Activity 3: 'Do you think an illustration can stand on its own, telling a story without the words?'

• What do you think? Look at examples of wordless story books such as Come Away From The Water, Shirley by John Burningham.
• You could extend this question in the following ways:
• Do you think a sequence of illustrations automatically suggests a story, whereas one on its own does not?
• Is one illustration on its own a work of art rather than an illustration?

Activity 4: 'You've got to invent that face.'

• Examine any description of a character given in a text. You could search the web for an example. List all the features you are given, and all the features you are free to invent. Try to invent the face.
• If you are teaching you could divide the group into two, one half to refer only to the given features, and the others to refer only to what's missing.

Activity 5: 'If the character's got to look sad - the whole picture's got to look sad.'

• Find a description of a sad (or angry or excited) character in a book. Click here for an example. Try drawing the character and think of all the ways the background can match the mood. Think about light, colour and shape, more than the obvious signs (such as smiling suns or weeping willow trees).

Patrick Benson's View

JE: Do you think an illustration can stand on its own, telling a story without the words?

Patrick Benson: Well, no. The way that I start out is that the text is the most important thing. What interests me as an illustrator is working with good writers. When I read good text I get pictures in my head, like everyone does. The ability of an illustrator is firstly to think of interesting images to go with that text and to be truthful to that text. Secondly, is obviously your ability and skill as an artist to be able to convey those ideas. It's no good having wonderful ideas if you physically can't draw them, so you've got to be able to articulate your ideas well. That doesn't mean you have to draw naturalistically or in a particular style. You just need to be able to convince the reader.

JE: So, as long as you're being true to the text there is plenty of scope to start playing around with the image.

Patrick Benson: There's huge scope. After all, the text might say the boy had blue hair and a freckled face. Therefore his face can look like anything. He's just got to have freckles. You've got to invent that face.

JE: And a book of course often has a mood about it, an emotion or an undercurrent. And so I imagine that in many ways you're illustrating that.

Patrick Benson: Yes. In a way you're getting to the heart of the matter because I suppose a publisher employs a particular illustrator because they know that they react to text and to the emotional content of a text in a certain way. Hopefully something surprising or interesting is going to come out of the meeting of that text and that illustrator. As well as conveying an interesting idea, the illustrator has also got to convey the emotional content of the book and to empathise with the characters, convincing the reader that whatever happens in the story has some effect on the way the characters are feeling. If the character's got to look sad the whole picture's got to look sad. You can do that in a whole range of ways. Cartoonists might convey the loneliness of a little child with a squiggle and a line. I might do it in a completely different way, with a whole lot of complicated cross-hatching and the way that I do the colour or the scale.

Activities
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