I have resurfaced briefly to write about a pair of workshops I attended today by Kathleen Jennings. Kathleen is a talented, Brisbane based artist whose works grace the pages and covers of numerous books. If you did nothing else but visit her website, that would be enough to realise how incredible it is that she would travel up to the small heritage town of Maryborough. Maryborough, the town known amongst certain circles as having the most pubs per capita in all of Australia.
Describing Kathleen as an illustrator would do her a disservice. A more fitting term would be storyteller. A bard who sings with a pen.
Her first workshop, Marvellous Birds, opened my eyes to the power of whimsy and reinforced the importance of putting something down on paper. We drew circle birds, beaky birds, fancy birds. We drew birds from books, from figurines, from each other’s drawings. Lots and lots and lots of birds started filling up the pages. It was truly marvellous.
In the second workshop, Narrative Art Masterclass, Kathleen’s treatment of the craft is a combination of how a vet is with a cat, a philosopher is with a Rubik’s Cube, and with some pop-rock candy sprinkled in between. She found a way to inject fun and richness into storytelling, combining familiar senses and familiar stories in unfamiliar ways. From Three Little Pigs and A Knight’s Tale I wrote one magical line: The wind and the wolf conspired to change the stars.
I really like the fresh perspective that Kathleen brings to storytelling. It’s a bonus that she’s as generous as she is ingenious, and she has an encyclopaedic knowledge of fiction. Today was the most fun I’d had in months.
Describing Kathleen as an illustrator would do her a disservice. A more fitting term would be storyteller. A bard who sings with a pen.
Her first workshop, Marvellous Birds, opened my eyes to the power of whimsy and reinforced the importance of putting something down on paper. We drew circle birds, beaky birds, fancy birds. We drew birds from books, from figurines, from each other’s drawings. Lots and lots and lots of birds started filling up the pages. It was truly marvellous.
In the second workshop, Narrative Art Masterclass, Kathleen’s treatment of the craft is a combination of how a vet is with a cat, a philosopher is with a Rubik’s Cube, and with some pop-rock candy sprinkled in between. She found a way to inject fun and richness into storytelling, combining familiar senses and familiar stories in unfamiliar ways. From Three Little Pigs and A Knight’s Tale I wrote one magical line: The wind and the wolf conspired to change the stars.
I really like the fresh perspective that Kathleen brings to storytelling. It’s a bonus that she’s as generous as she is ingenious, and she has an encyclopaedic knowledge of fiction. Today was the most fun I’d had in months.
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