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Back to Featured Interviews >> MEET IRINA MIRSKAYA
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| Irina Mirskaya |
As a child I loved to play with my friends, sew, embroider and make stuffed animals. I was also an avid reader and my mom had to hide books from me so I would do my homework. I loved folk and fairy tales, poetry, adventures, you name it. I read Russian authors and lots of books translated into Russian from French, English, Spanish, Yiddish, and so on. I also wrote poems, and was even published in children’s magazines and interviewed by local radio station. Painting and drawing came later, towards the age of 13-14. I came across a book on Russian miniature paintings on lacquer boxes depicting folk tale images and was completely hooked. Their vivid colors against a black background won my appreciation from first sight. In my paintings, I tried to resemble those highly stylized miniatures with watercolor and gouache on paper. With years my own style evolved, although I still treasure my collection of books on Russian lacquers and the actual lacquer boxes I have. Oh, and I still keep my doll and puppet-making hobby, you can check out my puppets here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=1788&id=100000137343682&l=e9ad952b39
When you went to college, were you already pursuing a career in illustrating? Or just art in general?
When I was graduating from high school back in Russia, I didn’t think seriously of a career in art. As I equally liked a lot of subjects, I went for a technical degree, because I felt it would provide a stable future. I graduated with Masters in Computer Science and worked for three years as a computer programmer until my family and I immigrated to USA. My first real job was at a textile printing plant, designing for fabric using graphic design programs. Here my experience with computers and art seemed to meet perfectly. I enrolled in a Textile Design Program with exceptional instructors Ann Waterman and Gina Woodruff at Otis Collage of Art and Design to supplement my working knowledge. I also continued to paint and took a Greeting Card Design class at Otis, which resulted in several greeting card licensing contracts with Ethnographics and Cardstore.com. After graduating, I was offered to teach a Textile Design course at Otis to the senior year students. I was teaching this class and later, Greeting Card Design (I had several greeting card lines by then) for about four years. During my time at Otis I also was taking additional classes, such as drawing, figure drawing, botanical illustration, watercolor painting. One of those classes, Children’s Book Illustration, taught by wonderful writer/illustrator Dolores Johnson, led me to the children’s book industry!
What kinds of things inspire you to draw and paint?
I find inspiration in nature, in the works of my favorite artists, in literature. Meeting with creative friends is always a huge push to create as well. SCBWI plays a big role in keeping me inspired by providing a network of like-minded professionals and an array of conferences and workshops on a variety of kids’ lit topics. Participating in monthly schmooses of SCBWI illustrators is a great way to stay inspired and get a lot of practical advice. I am a member of two of them – OC Illustrators and Westside Illustrators, and made many friends participating in both. On one of those meetings I met the legendary Bob Singer of Hanna Barbera, who’s critique and advice were of invaluable help to me while working on my first picture book.
What is the topic of your book? When is your book going to be in bookstores?
The book I recently illustrated, WE LOVE THE COMPANY, written by Angela Russ-Ayon and published by OurRainbowPress, is currently available in stores and on Amazon.com. This is a book about table manners, written from a child’s point of view, in a poetry form and includes an audio CD with the song, read-along track and instrumental track – a lot of fun ways to explore the book. The illustrations are executed in watercolor and I used a resist that acts like a white outline of the image and resembles batik.
Was your first book accepted immediately? Or did you experience a number of rejections?
The author of WE LOVE THE COMPANY, Angela Russ-Ayon, showed samples of my work to her publisher, and I got a contract. It may sound as an easy way to get in, but there is a lot of preliminary hidden work. Taking class with Dolores Johnson, being an SCBWI member for several years, participating in SCBWI schmooses and conferences gave me all the information I needed. I was constantly working on my portfolio and developing new samples (one of which got me a job).
I have had my share of rejections with some other projects. I hope that the experience I’ve gained working on WE LOVE THE COMPANY will help me to get those projects to a publishable condition.
As an illustrator, how much freedom do you have in the way you do your illustrations?
Working on the WE LOVE THE COMPANY I was very fortunate to have a lot of artistic freedom with my illustrations. Both publisher and the author liked my painting style and agreed with me that the illustrations need to be humorous and fun to keep kid’s interest in the subject. I decided to paint using “batik technique”, to give the illustrations an ethnic feel, and to incorporate decorative borders with healthy food images. That’s where my textile background came in handy: I used bits and pieces of the main picture as pullouts to create the borders!
OurRainbowPress is a small independent publisher, and I was able to work close with the author, Angela Russ-Ayon and the production team, preparing my illustrations as close to “production ready” as possible. When the book dummy was complete it was reviewed by an editor and we had a list of suggestions on how to improve it. Revisions were made in both text and sketches, which led to a better product.
What are you working on now? When do you expect to start submitting it to publishers?
Angela and I are considering some ideas to pitch to a publisher. On my own I am working on translation and retelling of a couple of Russian folk tales, one of which is complete in a book dummy format to be sent to publishers and another – only in a text form. I also work on a number of illustrations of my favorite folk tales (Russian, Slovak, Swedish) to put in my portfolio and on my website. Aside from the picture book projects, I started a research for a biography of my favorite artist, who’s paintings of the Russian folklore scenes and heroes were a major influence of mine.
Please visit my website to see samples of my work:
IMillustration.com