Chris Steffensen, Wayne Guppy, Selina Ede, Andrew Herrick

I was approached by Andrew Herrick the principal of St Jospeh’s Primary School to collaborate with them on creating a picture book to give to new students starting at the school. The books aim was to help them feel welcome and learn about the schools values and culture with their families. I was thrilled to be part of this project!

As you can imagine creating a book entails a lot of different skills sets; story creation, editing, illustration, layout, printing just to name a few. The beautiful thing about a printed story book is it can be read and enjoyed over and over again. A lot of school information on paper flyers doesn’t last very long however a book is treasured.

Process

Our first challenge was to create a story that communicated all the values and history of the school. Andrew already had a great initial plot idea of ‘The Church that Joseph Built’ which was based around the story ‘The House that Jack Built.’ With this as our starting point a full story was fleshed out. We split the story into spreads and continued to simplify and reduce the word count. Once we had a concrete story it was sent around the staff to proof read, critique and give feedback.

Then it was my time to shine with the illustration creation. But first we contacted our printer (About Print) and picked the size and stock of the books so as not to get any surprises later on or create artwork to the wrong aspect ratio.

Once this was confirmed I started to create thumbnails of each spread. These were sent through to Andrew and his team and we discussed how the story was to be portrayed visually. I then created some character designs of each of the main characters. These were sent to Andrew and his team to pick their favourites. I then created more detailed sketches of each spread to scale. This step involved a lot of visual fact checking as there are many real historical people they needed to show likeness and be accurately represented.

Once these pencil sketches were perfect and approved I coloured up one spread digitally to a final illustration. With some small adjustments to the overall look and feel of the book I continued to work my way through the rest of the illustrations.

The final illustrations we placed with the text layout and the book design was finessed. We sent the final book to a professional editing service to make sure there was no missed errors. We then added a page at the end with some historical photos of the school and church. We sent it off the the printers for a proof. The proof was great. So we proceeded with a large print run. Every child to start the school over the next 10 years or so will get a copy of this book. Such a wonderful project to be part of and I am so proud of the end result!

Questions

How long does a project like this take?

I would allow at least 3 months but ideally 6 months.

How much does a project like this cost?

Each book project will vary in price depending on number of pages, number of illustrations and number of copies you would like printed. Bear in mind once the artwork is created you can use it over and over again in many applications throughout the school. Once you have a rough idea get in touch with me for an official quote so you can secure the correct funding.

Costs involved

Editing

Illustration

Book design/layout

Printing

Shipping

Can the children be involved in the creation?

Absolutely they can! I love working with children on creative projects and this it is vital in getting my work to relate to the correct age group and community. There are a million ways to do this and each project is different. I tend to discuss ideas around this during the project briefing discussions.

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Throughout the first half of 2022 I have been working on a special project with a class of intermediate students at St Joseph’s School in Upper Hutt. Over a ten week period we researched, designed and created this amazing 5m long mural to be hung at the entrance of the school. It features many things that are special to these students and who they are as a school. I absolutely loved being part of this project and it forced me to deconstruct my creative process in order to guide these student on their creative journey. Heres a breakdown of what we got up to.

EXPERIMENTING WITH PAINT AND MARK MAKING

In our first session we experimented with painting techniques and mark making using acrylic paints on large paper. We looked at colour mixing and how to create different textures with paint and random objects like sponges and toothbrushes. This was messy, expressive and lots of fun!

MURAL TOUR

We went on a walking mural tour around Upper Hutt where we admired some of the wonderful murals created by talented local artists. We even visited a local artist ‘Chimp’ in his studio and were able to ask him lots of questions about being an artist and creating large scale artwork. He kindly demonstrated how he uses a spray can and showed us some of the pieces he was working on for international and local clients.

RESEARCH

We brainstormed and talked about what makes the school special and how we could represent this visually in our mural. We used the internet to look at some famous New Zealand mural artists and took colour and subject inspiration to use in our own concepts. We created three concepts which we presented to the school via social media and they voted on their favourite. We developed the chosen concept into our final artwork. The final artwork features two students doing a traditional Māori greeting called a hongi, the school kowhaiwhai pattern, the church with cross, a dove featured in the school crest, reference to the Remutaka mountain ranges and the Te Akurangi river as well as two large taniwha from the local legend of Whataitai and Ngake.

Transferring the artwork

We used the doodle grid method to transfer the final artwork onto our large panels in pencil. This took a lot of accuracy and patience as to get all four panels art to line up and look correct.

Painting the mural

We laid our boards out on large tables with drop clothes and started painting. We started by blocking in the large shapes then worked our way to the finer details. With a large group of students we were able to cover a lot of board in a small amount of time. Many of the shapes needEd multiple coats. The finished panels were then given a coat of graffiti stop varnish then installed on the wall near the entrance of the school.