Whether I had chosen to move to London for my MA this year, next year, three years ago, or not for another ten, there would have undoubtedly been circumstances I hadn't predicted. Unfortunately the coronavirus (covid-19) has perhaps caused a few more unforeseen happenings than I would have expected. The annual Children's Book Fair in Bologna which had originally been postponed until May, is now cancelled altogether. While having that money back in my pocket isn't a bad thing, I must confess it is difficult not to be really disheartened by this. The Bologna Book Fair was something I had been looking forward to attending for quite some time now, it was what I considered to be a highlight of pursuing my MA in London as it's infinitely more affordable to take a flight to Bologna from London than from New York. In addition, we had planned a mini-trip to Venice beforehand which (as I can imagine you have already guessed) was also cancelled. Despite my course leader's positive attitude that the cancellation means next year's fair will just be even better and he anticipates everyone on the course will go, one of my peers shares my fear that we have already missed our opportunity as she, too, lives outside of the UK and Europe and the likelihood of either of us being able to attend next year is rather slim. And yet, I understand completely why it's been cancelled.

Another benefit to being in London for MA was the London Book Fair. While not specifically geared towards illustrators, it's still an excellent way to see and meet publishers. But sadly that too was cancelled. I believe part of the reason was more or less indirectly due to the virus as too many publishers pulled out of attending. Again, a disappointment that's hard not to notice.

And now, as of this morning, we are no longer allowed to have face to face classes. Our Uni is trying to stay open as there are students living on campus, but have stopped classes from meeting in person. As my MA is a rather small group, our course leader had been hopeful we could meet somewhere on our own, but apparently even that isn't allowed. FaceTime is the next best thing, which should be interesting. Not ideal, but what part of this whole situation is?

But on a more upbeat note, the work for my MA keeps on! We have a 32-page book due at the beginning of April, or at least we assume it's still due, though we may be handing in the books to an empty office. The book has to be a finished dummy, meaning all the pages are fully illustrated with only a few spreads done in full color/completed to a final (or fully finished) level. In our case, we are doing 4 spreads completely finished. I've had the great opportunity to do a spread in etching and color it with watercolor, and while I am thrilled to have gotten to do an etching, I am not yet married to it being the final look. In fact, I don't think I will be able to do etchings at all seeing as there isn't quite enough time to complete them and if the facilities are closed it's not all too easy to create a makeshift acid bath in your flat.

There really is so much that goes into crafting a book. You have to select the right paper, decide on the placement of the text, what do the end pages look like, what's the title... Having a kernel of an idea for a book is only just the start of a very long process. Fortunately I was able to get my text written out early on, so only some final tweaking will have to be done before submission. It's tough sometimes to land on just the right images. The benefit of working digitally is that you can quite easily make changes in layout or image, which is far more difficult to do when working by hand. Working by hand means that you may have to start all over if one small part of a spread is off, but you also get more happy accidents which are sometimes the most lovely parts of a piece. Personally I feel a bit disconnected when creating an image digitally, although I do recognize the benefits. There is also this world of a happy medium where you produce the images by hand but can tweak them after scanning them into the computer. Right now I've been creating my images with an ink pen on layout paper. The nice thing about layout paper is it's slightly transparent (though has a bit more subsistence than tracing paper) and so you can easily redraw an image or part of an image again while still seeing the first image underneath. The trick is actually to start at the back of the drawing pad so you can lay pages over without ripping anything out. I don't know if any of that makes sense, maybe you have to see it in person. Once I have the image (or images) I like I can scan them onto the computer, clean them up, and then print them out again on whatever paper I prefer to work on, such as multimedia or watercolor paper. A fun little fact, most standard printer ink is actually oil based which makes it ideal for combing with watercolor as the line is less likely to run or smudge since oil and water don't mix. The only minor issue with this at the moment is my ability to scan and print my images. As long as our campus and the facilities remain open, I can access a large enough scanner and printer. But if everything gets shut down I will have to get a bit creative. (Below you can see a bit of my process creating that single, etching spread)

new print of the etching, scanned and printed on mixed media paper, and watercolor being applied

Thankfully my job does provide me with artistic inspiration. We have some exciting exhibits on at the moment, including Aubrey Beardsley and British Baroque at the Tate Britain and Andy Warhol at the Tate Modern. The Tate is remaining open as long as they can. To be honest work hasn't been quite as busy as we had anticipated with Warhol opening this week, though also not as terrible as we feared it could be. Actually, if you're not too keen on crowds this isn't such a bad time to go to see exhibits as there are decidedly fewer people around. I'm just thankful to have some smiling faces and wonderful colleagues to help pass the time!

So that's all for now. There are far worse places I could be and far worse situations in which I could find myself. We don't always know what tomorrow will bring, but if I can make something beautiful today it won't be a day wasted.

Ups and Downs