Journal of Literature · Night reading at the moment
Night before bedtime reading, a beautiful article, takes you into the world of memory of reading.
Today's night reading will take you into the Chinese childhood in picture books.
In the field of original picture books in China, Liu Xun is a rather eye-catching creator. Her work "Teeth, Teeth, Throwing the Roof" won the fourth "Feng Zikai Children's Picture Book Award", and in 2018, she won the 2nd Jingdong Literature Award for Children's Picture Book Original Work of the Year with "Wing Baby".
How did the picture books that impressed children and adults go from the flash of inspiration to the final publication? What kind of unique creative "secrets" do those writers and painters who are willing to paint children's hearts have? In the era of rapid progress, does China's original picture book need to be slow, wait for patience, and slowly move forward with children?
Today's night reading brings you a creative talk by Liu Xun. In the text, she tells you what she thinks and thinks in her creation with sincere words: waiting to be familiar with some places, waiting to be familiar with a creative, waiting to be familiar with children.
Wait out the picture book
Liu Xun | wen
I've spent more than a decade getting to know my children, and now I'm creating picture books for them. To create a picture book, you need to be more humble, and humility does not have to be crouched down to speak in the language of the child, it is a wish, a desire to abandon all kinds of ramblings to keep the child growing.
Those authors who are known as picture book masters at home and abroad are undoubtedly some childlike people who are good at creating happiness. Their works are easy to fit with the child's heart, and the content in the book corresponds to the child's ideas, bringing unexpected surprises to the child.
And those quiet and simple works, you need the author to be sincere enough, humble enough and confident enough to resonate with the child: treat yourself as a child who is not deeply involved in the world, inject more flowing cells into your own works, leave traces of your own growth in the works, slowly present a book after a book, grow in the works, and wait for one day to create a picture book that is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
Some of the picture books created by Liu Xun
Wait to get acquainted with some places
When I was conceiving a picture book, the content of the story and the imagination of the scene would appear in my mind at the same time, because my painting was a realistic style, so the scene selection needed to be very real and concrete.
I have a folder of more than 200 gigabytes in my computer called "Everyday", which contains photos that I usually take and when I go out to collect wind. Sometimes I just take pictures to leave a beautiful moment, and sometimes I just want to get acquainted with a place. If I want a place to be a scene in my picture book, it's not enough to just visit once or twice and take a series of photos. It's as if we want to write about a person, just have some brief conversations with him, only have some superficial understanding of him, and we can't write about this person very movingly.
In my opinion, to choose a scene for a picture book is to be familiar with this place, not only to be familiar with the distribution of the houses here and the direction of the sunset and sunrise, but also to be familiar with the changes here in different seasons, to be familiar with the lives of the people who live here, and to feel the traces of the lives of the people in the corners and corners, to experience the temperature and feel the spirituality of this place. In this way, when creating, you will design and arrange a suitable scene with a loving mood.
The preliminary work of a picture book for me is to visit the place to be painted many times, waiting to get acquainted with it, I believe that familiarity is more important than beauty, because familiar with it, the beauty that flows inadvertently during creation will be more impressive than its original beauty.
In December 2013, my first self-written self-written picture book, Teeth, Throwing the Roof, was published, and when I drew the book, I didn't feel very difficult because I had lived in the old town of Nanjing for 20 years and began to visit some of the remaining old streets and alleys in Nanjing since 2005. Later, when I was given the task of creating this picture book, I took my daughter to the old alleys of Nanjing many times to collect styles.
The cover of "Teeth, Teeth, Throwing the Roof" was drawn with reference to a photo taken in 2005, the house on this photo is long gone, and I used it as a cover to commemorate the spring festival in 2005 when my father and I first came to nanjing to collect wind.
I was very emotional when I drew the cover, and in those years, I visited again and again, and I never thought that I would use these materials to make a picture book later.
Some readers have told me that the book "Teeth, Teeth, Throwing the Roof" is very realistic and evokes their childhood memories, and I think that the book has only 16 pairs of pages, and the reason why it can impress some people may be because the pictures in the book are selected from thousands of photos.
Illustration of Teeth, Teeth, Throwing Roofs
Wait to get acquainted with an idea
When I read a picture book, I often marvel: the idea of the book is so good, the idea of that book is amazing. However, when it is your turn to create, you will be more hesitant, often an idea will feel good when it first appears, but after two days it will feel that it is very uninteresting and not worth mentioning.
In fact, sometimes it is not that this idea is bad, but because we and this idea have just met and have not yet become acquainted.
In the spring of 2015, the editor of the China Youth News Agency called me and said that he wanted to ask me to write a wordless book about winter and asked if there were any good ideas. On the phone, I casually told a small story I made up on the way to send my daughter to school: on a winter morning, the child saw the heat he exhaled turn into a white elf on the way to school, and along the way he saw many pedestrians exhaling such white elves, and when they came to the school, the children's white elves and the elves of their classmates gathered together to become a huge cloud, floating above the school.
The editor thought it was good after hearing this idea, and asked me to write the general story content into a text. But I still had two books on hand that I hadn't finished, and I wasn't enthusiastic about the idea, it was just a very ordinary one of the stories I usually made for my daughter, and if the editor hadn't called me, I might have forgotten the little story very quickly. But the editors told me very seriously that they were willing to wait for the manuscript to take shape and let me take the time to write the manuscript.
During that time, I was in a hurry to paint "As If", and I didn't have the heart to think about other stories, until August of this year, when I was admitted to the hospital because of a small physical problem, which had to stop my work. On the third night after the operation, I thought about the patients I met in the hospital during the day, some of whom had cancer, and I felt sorry for them and felt lucky at the same time.
I remember that night the nurse aunt slept soundly next to me, she made a uniform snoring sound, I took out my mobile phone and began to write the story of the "HaQi Elf", this time, I designed the HaQi Elf as a humble hippopotamus, it first came to this world and was curious about everything, it jumped on the roof, it climbed the high lampstand of the street lamp, it played while accompanying its little master to the school, came to the school it reluctantly said goodbye to the little master, and then joined the big team and became a cloud. I lay in my hospital bed and slowly typed out the story word by word, and began to have a little affection for this idea. After I was discharged from the hospital, I sent the manuscript to the editor, and soon the editor's feedback came, they said that the topic had been approved, and then I signed the contract.
In the winter of 2015, I began to create another picture book "Wing Baby", during which I took time to walk in the street, the streets of Nanjing in winter are beautiful, the dead branches of the plane trees are intertwined and fill the sky, I feel that the street in front of me is like an upside-down lake, the tree is a huge aquatic plant, I imagine that the "HaQi Hippopotamus" is actually not flying in the sky, but swimming in the lake. When I bought breakfast at the breakfast stall, I saw the hot air wafting out of each stall, and I thought that the Ha Gas Hippos would like these hot elves. When the smog came, every car turned on the headlights, they passed in front of my eyes, I would feel the headlights were very glaring, and I thought, will the Ha Gas Hippo feel nervous because of these lights? In this way, I gradually became familiar with this hippopotamus, and its movement expression and its thoughts would appear in my mind from time to time.
Illustration of "Ha Gas Hippopotamus"
In the autumn of 2016, the picture book "As If" that I cooperated with Teacher Qin Wenjun won the first "Picture Book Times Award", and after getting the prize money, I quickly used the money to buy a drone online, and after some tossing, the drone could finally fly into the sky. The drone took the place of me to look down on the streets of Nanjing, I remotely controlled the drone to rise, fly, turn around, look up and down, drop... I think the pedestrians, vehicles, streets in the eyes of the drone are what the Haqi hippopotamus sees, this new perspective makes me feel happy, I think, the first time the Haqi hippopotamus came to this world, all the scenes in its eyes should be so fresh and magical.
In the winter of 2016, although I had not yet started sketching the "Ha Gas Hippopotamus", I already knew this little hippopotamus very well, and I liked it, and I wanted to move it from my head to the drawing paper. Finally, my previous picture book", "WingEda", was finished, and then I began to draw "HaQi Hippopotamus", because this hippopotamus floated in my head for two years, and it was relatively easy to draw, and the one hundred and fifty sketches of large and small were almost completed in one breath.
In December 2017, "Ha Gas Hippopotamus" was published. If there is no editor's original insistence, this idea may have been forgotten by me a long time ago, but if the idea is implemented immediately after the idea is set, the work may appear hollow, only the skeleton has no flesh and blood, and some imaginary content will not be convincing, let alone touching. Therefore, after having an idea, we need to wait for a while to become familiar with this idea, and this kind of waiting is actually the protection of the author himself, just like we warm up fully before exercising, and the muscles are not easy to be injured during exercise.
There needs to be a period of mental friction between the author and an idea, and in the long drawing process, the author will not have the pressure of self-doubt and can experience pleasure in creation.
Wait to get acquainted with your child
To do a good job in children's picture books, getting acquainted with children is a lesson that cannot be bypassed. I often think that if I had chosen to make picture books before I was thirty, it would have ended in failure, because then my mind was full of art, and some of my own stuff occupied the main part of creation. Later, I had my own children, and I had a small studio, where I taught the children to draw, and over the course of more than ten years, I gradually became acquainted with the children, and at the same time met the child in my body again.
The more I interact with my children, the more willing I am to think in their shoes. For example, when preparing for the lesson, I will consider where the child's interest points are in this lesson, and what kind of story may be hidden in the painting to be drawn in this lesson. You will also consider which step of drawing will make the child feel very boring, which age of the child can cut which kind of thick paper when doing handicrafts, which kind of pen cover is easy for children to open, which kind of pen cover needs to take some effort to open...
In the process of getting along with my daughter, I also realized that every child has a password lock in his heart, and only by opening his password lock can we really get close to the child and help him solve the confusion in his heart. Maybe just a naughty little joke, and a little story, or a set of little cartoons, can solve the problem.
Illustration of Winged Dolls
When I was young, I loved and was afraid to look at the huge pine trees on the side of the road, because every time I saw them, I felt as if they were turning their heads and ears, and when twilight came, they would stagger and walk.
When I was a child, I loved walls, and at school, I secretly put the chalk heads discarded by the teacher in my pocket every day, and when I came home, I painted all my love and hatred on the wall behind the front house of my home. I also found a loose brick, pulled it out, and often wrote a very small letter to tuck it in, which I thought the old wall could understand.
When I was in the third grade, my family bought my first electric fan, and I would sit in front of the old-fashioned fan for a long time, imagining that the blue shiny base was a huge palace hall, and I was a very small and tiny person, and I could see my reflection when I walked back and forth in the hall.
Later, I don't know when it started, maybe I was too busy with my studies, maybe I grew up, and these imaginations of mine were far away from me, and my feelings about everything were blunted.
When I was eight years old, my mother had her fortieth birthday, and my father took me to a foreign bookstore to buy a set of tapes of Beethoven's 1st to 9th symphonies as a birthday gift for my mother, and I still remember that it was a big red gift box with a circle of golden edges around the box, which was very beautiful. For a long time, my mother would play Beethoven's music while doing housework, and the sound was very loud.
I asked my father why I didn't think the music was good at all. My father replied to me, "When you grow up, nature will like it, and Beethoven is a great man." Later, I grew up and listened to all kinds of music, pop, folk, rock, world music, until I was 31 years old, one night, while painting and listening to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with headphones, suddenly burst into tears, an indescribable feeling and gratitude rushed into my heart.
Illustration of Liu Xun's work "Riddle"
I have spent more than ten years with my children, and now, I create picture books for my children, and it may be much more difficult to create picture books than to teach children to draw and accompany their daughters to grow up, because teaching children to draw is only to teach them a single skill, and growing up with their daughters is just watering a small flower. And the creation of picture books requires more humility, humility does not have to crouch down and speak in the child's language, it is a wish, a desire to abandon their own scattered to guard the child's growth.
Picture book authors will talk to many, many invisible children when they are creating, tell them stories, and tell them a little bit of prophecy in words that children can understand, tell them what is true beauty, tell them what we need to keep forever.
New Media Editor: Jin Ying
New Year's Cultural and Creative Season
Postal code: 3-22