Mary GrandPré in SLC and the canonicity of her artwork (long)

[Dicentra spectabilis]

As was announced on The Leaky Cauldron, Mary GrandPré, who created the
cover art and chapter illustrations for the Scholastic editions of HP,
gave a lecture at the Salt Lake City, Utah library on Saturday, Nov.
15th.  The SLC denizens from HPfGU and SugarQuill arrived in costume
an hour early and got third-row seats in the stadium-seating
auditorium: Dooda, FoxyDoxy, GrannyBat, Dicentra (me), Lilac, Wahlee,
and a few others from SQ whom I did not know.

I thought I'd share some of the interesting tidbits she shared with us.

She's been doing illustrating for 20 years; during the latter 10 she's
been involved with children's literature. She and her husband are
originally from Minnesota, but they recently moved to Florida.  In
fact, that move was one thing that prevented her from being a keynote
speaker at Nimbus 2003.  They moved to Florida where her husband took
a job as head of an art school.  She mentioned that she's seeing
Christmas decorations in the palm trees and thinks: "Give it up,
people; you need *snow* if you're going to do the decorations."  For
that reason, she appreciated the snow-covered mountains surrounding SLC.

She showed us slides of her work, but none of it from her work for the
novels because she doesn't own the copyright to those illustrations --
Scholastic does, and I think she said Warner Brothers has some rights
to it as well.  As the illustrator for a chapter book, she is paid a
lump sum for her work, which is then the property of Scholastic, and
does not get any royalties for her artwork. (That's a standard
contract feature in the publishing world, not Scholastic being tight.)
 She does own the copyright when she illustrates a picture book,
however.  

She was very diplomatic when talking about her compensation, but she
hinted that she was suppressing a rant.  She did say that Scholastic
worked out an arrangement for her to get extra compensation in lieu of
royalties (I got the impression that it wasn't even close to what
royalties would have been), and that her compensation has increased
with each novel, though I imagine not by near enough.  She mentioned
that she also created the lightning-bolt font for the cover of the
books, for which she was not compensated.

She began drawing when she was five, and her parents eventually bought
her some pastels, which were the least messy of the artistic media (as
opposed to watercolors and oil paints, I suppose).  All of her current
artwork is in pastels, including the HP cover art.  She told us that
her dogs tend to track the pastel dust all over the place, so there
are multicolored dog tracks everywhere.  She doesn't use a mask to
protect herself from the dust (though she says she should probably use
one), and imagined that the inside of her lungs is probably
multicolored.  Nice image, I think.  

She uses her finger to blend the pastels: she says that finger oils
set the chalk, whereas tissues and other paper smudgers lift the chalk
from the paper. She does not prepare the paper with a coat of gesso
prior to applying the chalk, but she did show us something she'd drawn
on a piece of scrap plywood that she did prepare with gesso.  The wood
grain showed through, creating a pleasing texture.  She used to use
fixatives to set the finished work, but she has stopped that because
she believes the vapors are hazardous.

She cites Marc Chagall as her primary influence, with Pollack, Hopper,
Moore and others whose names I didn't take down as other important
influences.  In Jr. High, she was known as The Artist and did stage
design for the plays.  She went to a Minneapolis school of art design
and waited tables for 15 years before taking a leap of faith and going
freelance full-time.  
She has done some teaching, but feels that she's not very good at it,
since creating art and teaching it are two very different skill sets.
 About 10 years ago, she developed her current style, which she calls
"soft geometry."  She didn't develop a personal style before that
because the paradigm in the illustration community was that one should
learn a variety of styles to accommodate different projects.  Then the
paradigm shifted, and now illustrators are expected to have a
trademark look to them.

She showed us slides of some of the illustrations she's done over the
years.  They are all much cooler, IMO, than her HP work.  The faces of
Fleur, Cedric, and Krum on the cover of GoF carry signs her trademark
facial style but Harry doesn't.  She showed us the illustrations from
"Plum," a book of poetry by Tony Mitton, "Chin Yu Min and the Ginger
Cat" and "Pockets" by Jennifer Armstrong, the cover of Time Magazine,
conceptual drawings for the movie Antz, and other little illustrations
for magazine articles and pamphlets.

Her artwork is truly remarkable.  It's extremely imaginative, highly
stylized, and she uses bright colors with gusto. At some point, she'd
like to publish a book of her non-Potter artwork.  She and her husband
are creating a children's picture book right now: Amazon has its
release date at March 2004.

When David Saylor at Scholastic told her that Time wanted her to do
the cover art for their lead story, he said something like: "But I
guess you're very busy, so this might be one to turn down."  She said
that most artists dream of illustrating the cover of Time since their
earliest years.  "What? Are you crazy?  Of course I'll do the cover."

The art director at Time wanted her to emphasize that HP was getting
boys to read, so her first sketch showed three boys (facing out)
reading a book underneath a huge portrait of Harry.  She was peeved
that they were emphasizing boys: granted, boys *were* learning to like
reading because of HP, but there were plenty of girls involved in the
phenomenon, not to mention crusty old adults.  Her second version
showed the backs of the boys' heads (she hoped one of them could pass
as a girl).  The final version shows Harry only.

As for the Harry Potter series, this is how it all happened:

One day, David Saylor called her and said that they had a manuscript
for a chapter book called Harry Potter and the School of Magic that
"might be a series, but we'll probably do just the one."  She almost
didn't take the job, but then she read Book 1 and really liked it. 
They told her (I assume after the first book took off) that there
would be three books in the series, then they said five, and finally
they said seven. 

She makes three preliminary sketches and they choose one, "they" being
the Scholastic editor and art director.  She does not confer with JKR
on the illustrations, because the editors want the artists to come up
with their own interpretation of the story. (This is also common
practice in the children's book industry.)   This means, then, that
the illustrations are NOT CANON.  So much for finding secret clues in
the cover art.  Sorry!  She did meet JKR once in Chicago when she was
doing book publicity.  She told GrandPré that she likes her covers the
best.

However, JKR does approve her preliminary character sketches, but
she's very willing to let GrandPré bring her own artistic vision into
the art -- which means that she very likely approved Snape With Goatee
and other renderings that fans dislike.  GrandPré's favorite character
after Harry is Hagrid, whom she models after her St. Bernard.  She had
deliberately avoided the movies to preserve her artistic vision and
only recently saw them. (I assume after she did OoP.)  She appeared to
be reasonably satisfied with the art direction in the movies, but she
*really* wanted to mess up Dan Radcliffe's hair.  "He looked too...
British.  Too well cared-for."  We informed her that the publicity
photos from PoA show a scruffier hairstyle for Harry.  She seemed
pleased. 

Of all the non-Bloomsbury artists to do HP cover art, she is the only
one who gets to read the manuscript before creating a cover.  Security
concerns keep the mss. out of the hands of other artists, which
explains why some of the foreign-language covers are so goofy.  She
never knows when the manuscript is going to be sent to her: someone
from Scholastic calls her and utters a code word to tell her that the
manuscript is being sent to her, at which time she has to drop
everything and work on HP.  She can't discuss the book with anyone,
including her family members, and she has to sign all kinds of
confidentiality agreements to that end.  

She says that reading is very difficult for her (dyslexia?), and that
we fans know the books far better than she does.  When she sees each
new manuscript, which is always bigger than the last, she groans
inwardly because the reading task is so hard for her, and the extra
chapters mean extra work for her, probably with the same timeline.

The typical timeline for her role in the book production is:

--Two weeks reading the manuscript (which is loose pages at this
stage), then re-reading it and marking character descriptions.

--Three or four days creating preliminary sketches. 

--Ten days doing the final rendering.

She doesn't affect the stereotypical artistic mannerisms, attitude, or
ego (though she was wearing all black), and sometimes it seemed
strange that this very normal person standing before us had such
amazing imagery in her head.  She was very tolerant when some children
asked her questions about the upcoming PoA movie and also with a very
loud guy who appeared to be developmentally disabled.  

Afterwards, at the book signing, she was very nice and accommodating.
 (She's left-handed, BTW.) By the time we becostumed folks got to her,
she had been signing for about 45 minutes (I think).  They passed out
Post-Its so we could write our names and other stuff if we wanted it
personalized.  I had her write "To Dicentra: Rictusempra!" though it
came out "Rictosempra."  I don't think she knew what Rictusempra
meant.  That's ok, though.  

She thanked us for coming in costume, and when I mentioned that we
were a bunch of Internet folks, she asked what site I meant.  "Harry
Potter for Grownups," I replied.  "Ooohhh!" she said, recognizing the
name.  "Did you go to the conference in Orlando?"  I told her that I
had, and observed that she had been invited but wasn't able to make
it.  She told me that the move to Florida, plus some recent surgery
and other stuff made it impossible for her to go.  

Dooda, FoxyDoxy, GrannyBat, and Lilac will have to tell you what she
said to them: I wasn't listening.  Lilac also took abundant photos,
and she'd better post them soon!  (FYI: Lilac has spectacular lilac
robes with sequins and everything but she left them in the car because
she was too chicken to wear them in public.  That's right -- I called
you a chicken.)


--Dicentra, who forgot to ask her why Harry was holding his wand in
his *left* hand on the covers of GoF and OoP. Rats!