Last time, Graeme Base told us about his interest in the works of Mervyn Peake and Lewis Carroll. He talked about his musical career, and how he became an artist. He revealed why he was fired from the advertising industry. He told us about his first book, his more recent work, and his love of travel. He finished by commending the persistence of childhood. Now read on.
DC: I'm interested in the technical aspects of how you work.
GB: In terms of pen on paper? I work on a hot press illustration board. It's not very flexible; you can't wrap it round a scanning drum, for instance. "Hot press" means it's a very very strong surface. Some sorts of board are a little bit flaky, but hot press is incredibly smooth - it feels like glass almost - but it still has a certain amount of give, and paint will soak in. It's good for doing very high quality airbrush work.
DC: Do you use the airbrush much?
GB: I do, yes, for backgrounds, sky, and so on. When I first discovered the airbrush, I went through a stage where I thought it was God's gift to artists. I used it on everything, and everything turned out looking like plastic. It was very unrealistic, so now I only use it sparingly, for just those occasional atmospherics.
DC: Do you work in oils?
GB: No. No. I use no oil paint at all; I find working with oil paint akin to wrestling in mud. It's a most extraordinary thing that people manage to do anything with it at all.
I work in much finer materials, because of the nature of my work, and that's generally transparent inks, a little bit of gouache, white gouache perhaps, watercolours, watercolour pencils, that sort of stuff. It's a much more fragile medium than oils, but it also dries a hell of a lot quicker.
I work with a scalpel as well, where if I was doing fur I could scratch away areas of colour. I use that effect quite a lot. And a lot of coloured pencil work, lead pencil work, anything that will do the job. I'm not a purist by any means.
DC: You work on your own. You must be able to set yourself some sort of work schedule?
GB: The work schedule changes according to how I feel. There are times when I have a heavy deadline that has to be met. I have to force myself through times when I don't feel like working; the danger there is that the work can become second rate. It's much better if I can afford the luxury to stop working, to realize This is just not feeling good.
I just stop, wait for a couple of days or maybe a week, and do other things that are less demanding or that I feel good about, and then go back to the picture when I feel ready to start again, when I've got through the block.
'Cos some pictures can take months. Some of the Animalia pictures took over two months. And certainly during that time there were days when I said: "Look, I've lost this. I'm too close to it; piss it off. Put it up on an easel somewhere, on top of a cupboard, anywhere."
I even put 'em on the dinner table, and forget about them, and the pictures just stay there. And then I'll be eating or watching television or something, and I'll look across and say:
And then I'll gallop into the studio and I'll work half the night, 'cos I'll suddenly be enthused by it again.
There's this funny sort of struggle with a piece of artwork, and you often get way too close to it and have to stand back. That's why people like Robyn (Base) and Bob (Sessions) are so useful as critics because they understand the process, but they're removed from it. They're distanced enough to be able to come straight in and say, "I'm not sure what's wrong, Graeme, but there's a problem here."
And I'll go: "Oh, rubbish! What are you talking about? You wouldn't know one end of a paintbrush from the other!" And they just let me calm down about it, and eventually I'll admit: "Yeah, you're right." I get away with murder because of the artistic temperament. Which doesn't really exist for me, I don't think.
DC: There's such a thing as artist's block, like writer's block?
GB Sure, yeah. Yes. I'm going through a great stage of that now. I haven't any inspiration to go into the studio at the moment whatsoever. The only thing I want to do is buy a 40-pound hammer and a great big pair of overalls and get going on renovating this house.
DC: Where's the studio?
GB: In the house here, looking out into the street.
DC: You don't find it difficult having the studio at home?
GB: Oh, it has its good and bad. I suppose everybody who works at home will say it's terrific because you don't have to go to work. But then you never come home from work either; it's always there. I think the nature of my work is such that it's good to be working at home, because when I'm not inspired I can wander round the house, I can do some odd jobs, I can do whatever. I could go down the beach if it was a good day.
But if I'm really cookin', I can work right through and it's not like working back at the office. I'm still at home and can have a meal and that sort of stuff; it's so flexible.
I really like it. I wouldn't change that part of the business. It'd be nice to remove just a little bit. The bottom of the garden would be perfect. Especially if we ever have a family, getting away from the kids would be pretty important.
Because Robyn and I are both working from home in the artistic field. Robyn has a studio upstairs at the back, and I have a studio downstairs at the front. We're close enough to be able to say "Hi" at various times during the day, or "It's not going well, let's do something else". Occasionally, Robyn will come down and criticize my work. Much less often, I'll be invited up to her studio to look at what she's doing, 'cos Robyn's much more private about her work than I am. I quite enjoy people coming in to look at what I'm doing so that I get feedback.
DC: Do you find it odd that both of you have an interest in painting and in music?
GB: I think the two often go together. You very often do hear of people in bands who were once at art college. Maybe they did it as a soft option or something, but I wouldn't be convinced of that. The artistic temperament isn't restrictive; it's to be expected that it may manifest itself in more than one way.
The problem is that it causes some conflicts in career choices. Like, a lot of people think I would have to have my head read not to produce another book right now. Because I have so many ideas for books, and I know that at least three or four of them would work well.
Why on Earth aren't I doing it? What am I doing mucking about with renovating a house, when I could get someone else to do it for me? Why am I trying to be a musician when I've never had any luck in that whatsoever?
It's because I utterly believe in following my artistic nose. I won't embark on any project until and unless I feel good about it. It's a terrific luxury I'm talking about here, because of the success that Animalia and The Eleventh Hour have achieved.
DC: No starving in a garret for you?
GB: Well, no (laughs); but it was! Well, it wasn't exactly a garret, but it was certainly not knowing where the rent was coming from. Robyn was doing emergency teaching; and I was actually selling pictures to pay the rent because we didn't have enough money some months. So we had to find somebody to flog a picture to.
DC: How did you go about flogging your pictures?
GB: (Laughs.) Oh, ring up my friends. "Hey you know that picture you liked so much. How about you buy it, invest in it?"
But since those two books, it's been possible to think in broader terms about creativity, and say: "No, I really feel I want to try to develop this musical side, or work on set designs, or on an idea for a book that will take five years and may not sell in the end."
I haven't got an idea exactly like that at the moment, but I have that option. To some extent, that is; it's not going to last forever, I've got to be a little bit more careful.
DC: Can you talk about any of your ideas?
GB: Ahh-h. Let me think. (Deep breath. Thinks.) Two of them would be collaborations, where the stories have already been written. I won't go into details about them, because when you have the germ of an idea and talk about it, some other person may pick up the idea, even unconsciously, from an article or something, and things can go very wrong. I'm a little bit guarded about them, because some of these ideas may not even get done for ten years.
I'm working on some set designs for the Victorian Arts Centre - for their educational side. It's an idea I've been developing with some guys there. I'm designing the costumes, the sets, that sort of thing.
DC: What's the theme?
GB: Science fiction, believe it or not. (Laughs.)
(Thinks.) Robyn and I were away for two months just recently in North America and South America. We went to the Galapagos Islands, and also to Peru, and some of the jungle areas – the head-waters of the Amazon – and I saw some fantastic stuff there that has inspired me to do some books with jungles, and ancient architecture from the Inca sculpture in Peru.
I also did a spot of scuba diving, and now I've come back with an idea for doing a book set totally underwater. The only time you'd see the sky is through the water. I get excited because I think: "Gosh, I've never seen anything like that, and I wonder what it would be like to do a book set totally under water." That's another idea.
I'd also love to work in the theatre; I have some ideas for musical theatre type work. Not musicals necessarily as such, but set design and that sort of thing.
There are all these interlinked areas, and although it's lovely to have the choice, it's also a bit stressful trying to work out exactly what to do. The only answer to that is to let things percolate through to the top, and wait until I'm sure about what feels dead right, and what doors open widest, and then say: "This is obvious."
DC: After you've told other people your ideas, you don't let them suggest the directions in which you should go?
GB: They can suggest, sure. Like my publishers suggest I do a new book; but they have a slightly vested interest.
I suggest I just wait and see. I very strongly suspect it will be musical. I also strongly suspect it'll never make a brass razoo. But it really doesn't matter. The thing I can say with all honesty about Animalia and, very luckily, about The Eleventh Hour, is that neither of them was done with a sense of commercial gain.
I mean, Animalia; when you think about it, who the hell needs another alphabet book?
DC: There must be thousands of them.
GB: Thousands indeed. And if I thought about it for half an hour; about "Is this going to make any money, Graeme? What are you doing?", I wouldn't have done it.
But I said: "This, to me, is a vehicle for ideas; for drawing animals, which I love; and for putting in lots and lots of detail. The whole concept of the book seemed the perfect vehicle for the sort of artwork I enjoy. So I just started doing it.
The fact that it took three years was almost like career suicide. Imagine not producing anything for that amount of time, and then having this one expensive elaborate alphabet book come out at the end of it.
I mean, the publishing history was extraordinary with that book. For the first year, I couldn't get a contract on it. Bob Sessions was very keen to publish it, but he wasn't able to fund me.
To some extent, I didn't want a contract, either, because he couldn't supply me with enough in terms of an advance to let me work on it full-time, and I thought there was a very good chance that the whole project would just die. I'd get half a dozen letters done, and that'd be it. Just one of those things that never gets finished.
So for the first year, nothing happened. And then an overseas publisher, an American publisher – Abrams, an art book publisher, one of the best art book publishers in America – saw the work at Frankfurt Book Fair. They said: "Yeah, we'll do an American edition of this; here's ten thousand dollars to keep you going." And I worked away on that basis for another two years.
When it finally came out, Penguin in Australia gave it a great vote of confidence by having an initial print run of 11 000. That was success in a big way, because the normal first print run for a kids' book is five or six.
And I thought, well, we've done it. It's been worth it. Even though I'll never make my money back, it's been worth it.
So imagine our joy when about a week before the publication date – the book hadn't even gone on sale yet – the booksellers' interest in it was so great that Penguin announced a re-print of an extra 10 000 (where usually re-prints are 2000). So this was it, we had 21 000 in print a week before it even came out. A week after the release date, Penguin announced a reprint of another ten thousand and then another ten and then 25, and then 15. And so on, and on and on. In Australia so far we've printed 175 000 and close enough to half a million copies world-wide. Those are bananas sort of figures.
The great thing – the point I'm trying to make, I'm not just spieling out figures – is that it wasn't planned. I followed my artistic desires and it just happened to work.
I was very lucky with The Eleventh Hour because it was the same. It was one of those ideas. Bang! it hit me, and I thought: "Oh this is great." And I knew I'd do it even if it didn't make any money.
Again, it seemed a perfect vehicle for my sort of artwork. There were the animals, there was the detail of hiding clues and playing games and stuff, which is what I love doing. So it was just another perfect little thing, which came along at the right time for me.
DC: How has The Eleventh Hour gone overseas?
GB: Oh, The Eleventh Hour hasn't been published overseas yet (September 1989). We're off next month to Canada, America and England to do a promotional tour when it does come out. The original print run in the USA is 200 000. That's a record, I would imagine, for an Australian. So it just goes on and on. They're as keen as mustard over there; it's fantastic. (Almost apologetic.) I don't know why it happened.
DC: What art work, and what books, influenced you as a child?
GB: I must say Lord of the Rings was a tremendous influence on me. And the surrealists – Magritte and Dali, in particular – were fascinating to me as a high school student.
From a much earlier age, I enjoyed the work of A.A. Milne, Kenneth Graham, very British sort of things. 'Cos I lived in England until I was eight; we came to Australia in 1966. That was the sort of stuff I used to read.
And yet my earliest memories of "bedtime" are not of books at all. They're of my dad bring in the old mono record player and playing the Saint-Saens Carnival of the Animals and Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, and Sibelius and Dvorak and Mendelsson and all these things, so it's really no wonder that I've grown up with a great love of music and a desire to be involved in music. That was a tremendous influence on me when I was little.
DC: So is all your family interested in music?
GB: Oh, yes. Not players, although Dad forever wishes he'd learned how to play the cello. He's actually a civil engineer – he's retired now. Mum sings in a choir and she plays piano, but in a minor sort of way. Neither of them has really followed it through a great deal.
Neither have they in art, but they've always been terrifically encouraging. When I went home and said to them: "Hey, I'm going to be a commercial artist", there was none of this "No you're not, you're going to be a civil engineer or a doctor or lawyer or something." It was: "Terrific, great. Draw us a picture now." They were very very encouraging.
DC: Have they forgiven you for using their telephone number in the Jabberwocky book?
GB: (Bursts into laughter.) It wasn't. Who told you that?
DC: I saw the phone number in one of the illustrations when I read the book, and thought: It can't be. And then I looked it up in the phone book, and there it was.
GB: Did you ring it? Because actually it was a really really wicked thing to do. It was the telephone number to my own flat; except that I knew that by the time the book came out I'd have moved, because we'd already been given our eviction notices. So I said: OK, fine, I'll put it down. I can imagine everybody ringing: "Hello? Who is this? Hello?"
DC: Have the people who moved in contacted you?
GB: I suppose somebody got the number and I daresay they do get rung every now and then. But I flew the coop. Which was a pretty nasty trick to play, but I think that's one of the things I like doing. I know consciously that when I put the telephone number in the picture, I thought: "I know people are going to ring this. "Bewdy! Bewdy! Got 'em."
'Cos it's the same sort of wickedness that's in The Eleventh Hour all the way through. I love putting in all these little red herrings. But they're gentle; I'm not trying to be too frustrating.
After all, The Eleventh Hour is not a puzzle designed to frustrate. If you want to, you can solve it (clicks fingers) just like that. And that's fine. That was very conscious; it's not as though there's a flaw in the logic of the book. There is a very definite way out, a safety valve. Yet for people who have the desire to use their powers of deduction or observation or whatever, they've got that option. And I'm also just having a bit of fun with 'em: finding out how far they can be pushed before they crack.
But there's lots and lots of ways of solving that mystery. That's what I was working on. For the first year I was working out the levels at which I wanted to put the work. I didn't want it to be just a kiddie book where the parents would say: "Oh, it's so obvious." At the same time, I didn't want to do something that the kids would be totally frustrated by.
So I had to really hit this middle mark, or even better, have different ways to solve it. People who saw things in obvious and simple terms would see through it. Other people would rack their brains. The cryptologists could do their stuff. So I let there be many ways of coming to a solution, so the book would work at lots of levels.
DC: From start to finish, how long did it take you to do The Eleventh Hour?
GB: Two years. So I'm getting quicker, 'cos Animalia was three. But there's a lot of down-time during that, where I wasn't actually brush in hand at the artist's easel. But it's work when you're still churning it through: having a picture sitting on the dining room table, trying to work out what's wrong with it. All the period of developing concepts and working out codes and doing research is part of the process of creating the book. If you're talking about just the physical artwork time, you could cut it in half, but then the book wouldn't be the book it is.
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