Where do you get your ideas from? It’s a question that comes up every time. And like every creator of books who has faced a room full of children, authorillustrator Jez Alborough is still working on the answer. “It’s one of the questions that you suspect might have been suggested by an adult, and you can answer it on many levels. The short answer is: ‘I don’t know, but isn’t it great?’”
Alborough enjoys the questions that arrive in his postbag at his studio in Richmond-upon-Thames for the insight they give into the five to seven-year-old’s view of the creative process. He has compiled a booklet, Dear Jez Alboroug h, of questions asked last year by two groups of pupils: Brunei Garrison school and Deneholm school, Grays, Essex.
“In the answers, I’ve tried to talk about big ideas in a way that’s digestible without being superficial and reaches out to the children’s potential so they can see their drawings and ideas as being like mine.”
Robyn When you write a book what do you feel like?
JA Like most good questions, this is rather difficult to answer. I will try to answer, though, because sometimes when you have a go at doing difficult things - that’s when you learn the most.
Writing a book feels like... having a river in my head which I can dive into. When I dive in - it is exciting, refreshing and a little scary because I have no clue where it will take me. Sometimes it takes me nowhere in particular but I don’t mind because I’ve still enjoyed the ride. Other times it does take me somewhere, that’s when I end up with a new book and that feels really good.
Shikhar When do you get all these amazing ideas? I mean, because they are unthinkable.
JA My ideas aren’t really unthinkable because, once upon a time, I “thought” them. But some of them are quite strange. Whoever heard of a duck driving a truck or a bear with his own teddy? But where do they come from?
I can tell you where I was when I had some of these ideas (such as in the bath for my first book), but that’s not what you mean is it? I can tell you how I found some of the ideas. For example, Duck in the Truck came from me listing all the words that rhyme with duck. But as for ‘where do I get the ideas?’ that’s a tough question. I think they must come from somewhere in my head.
The real answer is that I don’t know, but I’m glad that I do get them because ideas are fantastic things. Can you imagine a world without ideas? It would be unthinkable!
Akash Are you really artistic at drawing or not so good?
JA If you like my drawings, then you could say I am good at drawing because at least you like it. But maybe not everyone likes it. There are many types of drawing, just as some people like one pop group and not another - so people prefer one style of art to another. It’s good that we are all different and have different tastes. Can you imagine if the only ice cream you could get
was vanilla?
In the end I do drawings that I like and if other people find them tasty - that’s fantastic!
A longer version of this feature appears in this week’s TES
