Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Picture Books I Learned in Architecture School (well,.....)

Tuesday evening I delivered a talk at SCBWI/Western Washington, titled Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Picture Books I Learned in Architecture School. Okay, so, that title isn't even close to true, but it sounds good, right?

It happened to be the same evening that Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, was speaking elsewhere in Seattle (with Sherman Alexie as inquisator). Even I was tempted to skip out on my talk! But fortunately for me, plenty of children's book people either forgot to buy tickets to see Handler before the show sold out, or were curious to see how an architect could possibly know anything about picture books. And I'm grateful for it.

Anyway, phew! I am quite sure the time I spent preparing my first Power Point Presentation ever is completely disproportionate to the time I spent delivering it. But it was hugely fun to do, and my horizons have been greatly broadened. Just using a microphone in front of a sizable audience is education enough.

For those who could not be there, I'll tell you a little of what I really talked about. If you want to know more just let me know.



When I want to get to know a good book really really well, I sketch the entire picture book on one page of my sketchbook. I do a graphic analysis, which is something I really did learn in architecture school. I use figure/ground studies (also an architecture school tool), in tiny little thumbnail storyboards, to study how a book is designed and composed, both visually and in terms of the overall story arc. Stick figures, dark blobs, a couple of key context lines. It's quick and dirty, and very illuminating. I look at how the composition of the spread dramatizes the text. I dissect the structure of the story arc in terms of the overall composition of the book. For each spread, I look at what is figure (characters and objects), and what is ground (white space). I'm not looking at style or color or medium--just composition. It's a super-simplification of the book. And if it sounds a little analytical, well, it is, in a messy, intuitive sort of way.


So for my SCBWI presentation, I walked in detail through my graphic analysis of The Amazing Book Eating Boy, by Oliver Jeffers--such a favorite of mine! (I shared the overall thumbnail view of that here, a while back.) I went into a lot of detail, and it was excellent for me to have to articulate what I look for, and how it influences my own writing and illustrating. I explained what I learned about the importance of white space, of thinking like a movie director, of allowing the composition to amplify the rhythm and pace of the story. This is a great way, even for non-drawers, to see the relationship between text and image--anyone can draw a rectangle representing a page, and stick figures or blobs representing the primary compositional elements!! And if you want to really get inside the head of the creator of your favorite books, you almost have to imagine yourself in their process, and it helps to do that on paper. I know it helps me a lot. Plus it's something to do when you're stuck, and need to push a pencil to avoid becoming permanently lodged.

When all was said and done, what I realized is that I did in fact gain a lot of tools in architecture school that I really do apply to my picture book work. But really, everything I ever needed to know about picture books, I learned from picture books. There is so much to learn from the masters. It's just a matter of learning how to look.