancanning across the screen, or Giddy Goat zooming about in his little red plane.
You’ve illustrated quite a lot of books. Which one has been the best one to draw?
That’s such a difficult question. I had a lot of fun with 'An Itch to Scratch' as I had to illustrate a big gorilla with an itch in the middle of his back that he couldn’t reach. I kept posing in front of the mirror, jumping on one leg with my arms twisted up my back, then rushing to sketch what I looked like before I forgot. Any neighbours watching through the window must have thought I was completely bonkers!
Do you write and draw for the adult market too?
I write more adult poetry and stories for fun, but not for publication. I don’t illustrate for the adult market these days either. Pretty much the only drawing I do that is not for children’s books are my sketchbooks.
What did you use to spend your pocket money on when you were a child?
I was really into comics for a while – the Dandy and Beazer, then Jackie magazine which was more girlie. I rarely bought books at that time as I used to borrow them from the library instead. I also went through a phase of collecting bits and pieces for the dolls house my Grandad made me. He was very clever and it was fantastic. I particularly remember that he gave the outside of the house perfect pebbledash by smearing it with porridge than painting it!
Why do you think your books are so popular with children?
Well the best people to ask that one would be the children themselves of course. I imagine it is partly because they are funny, partly because the illustrations are so lively and full of colour. I hope too that I manage to bring my characters to life.
You seem to travel a lot as your travel sketches show. Where was your most memorable journey to?
I have been very lucky and travelled to a few very memorable places, but Namibia takes a lot of beating. I particularly remember watching one evening beside a water-hole while a herd of elephants came to drink. They walked nose to tail in a long line just like in 'The Jungle Book', and though there were at least a dozen, from tiny babies up to great bull elephants, they were almost perfectly silent, you couldn’t even hear their footsteps. You can see my elephant sketches at www.lynnechapman.co.uk/publisherspages/sketchselection.htm. It was in Namibia that I saw warthogs too, trotting along with their tails sticking straight up in the air, looking really cute and really ugly at the same time.
What was your first best friend’s most annoying habit?
She picked her nose - yuk! 
Did you ever play tricks on the teachers in school?
Yes, we once had a maths teacher who had a hearing aid. One lesson we got together before he arrived and agreed that we would all begin humming together, so that he thought it was his hearing aid going wrong – it worked really well!
There’s a lot of detail in your illustrations, do you draw from memory or do you use objects or photographs?
I mainly draw from my imagination and from memory, although I often use the internet to find pictures to use as reference. It’s often quite difficult to remember how something like, say, a bike goes. The trouble is, if you copy a photograph, it can end up too fussy, so what I do is look at the photo, then put it away, so that I remember just the most important things.
Do you know any good jokes?
Sorry, I’m rubbish at jokes – I always forget the punch line!
Find out more about Lynne Chapman.
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