Children’s book illustrator
EVELT YANAIT
She is collecting interesting scenes from the real world and capture them in her sketchbook.
She then puts some fantasy in it and voila…
a realistic imaginative illustration that make people feel all kind of emotions!
Which piece of your artwork would you like to share with the kids that follow “The virtual Kids Gallery”? Can you tell us some interesting facts about it?
This is a picture to illustrate my passion for drawing (and cats!). The parents are upset (that’s why they are in the shadow. Their faces are not shown, to keep the mystery, but their body expressions tell us what we need!) and the girl knows she’s in trouble (see how she’s hiding her pencil), but her passion for drawing was irrepressible. It’s usually a good idea to add a touch of humor (in this case, the cat hiding its paw too). I’ll tell you a little secret: the picture on the wall is a real illustration I made when I was a little girl.
You are a children’s illustrator! Do you still feel like a child when you do an illustration in a story?
Kind of! When you draw characters and stories, you must imagine them first on your head, and when doing this I always remember the kind of sensations and expectations that were in my head when I was a little girl reading a book. When you write or illustrate for kids, you must navigate through their world, and it’s important to keep visiting it frequently. It helps to be often surrounded by things that inspire you and remind you that world: peculiar things, pretty books, amazing stories, imaginative people…
When did you first realize you want to be an artist?
I knew I wanted to be an illustrator since I picked up my first pencil! When I was little, I could be drawing and painting for hours and hours (same as now!). I used to want to be a writer as well. I have achieved one of these and I hope to be writing my own storybooks soon!
Can you recall when you made your first piece of Art?
I have always drawn, but I also enjoyed any kind of crafts, like building paper houses for my dolls, designing cardboard cities for my toy cars, or making gifts for my family with the unexpected materials I found. I think ‘art’ is not a single piece of craft, but an attitude that we all have since we’re kids. And we can make it grow!
Did any of your art teachers give you a tip that you still remember/ you follow.
I’ll give you two tips:
First one: think on the characters as part of different stories. Never draw a character just standing, or just walking.
People hardly ever stand without doing anything. Try to create a story for each character to see what she/he is doing, how and why, and try to make it interesting or funny. For example, instead of drawing two friends walking, you can draw two friends walking while taking the dog for a walk, but the dog has seen a cat and he has escaped from the kids, which are surprised and trying to reach the dog.
Another example: instead of a couple standing at the bus stop in silent, you can make them arguing, or it could be raining and their umbrella has turned upside down.
There’s another tip that helped me a lot: always carry a sketchbook on your backpack and draw the things you see trying to copy them from the real world.
You can go to different places with the ‘secret’ mission to find interesting things and capture them on your sketchbook, as if you were collecting them for the most amazing collection ever seen! A big one! You can draw everything you want, even people! It’s difficult at first, but you learn a lot doing so and you’ll see soon how you improve your skills! After doing that, you can play with the picture inventing fantasy things to complete it while exercising your imagination!
When you make Art, what do you think?
Usually I realize, after some minutes drawing, that I’m feeling the same as the character I’m drawing. Like, if he’s surprised, I find that I have my eyebrows up, or if he’s angry, I find that I have an angry pose on my face. I mainly think on how the character is feeling.
Is Art and an artwork… happy or sad?
I think art is emotion, as happy or as sad as life itself. The emotions are the most important in an illustration: even more than an accurate representation of the bodies or things. There’s a nice exercise you can sometimes do to improve your skills: make a list of emotions, and then ask someone to tell you a random thing to draw (for example, a car). Then you have to draw this thing in different moods or emotions. For example: happy car, sad car, angry car… but not just using its mouth and eyebrows, but also using colors, weather, body position, type of landscapes… It’s a good idea to start an illustration thinking mainly on the sensation you want to get on it.
Do you have any “primitive” artwork of yours from your childhood?
This is the drawing that appears on the wall of my other illustration!
Thank you for your project and for inspiring kids around the world!