Why I love drawing snow
A snowy retrospective and inspiration.
Happy New Year and a great big hello to old and new subscribers.
Substack has given me the perfect place to share a piece about one of my favourite things to draw - SNOW! I think there are a few reasons why I love it so much, but mostly I’m a big fan of negative space and capturing the world suddenly transformed.
This is a snowy Christmas card I made almost twenty years ago. I remember giving the cards out to friends in a cosy pub on Christmas Eve and someone said it reminded them of a children’s book they had as a kid. I took this to be the hugest compliment, the type that stays with you and helps steer you slowly in the creative direction you want to go in. I was still working in animation at the time and in 2012 I worked as Lead Assistant Animator on The Snowman and The Snowdog. It was quite a surreal experience drawing the Raymond Briggs Snowman flying over London. And it set the unwritten rule that it has to always be a hot sticky summer when I work on snowy projects, and there’s been a few since…
A Dot in the Snow written by Corrinne Averiss was my first illustrator-only book project, I loved the visual simplicity of the premise – a young polar bear spotting a dot in the snow. As well as the relationship between the characters, I was keen to capture their relationship with the environment, the filmic potential and the sense of space. (There’s a new edition just out in France, called Un doux moment polaire)
The Snow Dragon written by Abi Elphinstone is a longer format picture book about Phoebe and her sausage dog Herb. I really enjoyed playing with the contrast of early graphic scenes in an orphanage, with the softer snow-filled images of the adventure with the Snow Dragon. (The Frost Goblin is my latest collaboration with Abi Elphinstone. Not strictly snow, so I’ve not included it in this post, even though frost has that same magical quality of transforming a familiar world. See my last post on the Goblin windows).
The Good Bear by Sarah Lean is a middle-grade story set in snowy Norwegian woods. Working in black and white was a fun challenge and I used greyscale tones and textures to build up the images.
This illustration was inspired by the line “...I will always have this memory of Christmas Eve in a winter wonderland with a bear.”
Inspiration
I’m not alone with my love of capturing snow, so here are a few favourite snowy inspirations. Peter Doig gets two, his snow paintings made a big impression on me at a Tate exhibition a few years ago.
Whether it’s snowy where you are or not, I hope January is treating you well. Thanks for reading my second Woodcock Dispatch. This one has been more of a themed retrospective / inspiration piece, so things will continue to be fairly random, but there is news coming very soon about my next author-illustrated book!
Happy 2023!
Fiona
Lovely post! A perfect lunchtime read on a chilly day.