F
iona Woodcock’s début picturebook, Hiding Heidi (Simon & Schuster Children’s Books) is visually quite sensational. With clever splashes of colour and pattern in pencil drawings and plenty of white space, Fiona Woodcock tells the story of Heidi, who loves to play hide-and-seek and has a knack for blending into backgrounds. She and her friends play it often, and she always wins, though she sometimes feel that not being easily found isn’t such fun after all. In her guest post for Picturebookblogger, Fiona mentions how she created Hiding Heidi as a “silent film”, before adding the text and undoubtedly the visual storytelling really shines. The mix of screen print and drawing create an soft, dream-like atmosphere which matches the imaginative play of the children.
The ingenious play with patterns and colour will delight young readers, and their use to convey feelings and emotions works fantastically well and is perfectly pitched. Beautifully lyrical, this is one stunning début, and Fiona Woodcock is definitely one to watch.
I am delighted to welcome Fiona to Library Mice as part of the Hiding Heidi blog tour to talk about the place she works:
Where I work
by Fiona Woodcock
I have a studio set up in my flat in South London. In the middle of the room there’s a big fully extended 1950’s formica topped kitchen table that I’ve had for years. I sit there for most of the day drawing, painting and printing on an angled light-box. From there I can look out at the sky and reach all my art materials. Then when I’m done there I turn around and scan everything into my computer which is all set up on a long table.
My boyfriend’s design journals and books are crammed onto our shelves along with my stash of art books and children’s books. Which makes for a nice library of inspiration to dip into.
I’ve had this inspiration wrack for years, which is an ever evolving collection of my latest work and inspirations. Almost a precursor to my instagram account. This picture is from a few years ago, when my love of fluorescent pink was at its height!
It’s a lovely space to work in and gets great light. It tends to fluctuate between tidy order and messy controlled chaos depending on where I am on a deadline!
This picture was taken a while ago by a dodgy old webcam that crashed following a Skype call. Please excuse the poor picture quality, but I like how it documented the scene whilst I was working away – oblivious of the fact that I’d accidentally left the camera on. Various attempts to recreate this picture have failed to capture the same genuine moment of concentration.
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Many thanks Fiona!
Hiding Heidi is out now and can be purchased here.
