Four tips for small (or big) designers

Orbie has had a lot of success in 2022. His album The end of lice?, in which she imagines how the physical distance practiced by humans has turned the daily lives of these detestable parasites upside down, notably won the prestigious TD Prize for Canadian Children’s Literature in addition to having been nominated for the Governor’s Literary Awards general. Since the holidays are the perfect time to indulge in your favorite pastime, The Press asked the author and illustrator for some advice for young (or big) amateur designers.

Observe

“I think 75% of the work of drawing is done by the eyes, by observation, and that’s before you even touch a pencil,” says Orbie. A first tip that applies regardless of whether you want to draw a person, an object or a setting.

Holiday get-togethers are, in her view, an ideal opportunity to observe many living models. “When all the adults are chatting together, the children can take the opportunity to draw them,” she suggests. Between cousins, it can also be fun to try to reproduce different facial expressions. “One is making an angry face and the other is practicing drawing. He can watch how the face moves,” Orbie suggests. The latter also finds it easier to draw inspiration from live models than from photographs. “We see the details differently,” she believes.

Vary your subjects

Do you excel in portraits, but drawing animals is a challenge that you cannot overcome? Dare to practice again and again, suggests Orbie, who says she wishes she had received this advice when she was younger. As a child, she loved to create characters, but she only rarely drew sets. Today, she considers that these represent a “good stake” for her. If you’re having trouble illustrating an element, you can “watch how others do it and then practice doing it your way,” she suggests.

Start with pencil

A child, with tears in his eyes, exclaims that his drawing failed because he doesn’t like his character’s nose. Another crumples his sheet, because he has made a crooked line. For most parents, these scenes are real life stories. That’s why Orbie suggests that little designers begin their work with a lead pencil. “That way, you can be wrong as often as you want, especially if you’re not very heavy,” she notes. When she gives workshops in schools, Orbie explains to children all the stages she goes through.

“I show them my sketches. These are not beautiful designs. It’s just so that we understand how the characters are placed, how I frame them. The expressions are there, the global position too”, develops the illustrator. And it’s normal not to be satisfied the first time, she insists. “Sometimes I redraw the same drawing 20 times. » When the draft is finished, it can then be traced on a new sheet to obtain a final version.

Stop thinking about the end result

“One last piece of advice that I could give and that I give to myself all the time (and that I have a hard time following), is to draw for yourself, without thinking about the result”, indicates, for finish, Orbie. We take out a notebook intended to be seen only by ourselves and we make our pencils travel on the pages in the course of our imagination. According to her, we then manage “to go somewhere else and learn new things”. Sort of like preschoolers “who draw just for the fun of letting their hand go on the drawing”. The children’s works are also a great source of inspiration for the illustrator, who always brings a box full of drawings by toddlers when she goes on a creative residency.

“Every time I do workshops, there are lots of things the children do that inspire me and inform my work. » The heroine of The end of lice? is the perfect example. Orbie changed his first sketches after seeing a drawing of his daughter. “I found him so cute. I redesigned my character, really inspired by the little pig’s nose and the long duvets, ”says the one who is currently working on a comic strip about an investigation into lost stockings, which is scheduled for publication in 2023.

The end of lice?

Text and illustrations by Orbie

The 400 blows

From 5 years old