February 20, 2015
She’s waited all her life to write this – reworking to book format
I have spent recent illustration time doing a new book format of She’s waited all her life to write this (Bloodaxe 2012) by Clare Shaw. The poem features in Clare’s second book Head On (Bloodaxe 2012). I originally illustrated the poem as an A3 picture. I admit I choose it because it was short and quite quick to illustrate. Since then many people who have heard Clare read it, have commented on it’s iconic lines which are a message to writer’s everywhere.
It has been fun adapting it to book format but I did decide to replace virtually every image. I had used a lot of icons before and pictures which were unrelated in ‘place’. In the new version I have situated the whole illustration in a house so each image relates more to each other and hence tell more of a story and softened the whole look. I hope it works. The actual house I took a lot of illustrators license with. Its actually made up from a series of places to make a room that would fit all that I wanted to show. It does make for rather a large kitchen!
The first page of, She’s waited half of her life to write this. Clare Shaw (Bloodaxe 2012)
