Story lava, seaweed cyanotypes, and a return to my roots

Story Street #18

Welcome to Story Street – a monthly newsletter from children’s author/illustrator Jane Porter. Read on for ramblings about my life as a picture book maker, community artist, comic diarist, and very, very amateur luthier.

Remember the quilt I mentioned I was planning to make? Well I’ve started, by making these seaweed cyanotypes! During April I’m going to start putting some pieces together, so look out for more on this project soon…

Buckets of stories

March began with a hectic couple of weeks of World Book Day events. As a picture book maker, it’s always great fun to visit schools and help inspire children to come up with their own story ideas. Their bubbling enthusiasm is contagious – it’s like watching a volcano erupt, with plots and characters flowing around the classroom like lava, and I always want to catch them all in a big fireproof story bucket.

I love listening to the way very young children communicate…

And seeing all the World Book Day costumes is always entertaining. Hats off to the boy who wore an inflatable lobster costume ALL DAY!

I had a lovely time back at Evelina Hospital School making character passports and story maps with children on the wards. Here’s my samples:

Maybe I’ll make some stories about these characters one day. They all arose from the squiggle game, where you swap squiggles and make them into something new, and some wonderful new characters emerged on the wards as a result.

I was very grateful to two wonderful independent bookshops, Nomad Books in Parsons Green and Alligator’s Mouth in Richmond upon Thames, for supporting my events with book sales. Both shops are SO friendly and offer perfectly curated selections of children’s books – do drop in if you find yourself in those parts of town.

Don’t forget author visits are not just for World Book Week – and I can do them online too! If you are a teacher and would like a visit, you can read all about it here:

Comics and capybaras

Meanwhile my doormat has been piled high with exciting post from around the world – mini-comics from my online students for our zine swap. Themes this term were ‘a strange place’ and ‘something inspired by a painting’ – and once again my students have delighted and amazed me with their inventiveness and wit!

It’s been a great term - we’ve made comics about capybaras and flamingoes, a terrible mix-up in a ship’s cabin, misunderstandings and more. I’ve had so much fun seeing what everyone comes up with in response to each week’s prompt.

If you’d like to join in, I’m now taking enrolments for the summer term, which starts on Wednesday 24^th April. I made this video to explain all about how it works:

Spaces are filling fast! And it’s still a very reasonable £175 for ten weeks. You can find more details here:

…and read what the students say below:

“This is by far the best class-experience I’ve ever had! Thanks for letting me jump in” Barbara, Switzerland

“I really love having dedicated time to work on comics. It’s been such a lovely course and I’d love to continue again – I keep telling everyone how fabulous this course is!” Denise, Chicago

“I want to thank you for your workshops, all the hard work you put into it. It is so well made. I loved it! So thank you again!” Malu, Belgium

“I learned so much over the last 10 weeks and can’t wait to find a bit more time to play with some of the ideas I was playing around with in class. If you want to do comics and need a little friendly nudge, I highly recommend Jane’s classes!” Zara, Virginia

Six steps forward, four steps back

Remember in Story Street #17 I proudly showed you the blocks that will be part of the violin I’m making? Well, hubris has caught up with me - things went horribly wrong from there. I was over-enthusiastic with the planing, and four of the blocks ended up too small.

I’ve had to start again - several times, and I’ve been hiding the failed blocks in my pencil case because I’m so ashamed. But I’m planning to redeem the situation by making the wasted blocks into woodcuts to print with... watch this space.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how utterly different the process of making a violin is to how I usually work – I don’t normally measure anything, ever! And now I am grappling with the concept of measuring to a tenth of a millimetre with a gadget I’d never even heard of before: Vernier calipers.

When I’m drawing, I follow my instincts, go with the flow, and all that sort of arty stuff – every bit of which is very strictly banned in violin-making.

But I am telling myself that getting out of my comfort zone is good for me… and dreaming of the day when I can freestyle a bit with the carving I’m planning to do on the back.

Further adventures with my great-grandfather’s fiddle

Regular readers might remember the story of my family fiddle, rudely traduced as a ‘shed job’ by a fancy London shop, and more recently beautifully restored in Edinburgh. A couple of weeks ago I brought it to the Niel Gow festival, which takes place once a year in Birnam - where my great-grandfather actually lived! You can read the full story about the fiddle here:

On the train up to Scotland, I had a strong sense of taking the fiddle home, and my mind was marvelling at the idea of this instrument having been played over 100 years ago in the same place. I wish I knew what tunes he had played - some of them were sure to be by fiddle legend Niel Gow who also lived in the area. One of the many highlights of the festival was hearing Niel Gow’s ‘Lament on the death of his second wife’ played on his actual fiddle. There were concerts and workshops by some extraordinarily talented players, and each night a multitude of sessions. This scene from my diary gives you a sense of the atmosphere at the Taybank in Dunkeld - for something entirely ‘unplugged’, it was ELECTRIC!

I stayed with a fiddle friend who lives nearby, and she also introduced me to beautiful Glen Lyon - thanks Imogen!

There was something magically wild about these horses running about in the rain. Look at those floppy fringes!

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading Story Street - I’ll be back with more on May 1st.