How I came to Illustrate Julefreden by Lars Hamann.

In early 2024 I moved from Australia to Viborg Denmark.

One week after moving into a lovely old apartment in Viborg I felt it would be a great idea to become a part of the community and participate in local events. I searched online and found a lecture about the history of Viborg at Nytorv 3. It was being held in an old beautiful old building which used to be an old pharmacy in the Centre of Viborg.

At that Lecture I met Lars Hamann who is project manager at Vi Er Viborg and also a Danish author who mentioned that he was looking for an illustrator to created and illustrated of his children's middle grade novel. I mentioned that I was an illustrator and I showed Lars some of my previous fantasy illustrations and he decided my art style would be perfect.

Lars mentioned that his book Julefreden had been printed two times prior. This year Lars wanted to publish a fully illustrated version of the book. The book had previously been published each year by Norhaven for We are Viborg as a free giveaway for schools to read with the children before Christmas as a resource and as a fun activity. It is also handed out to tourists and visitors.

Two previous print editions of Julefreden by Lars Hamann.

At our first meeting Lars brought a few books that illustrated the feel he would like for Julefreden. This gave me a good gauge for understanding his preferences for the illustrations.

We agreed that I would create 12 illustrations. I would draw one illustration for every second chapter. This would create excitement for the characters adventures but not overwhelm the reader or detract from the story.

The manuscript I received was in Danish and so I used Google to translate it for me. It was a bit of a mess and I had to try to navigate the manuscript, write copious amount of notes and confirm information with Lars.

I read the manuscript three times or more and tried to really get a feel of the strongest visuals that could potentially add value to the story. I didn't want to draw what was already written and neither did I want to take over the readers imaginations because that is the fun of reading and immersing yourself in a book. Therefore, I needed a lot of thinking and doodling time to test concepts and to see where I could potentially fill some gaps in Lars's written descriptions.

I put myself in the shoes of a young Bibi, what would delight or frighten me about the story's creatures, the danger the central characters were experiencing and what questions I would have.

I drew up a layout sheet of how the illustrations would flow and created very rough sketches. At our next meeting I showed Lars my illustrative roughs and asked if they suited the concepts he had envisioned. He was happy and so I continued with his preferences and suggestions.

Rough sketches of some of the characters and situations.

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