CROPPING AND CREATING - Teresa Flavin on writing her latest novel 'The Shadow Lantern'............. by Theresa Breslin

This post is a response to request from a follower of the History Girls Blog who asked for insights into writing. It follows on from various conversations I’ve had with the writer and illustrator Teresa Flavin, and to satisfy my own curiosity and fascination with labyrinths and magic lanterns and other sic things.

 Teresa Flavin is a Glasgow-based children’s author and illustrator. Her illustrated fantasy novel for 9-14 year olds, The Blackhope Enigma, was published in 2010 by Templar Publishing and was long and short-listed for numerous book awards, including the 2011 Scottish Children’s Book Awards. The sequel, The Crimson Shard, was published in 2011 and was also nominated for several awards. The final book in the trilogy, The Shadow Lantern, was published on 1 May.  
http://www.templarco.co.uk/fiction/teresa_flavin.html

I knew Teresa first as an illustrator. Originally from the U.S.A. she moved to Scotland a number of years ago and we met at a writers’ conference. The first thing I wanted to know was why, as an established artist and illustrator, was she attracted to writing novels for young people? She replied:

I had been illustrating children’s books for some time so the idea of writing children’s stories was a natural progression. I wanted to illustrate a wider variety of stories and decided to try my hand at creating texts that would excite me artistically. I also knew of editors who were interested in seeing picture book manuscripts from author/illustrators and set out to write stories that I could present with a dummy book and one or two finished sample images. But as I worked on texts of just a few hundred words, I was attracted to many complex ideas that were far more suitable for longer stories. They began as what Tim Bowler calls “a whisper in the head”, then became an insistent buzzing and eventually pulled me away from picture books altogether. I began to discover my inner fourteen-year-old and became caught up in telling the fantastic adventures of two art-enthused teens that bore similarities to myself at that age.

So then of course, the question that many of us are asked…. Why historical? In Teresa’s books this is a thread within the stories. She told me that she doesn’t recall making a conscious choice about this, and went on to say…

Preliminary sketch of Blackhope Tower for The Shadow Lantern.

I had been reading an intriguing and spiritual book about labyrinths and they were very much on my mind. My first novel, The Blackhope Enigma,was an exploration of this daydream/question: what if a young person could walk around a labyrinth and be so transformed by the experience that he or she is transported someplace else? And what if that place is below the surface of a Renaissance painting? I have been fascinated with such paintings since I was very young and have always wondered what it would be like to enter one.

I reckoned that for such a thing to happen there would have to be enchantment involved, but I was unprepared for what I found when I poked around the history of Renaissance art and magic. I became completely lost in research for some time, endlessly reading about grimoires and memory palaces, Hermeticism and alchemical imagery. Suddenly the idea of hidden worlds below a painting did not seem so far-fetched; plenty of people in sixteenth-century Europe would have believed it possible in a world where one was surrounded by magic and wonders.

One historical path led to another and I was discovering so many amazing things that my stories acquired layers, characters and details I could not have imagined at the start. I was hooked. I wanted to unearth and weave more fantastic elements into new stories, to bring odd bits of history alive in the adventures of young contemporary characters.

Teresa’s books are special in that Art and Language are melded in the narrative and I wondered how she tackled doing this. Her answer tells me as much about her views on painting as it does about language.

I wanted young readers to see and feel the richness and strangeness of the worlds I created, but I had to be careful not to weigh them down with description. When I make a painting, I hope that it’s not overworked or leaden; it needs to “sing” to the viewer. Therefore my approach has to be simple, confident and from the heart. I’ve come to think that writing about art is the same. There needs to be just enough detail to entice and to set the reader’s imagination alight. It’s a delicate balance and involves just as much cropping as creating.

I love that expression “as much Cropping as Creating”. I also loved the first book (and the rest!) and really wondered how she'd approach any follow up story and indeed how they would be linked them to each other.

The second and third novels, The Crimson Shard and The Shadow Lantern, grew organically out of The Blackhope Enigma. There was no over-arching story, no grand plan from the start. Instead there were fascinating strands to take up and some new elements to explore, such as trompe l’oeil murals, alchemy and art forgery in The Crimson Shard. Early magic lanterns and spirit photography were inspirations for The Shadow Lantern. I enjoyed digging into these elements, putting them together and seeing what could happen.

I discovered how easy it is to lumber a narrative with too much background information! I ended up identifying with young readers who had not read the first or second book. What do they need to know? Will they become confused? How can I help them? The problem was that I was a bit too ‘helpful’ at times and there was a lot of back-story pruning that had to be done. Again, this is a delicate balance, achieved after much feedback from my editors.

One of the great pleasures of writing a trilogy was in spending more time with my main characters. At the beginning I had the daunting prospect of getting to know them, challenging them, making them grow and change. By the second book, I had a good idea of who they were and how they moved through the world; by the final book, it was a pleasure to be with them and to find out how they would approach the next obstacle I placed in front of them.

It would be great to have feedback on Teresa’s thoughts and books – please do get in touch.

I’ll leave her with the last word about writing the series, and hope that others have the same experience in their own writing.

It’s been a wonderful journey…

The Shadow Lantern has recently been published in the UK by Templar Publishing. To learn more about Teresa’s novels and artwork, visit her new websites at http://www.teresaflavin.com/



http://www.theresabreslin.co.uk/ http://www.facebook.com/Theresabreslinauthor
Twitter: @theresabreslin1

LATEST BOOKS
Spy for the Queen of Scots shortlisted for the Young Quills Award
The Traveller (from dyslexia friendly publisher Barrington Stoke)
Divided City Playscript now available.

From the Sketchbook: The Colour of Danger

By Teresa Flavin

This month’s sketch is the preliminary drawing for a pen and ink illustration in my young adult novel, The Crimson Shard, set in an 18^th century forgery sweatshop run by a rich and mysterious overseer. An impoverished painter instructs the young forgers on how to cut quill pens from goose feathers and makes them draw animal skulls in ink for practice. When their skills are proficient enough, they begin to forge master drawings and paintings. Obsession, greed and danger are never far from the secret workshop.

Writing about forgers obliged me to find out how forgers ply their trade and this in turn led to research on how Renaissance artists worked. This dark path led straight into the history of paint pigments and their fascinating connections with alchemy.

As a young artist, I gave very little thought to where my materials came from, except perhaps for charcoal sticks, which seemed to come direct from roasting in some fire-pit. It wasn’t until I learned that the pastels I used were possibly poisoning me that I began paying attention. Pastels are powdered paint pigments bound with gum arabic or gum tragacanth into sticks, and their dust can contain toxic substances such as cadmium. With great regret, I gave up pastels and learned how to use other far less dangerous paints.

I benefitted from the development of safer, permanent pigments, but painters of the past had to deal with unstable and poisonous materials. Cennino d’Andrea Cennini, a 15^th century Florentine artist, listed the attributes and dangers of early colours in The Craftsman’s Handbook, translated by Daniel V. Thompson, Jr. For example: “A colour known as orpiment is yellow. This colour is an artificial one. It is made by alchemy, and is really poisonous.” Cennini recommends artists seek other dangerous pigments from “druggists” rather than making it themselves. The medieval apothecary also served as art supply shop. It is not difficult to imagine containers of pigment, some derived from the scales of cochineal beetles or the glands of snails, sitting next to medicines brought by traders from around the world.

On a recent trip to London I visited L. Cornelissen & Son, artists’ colourmen since 1855. Colourmen appear to have traded in London since 1725, providing specialist art materials to artists and hobbyists. The Cornelissen shop bears a distinct resemblance to an apothecary with its numbered wooden drawers and shelves bearing jars of ground pigments and resins. They even supply “early colours” that were used by the ancient Egyptians (including the dreaded Orpiment, as well as Malachite and Realgar, another pigment that Cennini warned against) and the Romans (Verdigris and Azurite).

I was astounded to see a jar on their shelf labeled “Dragon’s Blood Pieces”. Dragonsblood is a pigment said to be the combined blood of dragons and elephants in mortal combat. It is actually a tree-based resin used as a red varnish, brought from India by early sea traders. Cennini advised that “dragonsblood” was “used occasionally on parchment, for illuminating. But leave it alone, and do not have too much respect for it; for it is not of a constitution to do you much credit.”

However enthralling it was to see Dragon’s Blood Pieces (and Dragon’s Blood Powder) on the shelf, I had eyes for one colour only: Vermilion. Cennini gives explicit advice on purchasing Vermilion from the apothecary and on how to work the pigment up, but his description is almost bland. Vermilion is a dramatic colour, not least because it was so perilous to produce, but because of the symbolic meanings of its two main components, sulphur and mercury. Vermilion resulted from the alchemical “marriage” of the complementary elements of Fire (sulphur) and Water (mercury), which also corresponded to Heaven and Earth. Even though vermilion occurs naturally in cinnabar, the pigment made by alchemical processes had great sacred meaning and was integral to the alchemists’ search for the Philosopher’s Stone.

Vermilion has a very hazardous side. Inhaling mercury fumes or the pigment’s dust could debilitate an artist and even kill him. It was not the only pigment reported to have affected a painter. Michelangelo is believed to have suffered from lead poisoning (on top of his alleged gout) and a recent excavation of Caravaggio’s bones suggests he had lead poisoning when he died.

As I stood in Cornelissen’s shop, dazzled by the jars of powdered colours, I thought of the perils artists had gone through to create beautiful work. How many of them toiled through illnesses or died of complications from poisoning? We marvel at the riches they left us, not realising the price they may have paid.

THE CRIMSON SHARD is published in the UK by Templar Publishing. Teresa thanks L. Cornelissen & Son for allowing her to take photos of their premises.