Eva Lindström

Eva: ‘Everyone walks away’ is the name of the book I have just finished.

This is how the story goes:
Three characters walk away. One character is left all alone. Then this character walks away too.
At the end, the three characters appear again and the lonely one invites them to a tea party.

The story is rather quiet and emotional and it ends in an open way. The reader will be able to finish the book herself, or accept that it ends with a question.

I always start with just a fragment of an idea when I begin working on a book. A state of mind, a diffuse idea, a feeling of something that can turn into a story. And then, the more I write and rewrite, the clearer it gets, or it gets unclear in an interesting way.

All of the pictures are in my head while writing. The colours, the personalities, the landscapes: everything is there, pointing out a possible way to tell a specific story. And the stories often circle around subjects, such as lost things, lost people, friendship and no friendship, longing...

I really try to tell stories about other things too, but I seldom succeed.

This time, it happened to be a story about how one character is sad because he thinks that ‘everyone’ is walking away.

His name is Frank, and the ones who walk are Palle, Titti and Milan.

Why do they walk away? Does Frank enjoy being an outsider? Is Frank the one who is leaving? Is everyone walking away?

I don’t ask these questions while working on the book. It is when the book is ready that I first start to wonder: What is happening? Who does what? A good thing for me is to not know everything.

First there is the text and then the pictures. I start to paint and everything changes; a new story is told without words. And the best part of the whole thing is when I work with the words and pictures together. I rearrange the text (it is not allowed to say too much), cut most of it, write new pieces. And as the text changes, I paint another room, other trees, other faces.

I want there to be a space in both the words and pictures: small gaps where the reader can walk around. It is important that the text is not a fence. If I am lucky, a certain humour can appear when the words meet the pictures in an unexpected way.

In this book, as with some of my others, I have mixed people and animals.
Frank has a rather long nose and Milan has a longer one. The other two seem to be ordinary people. One reason for me to mix the species is because I feel that the pictures become interesting. Different kinds of bodies and faces make the pictures attractive and I have fun while drawing them. Another reason might be that this animal/human mix moves the story to a place outside the everyday world.

It is hard to clearly explain all the decisions that are made while working on a book. I think that the work itself, how it proceeds, makes things happen. Along the way I see options; the story has suggestions. I can follow these suggestions, and one thing opens up to something else.

Some years ago, I never did any sketches for my books. Now I do. Not always, but sometimes, and I am beginning to see the point in doing them. I don’t make them detailed – only very simple sketches that show in a vague way how things might be.

My working materials are watercolour, gouache and graphite. I paint on an Arches paper (300g, satin). I like it very much when transparent watercolour meets thick gouache, and I also like graphite contours – and spaces covered with graphite.

This is how I do it right now; I might change my approach soon.

A good thing with gouache is that it helps me to cover my mistakes. It is easy to paint something else on top of something that went totally wrong (I don’t use a computer). The resulting composition can be a surprise. The picture can take a new direction, as if I was not involved in the decision. A dark tree hides something and the picture gets a new balance.

It is always a step in the right direction to do something that I am disgruntled with.
Here are some badly painted hares. The picture is from a book called ‘We are friends’ (Alfabeta, 2014). Some of these trees and stumps would not exist if it were not for the ‘hare failures’.

Coincidences, accidents and failures are my best friends.

And here is Frank.
He is leaving his room now. The story will soon end.
He has been crying in a pan. He added 4 dl of sugar. He has cooked and stirred for hours.
The marmalade is ready to eat.
He will now invite the others for tea.

Illustrations © Eva Lindström. Post edited by dPICTUS.

Buy Eva's picturebooks

Alla går iväg /
Everyone walks away

Eva Lindström

Alfabeta Bokförlag, Sweden, 2015

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Frank feels lonely when everyone – Palle, Titti and Milan – walks away. He puts tears and sugar in a pan and lets it cook for hours. Frank's marmalade. His very own recipe.

This beautifully illustrated tale of friendship and loneliness will be published by Alfabeta in September 2015.