The artist for WILD ABOUT BOOKS is Dean
Griffiths. He has illustrated two picture books, The Patchwork House
by Sally Fitz-Gibbon and most recently The Lighthouse Dog by Betty
Waterton. He is currently working on a new book which will be published next
spring.Dean lives and works in Duncan, on Vancouver Island. He has always
liked to draw and first thought about becoming a professional artist after
reading about Chris Van Allsburg, the author/illustrator of Jumanji
and many other books. In highschool, though, Dean only took one art course,
which he failed--the teacher said he spent all his time drawing!
Dean has worked as an animator for a video game company in Vacouver. He also worked together with a friend on an art show in Parksville: Dean drew the pictures and his friend painted them. Eventually, Dean decided it was time to learn how to paint himself so he took a course and also taught himself. Some of his paintings have been turned into greeting cards.
Illustrating picture books is a lot different than working on your own ideas and out of your own imagination. Dean has to work with other people's ideas and paint "in series"--for example, in The Patchwork House, the same house is painted over and over but in different seasons and time periods. Sometimes there are interruptions and it is hard to get the work finished on time. When Dean was working on the Summer Reading Club poster, one of his guinea pigs lost her front teeth and was sick. He was very worried about her and had to take her to the vet. It is not easy to illustrate someone else's ideas, but we think Dean has done a great job on the poster--the jungle-y island and all the animals are WILD!
Dean starts his sketches at a drafting table in a room with a fireplace, which is nice and cozy. When he needs to spread things out he uses an eight-foot long table so he can see everything at once. While he's working he likes to listen to classical music; Haydn's "Farewell" Symphony was a piece he listened to while working on the Summer Reading Club artwork. He works on several things at once, so it's hard to figure out just how long it takes to complete one project, but it took Dean just over a month to do the poster and other artwork for the Summer Reading Club.
Right now, Dean's favourite thing to paint and draw is squirrels, because he's working on a book that has lots of squirrels in it. It's easy to find pictures of squirrels and real live models! Dean's favourite colour right now is green (it was brown when he was a kid, then changed to blue for awhile). A book he really liked is The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship (there are several different versions of this Russian folktale--check to see if your library has one). His favourite flavour of ice cream is Black Forest Cake.
Dean says if you are interested in becoming an illustrator you should practice as much as you can: study the work of illustrators you like; draw everything you see, from rocks to your best friend; and stick with it! Remember, even the greatest illustrators started out drawing stick men. Believe that you can do it!