SUSAN JEFFERS BIOGRAPHY I BOOKS I PRESENTATIONS I BOOK ORDERING
done the same things. When I was little, my best moments were spent drawing pictures, reading stories with my parents, playing with friends and sitting by the Ramapo River dreaming of horses. This has not changed. Being a children's book illustrator has combined all of these things.
Literature has been a great support in my life. The story of Black Beauty kept me company growing up. I longed to be as gentle and steadfast as he was. I was inspired by Velvet's courage and wanted to win the Grand National on my beloved piebald horse like she did. I remember sitting in the choir loft deciding on how I would illustrate the Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen that my parents had read to me. Retelling that story to myself got me through many tedious moments. I wished I were as brave as Gerta but I was pretty sure that I was the wayward Kai and my older sister, Judy, was going to have to come rescue me from the frosty Queen. I loved these stories, they always asked me to be the best I could be.
The first part of my work is to find a story that inspires pictures in me. It is like being a dancer and having to wait for the music to move your feet. Everything comes from this.
I enjoy researching books like Hiawatha so much that I have trouble extricating myself from old photos and first person diaries of being captured by Indians, which are, of course, more stories.
For the most part, I work in pen and ink and gauche, an opaque watercolor. I make thousands of little lines with a fine pen to describe the forms. This looks hard, but it is actually the easiest part and is very relaxing. The most difficult part for me is telling the story with the right relationship of composition and characters to convey the emotion of the story. This requires making many little drawings, called thumbnail sketches, until the drawing says what you want it to say, hopefully. Sometimes this does not happen.
My favorite things to do these days are riding and studying dressage with a beautiful horse named Hans, (Hans is much the better student) and painting landscapes and portraits. Happily this is a lot like my work.
I graduated from Pratt Institute in 1964 and published my first children's book five years later. I've been honored with a Caldecott Honor, a Golden Kite SCBWI Illustrator's award, a Society of Illustrators Award of Merit, a Golden Apple Award given by the Biennale of Illustrations at Bratislava, and an American Booksellers Book of the Year (ABBY) Award, and Brother Eagle, Sister Sky has been a New York Times best seller.
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