Susan Mitchell

Workshops

As a children’s book illustrator, I like to think that I am helping to bring an author’s story to life. In this presentation, I show children everything that goes into doing this, from first being given a story, to making rough sketches of the characters and scenes, to painting the finished picture book. Using examples and materials from my own experience, I take children through all the various steps. I then answer their questions before reading from one of my published books.

I like to do something that involves the children, so a fun activity is having the children help me to create new characters. I have three groups of cards with character names, type of character (e.g., bear, robot, etc.) and names of places. I mix up the cards and pick one from each category. I then ask the children to help me imagine what these characters look like. Is he/she short or tall? What colour hair? What is he/she wearing? Holding in his/her hand? etc. On a large pad I will draw their suggestions. This is really fun and everyone gets very animated. If the group is small (around 40-50), the children get a turn to draw and develop their own characters also.

After the activity, I like to end the presentation by reading from another of my books, and answering any last questions about being an illustrator. At the beginning of a presentation, I find younger children are often shy to talk and let their teachers ask all the questions, so it is good to give them another opportunity once they are more excited and involved.

Finally I hand out some photocopied pages to colour so that the children have something to take back to class.

Special Equipment:

A flip chart with a pad of blank paper and a marker.

Biography

When Susan was a child, her mother would read books to her and her sister every night, and they loved the magic of looking at the intricate illustrations from books such as Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and Wind in the Willows. The sisters would then spend hours making up their own stories and creating illustrations for them.

It seemed a natural progression to study art as an adult and she received a degree in Drawing and Painting from Edinburgh College of Art in 1984. She had various jobs after graduating, but unfortunately none of them had anything to do with illustration. Her most interesting and creative jobs were working as a scenic artist’s assistant at an old theatre and running art workshops for community groups.

In 1994, she emigrated with her husband from Scotland to Montreal. Just before leaving, she visited a gypsy fortune teller who told her she would not only move across the water and have an only son, but begin illustrating children’s books. This prediction encouraged her to pursue her illustration career instead of just dreaming about it. Shortly after a friend helped to put her portfolio website together, Susan received her first book contract to illustrate The Christmas Pop-Up Present for Simon & Schuster.

Susan now feels very fortunate to work full-time as an illustrator, with 15 published titles. When she is not drawing or painting, she loves to sew and make soft toys that resemble her illustrations. She has an ever growing collection of picture books and still loves to read stories and look at beautiful artwork.

Susan is married to children’s author P.J. Bracegirdle and has a son named Ewan.