
7 September 2012
Rob Ball's exhibition, E17x17
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11 August 2023
Posted in: Artists, Children's books, Illustration, Publishing
You might be familiar with engraver-extraordinaire Chris Wormell’s work. His etchings, sketches and digital drawings spanning a 40+ year career have become somewhat infamous in illustration circles. But you might not know that Chris is also a master novelist. One of his most recent projects, The Lucky Bottle, saw him combine these two skills to wondrous effect. So wondrous, in fact, that he recently won the Teachers Choice Award for Young Readers at The Children’s Literature Festivals 2023.
We caught up with Chris to learn about where the inspiration came from.
Just like the chicken and egg, we’re all dying to know which came first, the story or the illustrations?
The story came first for this one, though of course the illustrations were always there in my mind as I wrote – also, for the most part, how they were to sit on the page. But unlike my last book, The Magic Place, where the illustrations help tell the story in much the same way as with picture books, the images in this book were really just illustrating the text.
Did the story affect the approach or style of the illustrations? What was the creation process like?
Inspired by the wonderful illustrations of Ernest Shepard and Edward Ardizzone, I felt pen and ink was the way to illustrate my story.
Here’s how they came about. First, I indicated the places in the typescript roughly where I wanted pictures and the size they were to be (full page, half page, spot etc.) then the designer – Alison Gadsby – left the appropriate spaces when laying out the pages. I then made rough sketches to fit the spaces and once everyone (editors Rosie and David Fickling and Alison) had given a thumbs up to these, I made the pen drawings.
Where did the inspiration for the story come from?
This story has been rattling around in my brain for a number of years. In fact, ever since my son – who’s now in his later thirties – was a young boy!
Jack had bought a little bottle with a model ship inside it on a seaside holiday somewhere and it sat on a shelf in the kitchen. One day, looking at this object, I began to wonder who had thought of putting model ships into bottles, and then the possible story of how the first little ship got put into a bottle began to grow in my mind…
I tried it as a picture book first but soon realised it was going to be much too long a story. Then for many years I forgot about it, not believing, at the time, that I was able to write a book of novel length. When, years later, I did, and was then looking for ideas for a second book, I turned once more to the ship in a bottle story.
Is there a standout moment from the whole journey creating The Lucky Bottle?
Two stand out moments in the creation of a book: When your publisher, after reading your story, says yes, they want to publish it. And later (sometimes years and years later) opening the brown paper parcel sent from the printers and holding the actual book in your hands for the first time. All the months and years leading up to these two moments are just hard slog!
No, of course that’s not true, not altogether. There are marvellous times when the writing is going well, and ideas are popping into your mind as the words spill onto the page. And when drawing too; sometimes your hand and the pen seem to scratch away making the perfect marks almost independently of thought and decision, your brain seeming to have little to do with it.
These are the exceptions though. There is a lot of hard slog…
Which illustration is your favourite, and why?
Impossible question. I’m fairly pleased with some of the drawings of Jack and Robinson though. Mainly because I’m pretty hopeless at drawing people and some of these came out quite well.