Honored to Win First Place in Book Illustration at Phillustration 7

I am very honored and grateful to the Philadelphia Sketch Club and the judges for Phillustration 7, for awarding my illustration “Ghost Tour” First Place in the Book Illustration category this year. I painted this piece last fall for the children’s book Let’s Visit New Hope, written by Gayle Goodman and Roy Ziegler and sponsored by the New Hope Historical Society.

(c) Pat Achilles

There were no shortage of terrific illustrations in this year’s show in several different categories. Other members of the Bucks County Illustrators Society, of which I’m a co-founder, also had outstanding work exhibited, including Glenn Zimmer, Deb Hoeffner, Pam Hamilton, and Rebecca Rhodin. Joe DeVito served as one of this year’s judges and his pencil concept sketches for a King Kong project he is working on were also prominently featured.

The crowd at the Sketch Club was large and enthusiastic for the opening reception yesterday – Pam Hamilton took this wonderful panoramic shot of the gallery:

The Sketch Club is a venerable Philadelphia institution, having started in the 1860s, and is considered the oldest continuously running organization for artists in the country. Outstanding painters and illustrators of the past who have been members include Thomas Eakins, N.C. Wyeth, Henry Pitz, Walter Baum, Edward Redfield, Daniel Garber; and Ranulph Bye, among many others.

Sketch Club President Rich Harrington and the staff created a varied and exciting exhibit that I recommend to everyone who enjoys ‘fine art that tells a story’ – which is how good illustration is defined. I am thrilled and grateful to receive this recognition, and thankful also to authors Gayle and Roy for writing the book that inspired my illustration!

The Sketch Club is located at 235 S. Camac Street in Philadelphia, and this show is up until November 27, with gallery hours Wednesday, Friday,  Saturday and Sunday from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm.

Self-publishing ‘Let’s Visit New Hope,’ Part 3: Dummy Book

The new children’s book ‘Let’s Visit New Hope’, written by Gayle Goodman and Roy Ziegler and illustrated by me, Pat Achilles, has just been released by the New Hope Historical Society. We used Amazon’s online publishing service, Createspace, to publish it.  This series of posts will follow the steps in the creation of the book.  

In my previous post I showed the thumbnail stage of designing this children’s book.  Once this step was finished I could further develop the basic sketches into actual-page-size sketches.  Our book’s page dimensions are 8.25″ x 8.25″, so I made double-page-spread sized sheets and drew the sketches with more detail than the thumbnails.  They are still somewhat loose because things can change once we see everything together.  Here are a few dummy book pages (you can click on each to enlarge):

You’ll see, these sketches will all change somewhat by the time the finished art is complete.  I also created a sketch for the front/back cover of the dummy:

Which was soon revised to this – can you see the change?

With the authors’ agreement, we decided to keep the title typeface reminiscent of M. Sasek’s wonderful travel books.  At this point I photocopied and stapled together several copies of the dummy book so that the authors could distribute them to potential donors to the project. This gave everyone involved a good idea of what the final book would include and look like.

Next I’ll show some of my processes to create the finished art for the book.

You can obtain author-and-illustrator signed copies of ‘Let’s Visit New Hope’ by ordering through through the New Hope Historical Society’s website at http://www.newhopehs.org. My next post coming soon: Sketches into Finished Art. Previous posts are on my blog, just scroll through https://achillesportfolio.wordpress.com/pencilled-in/ .   If you want to read future posts as they are published, subscribe to my blog by clicking on the +Follow box at the lower right of your screen and you will get email notifications when I have posted the next article.

Self-publishing ‘Let’s Visit New Hope,’ Part 2: Manuscript and Thumbnails

The new children’s book ‘Let’s Visit New Hope’, written by Gayle Goodman and Roy Ziegler and illustrated by me, Pat Achilles, has just been released by the New Hope Historical Society. We used Amazon’s online publishing service, Createspace, to publish it.  This series of posts will follow the steps in the creation of the book.  

Before even writing the manuscript for Let’s Visit New Hope, co-author Gayle Goodman wisely talked to and surveyed a number of second-graders at New Hope-Solebury Lower Elementary School.  She polled them on which sites, pastimes and events in the town were their favorites.  This gave her excellent criteria for what to include in the book and what to leave out – a kid’s-eye perspective of what is most important in the town. From this information she fleshed out the story and then historian Roy Ziegler wove the history of the town into the narrative .

An illustrator needs a finished manuscript, or at least a very-nearly finished one, to start working on a project. When the authors brought me this manuscript it was approximately 10 pages long, typed and double-spaced.  We envisioned this becoming a 32-page fully illustrated book, since 32 is a typical (though not exclusive) number of pages for a children’s picture book.  (Createspace accepts as few as 24 pages for a book.) Throughout our design process the manuscript underwent editing, but the basic page count and storyline was established with the first manuscript.

The authors had suggestions as to what should be depicted on some pages, but they left most of the art decisions to me.  As I mentioned in my previous post, we wanted to create a pencil sketch dummy book to show to prospective donors to the project.  Gayle had tentatively broken the manuscript into page-by-page chunks of text, so from that I started the design process by drawing small, very loose sketches called thumbnails, and making small double-page spread layouts.

You’ll see how these thumbnail sketches changed through our progress – and some changed a lot.  But this basic layout showed us the flow of the book, and we could see which pages perhaps needed more descriptive text or more room for art. At this time I also started gathering a lot of photo reference material about the subjects in the book – I went to New Hope for an afternoon and took photos of the buildings from various angles, and collected pages and pages of reference from websites and books. After this step I felt I could start the dummy book, which I’ll write about in my next post.

You can obtain author-and-illustrator signed copies of ‘Let’s Visit New Hope’  at http://www.newhopehs.org. My next post coming soon: The Dummy Book. Please write any questions in the comment box below the post. If you want to read future posts as they are published, subscribe to my blog by clicking on the +Follow box at the lower right of your screen and you will get email notifications when I have posted the next article.

Self-publishing ‘Let’s Visit New Hope,’ Part 1: Inspiration and Timeline

The new children’s book ‘Let’s Visit New Hope’, written by Gayle Goodman and Roy Ziegler and illustrated by me, Pat Achilles, has just been released by the New Hope Historical Society. We used Amazon’s online publishing service, Createspace, to publish it.  This series of posts will follow the steps in the creation of the book.  

The authors of Let’s Visit New Hope contacted me last summer to ask my availability for taking on a book project.  Author Gayle Goodman, who has worked with grade-school children in the area, was the motivator, having realized there are no children’s books devoted to the unique, historic town of New Hope.  Roy Ziegler is a local author and historian whom Gayle brought on board for his particular expertise in the history of the area.

Art (c) M. Sasek

At our first meeting Gayle brought along two books from her childhood that somewhat inspired her to develop this project – and they became my inspiration as well. This is Paris and This is San Francisco are two of dozens of children’s books created by the incomparable architect-illustrator Miroslav Sasek in the 1950s and 60s.  They are delightful romps through famous cities of the world, with a dizzying number of beautiful illustrations drawn by Sasek, with the skill of a master but a child’s eye for fun.

They made me eager to do a book in this same vein, for our lovely local town of New Hope. The authors and I needed first to rough out a timeline for its production.

The authors had notes for the book but not a finished manuscript, and they planned to approach the New Hope Historical Society and other resources for grants or donations to pay for the art and production of the book.  From their typewritten manuscript, I would lay out the book from page 1 to 32, deciding which text and what art would go on each page.  I would sketch the illustrations and paint the finished art. And then the whole piece would be turned over to Createspace for printing – Roy had used Createspace for his other books and found good customer service and easy navigation. So basically we had to estimate the time needed to write the manuscript, gather donors, lay out the book, create the illustrations and have it printed.

Our ballpark estimations were developed: a couple weeks for the manuscript to be written; a month to lay out the book; 3 months to create the art; and a month to get it printed.  The task of soliciting donors, we decided, would come after I laid out the manuscript as a dummy book with pencil sketches.  We felt it would be a big selling point for donors if we could show them an approximation of what the book would look like, and also, having a 32-page dummy book would prove that we were serious about getting this book made.

Art (c) Pat Achilles

While we initially hoped to have the book ready for sale in December for holiday gift-giving, this was unrealistic for a full-color 32-page book. Instead we targeted March 1, which is Benjamin Parry Day in New Hope, as our hoped-for launch date.

In discussing the events and family-friendly places to include in the book, Roy suggested the idea of having Ben Parry himself – known as the Father of New Hope – be the narrator of the book, leading the reader through the town’s history and culture.  The Historical Society celebrates Parry’s birthday on March 1 at his historic home in the center of the boro, so Benjamin Parry Day was indeed the perfect time to aim for in introducing our book.

‘Let’s Visit New Hope’ is available at http://www.newhopehs.org. My next post coming soon: The Manuscript and Thumbnails. Please write questions in the comment box below the post and I will answer them asap. If you want to read future posts as they are published, subscribe to my blog by clicking on the +Follow box at the lower right of your screen and you will get email notifications when I have posted the next article.

My new children’s book about New Hope, Pennsylvania

Since last September I’ve been working on the illustrations for a new children’s book, Let’s Visit New Hope by Gayle Goodman and Roy Ziegler. The authors, who live in New Hope, found no children’s book anywhere devoted to this unique, culturally rich river town, and so set out to create a book that would highlight its history and family-friendly sites and events.  I’m honored they asked me to provide the artwork!

I’ll be writing more posts about the process of developing the book and my illustrations here in my blog, and I’ll be happy to answer questions if you’d like to leave comments. We used Amazon’s Createspace to self-publish the book, and I can answer questions about self-publishing too since I’ve worked with other authors to self-publish.

Our book launch is on Sunday March 1, at the Parry Mansion in New Hope, and the public is invited.  It’s the perfect place for the launch since Benjamin Parry, the man who built the first ‘Hope Mill’ after which the town is named, is our narrator for the book.