{"id":1412,"date":"2012-01-25T08:33:29","date_gmt":"2012-01-25T08:33:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bridgetothestars.net\/news\/?p=1412"},"modified":"2012-01-26T09:07:40","modified_gmt":"2012-01-26T09:07:40","slug":"interview-with-illustrator-kate-baylay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bridgetothestars.net\/news\/interview-with-illustrator-kate-baylay\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with illustrator Kate Baylay"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our friends at Cittagazze<\/a> have interviewed Kate Baylay, illustrator of the wonderful new Everyman’s Library<\/a> edition of His Dark Materials, and have kindly allowed us to share this interview in English.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00c2\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/center><\/p>\n

CITTAGAZZE.COM interviews KATE BAYLAY, illustrator,
\nJanuary 2012<\/p>\n

Kate Baylay is 22. She obtained an illustration degree this July at the University of\u00c2\u00a0the West of England, in Bristol. She recently created the cover for the new UK and US \u00c2\u00a0edition of Philip Pullman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s His Dark Materials<\/em>, her first commissioned work. She\u00c2\u00a0kindly agreed to answer our questions, sent by e-mail.<\/strong><\/p>\n

ON DRAWING<\/strong><\/p>\n

How long have you been drawing? When did you decide to become a professional\u00c2\u00a0illustrator?<\/strong><\/br><\/p>\n

K. Baylay: I have always enjoyed drawing very much. While I was taking art at sixth\u00c2\u00a0form I decided to study illustration at University and ever since then I knew I wanted\u00c2\u00a0to be an illustrator.<\/p>\n

What is the difference between drawing for pleasure and for professional\u00c2\u00a0purposes?<\/strong><\/br><\/p>\n

K. Baylay: The main difference is that when I am drawing for professional purposes I\u00c2\u00a0have to find inspiration from subjects chosen by other people. When I draw for\u00c2\u00a0pleasure I choose my favourite books and stories . I was very lucky with the His Dark\u00c2\u00a0Materials cover because I found the books so interesting and inspiring, it was a very\u00c2\u00a0enjoyable project.<\/p>\n

Do you exclusively illustrate or do you work in other fields as well?<\/strong><\/br><\/p>\n

K. Baylay: Illustration interests me the most and it is the area of art I’m best at so I\u00c2\u00a0mainly draw for illustration.<\/p>\n

How do you work? What are your tools and how long does it<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0usually take to complete a drawing?<\/strong><\/br>
\nK. Baylay: I do the line drawing by hand and then scan it in with different painted\u00c2\u00a0textures and complete it on photoshop. Depending on the piece of work it usually\u00c2\u00a0takes me a couple of days to finish it.<\/p>\n

WORKING ON\u00c2\u00a0HIS DARK MATERIALS<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

How did you get involved on the His Dark Materials<\/em> project?<\/strong><\/br><\/p>\n

K. Baylay: I showed samples of my work to Everyman and they told me that this\u00c2\u00a0project was coming up. Naturally I was very interested in pursuing the chance to do\u00c2\u00a0the cover illustration so I submitted some ideas.<\/p>\n

Do you read a book differently when you have to illustrate it?<\/strong><\/br><\/p>\n

K. Baylay: I find that I always visualize books and stories when I’m reading them and\u00c2\u00a0often feel inspired to illustrate them even if that wasn’t my purpose in reading it.<\/p>\n

How did you create this cover? What were your choices to translate the content of the trilogy into images?<\/strong><\/br><\/p>\n

K. Baylay: I thought Iorek Byrnison was such a central and arresting character I\u00c2\u00a0immediately felt inspired to make him the main focus of my illustration. I wanted to\u00c2\u00a0have the pivotal characters represented by their daemons because I found them such\u00c2\u00a0an interesting concept and the church was to represent the religious themes in the
\nbook.<\/p>\n

Did the publisher make any comment on the work you submitted? Was there any\u00c2\u00a0modification required?<\/strong><\/br><\/p>\n

K. Baylay: There were a few changes I needed to make and I had to submit a few ideas\u00c2\u00a0before the final illustration was accepted.<\/p>\n

For His Dark Materials<\/em> and for Roald Dahl’s Completely Unexpected Tales<\/em>, you\u00c2\u00a0created a cover with animals rather than humans. Was it a deliberate choice?<\/strong><\/br><\/p>\n

K. Baylay: For the His Dark Materials cover I focussed on animals because they have\u00c2\u00a0such a large role in the books as the daemons all have animal forms. I found the idea\u00c2\u00a0that the form of each daemon reflected the personalities of their people very\u00c2\u00a0interesting.<\/p>\n

What do you feel when seeing your own work on bookstore shelves?<\/strong><\/br><\/p>\n

K. Baylay: It’s very exciting! Particularly as Philip Pullman is such a well known and\u00c2\u00a0respected author, I feel very proud to have my illustration on the cover of his book.<\/p>\n

Finally, what are you working on at the moment?<\/strong><\/br><\/p>\n

<\/strong>K. Baylay: I am currently working on a new project and hope to get more commissions\u00c2\u00a0for book illustrations.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Thanks to Kate for her answers, we wish her\u00c2\u00a0all the best for her career. \u00c2\u00a0You can find out more about Kate Baylay\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work and order art prints on her website: www.katebaylay.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our friends at Cittagazze have interviewed Kate Baylay, illustrator of the wonderful new Everyman’s Library edition of His Dark Materials, and have kindly allowed us to share this interview in English. \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","category-the-book-trilogy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridgetothestars.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridgetothestars.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridgetothestars.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridgetothestars.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridgetothestars.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1412"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/bridgetothestars.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1455,"href":"https:\/\/bridgetothestars.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1412\/revisions\/1455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridgetothestars.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridgetothestars.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridgetothestars.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}