Drawing and colouring: a journey with poor and severely limited grey sight
Writing and illustrating a book is already a journey in itself and a challenge. Doing so while your eyesight is failing you is a different order of magnitude altogether. It calls for a way of working all of its own. Below is a glimpse into her creative process and the tools needed along the way to get where she wants to go with Pluis and the friends. The whole process is a journey where she mostly has to sail on feeling, intuition, experience, perseverance and, at times, a helping hand. It's often sailing along a course line where, just like colouring in the drawings, you must not be afraid to colour outside the lines every now and then. Writing and illustrating a book is, in the end, definitely daring to do so!
1. The story begins in rhyme
She prefers to write in rhyme (a love of poetry that predates the books) and draws inspiration from small, funny, seemingly everyday moments, from her own curiosity, her years working at a nursery school, and her own imagination and empathy.
2. Drawing under the magnifying glass
Using a magnifying reading glass, Marjo brings little owl Pluis, hedgehog Joep and all their other friends to life on paper. It's hard to keep an overview and to get the colours, proportions of the characters, perspective and placement right. It's a lot of practising, trying and correcting. And starting over. It calls for patience, courage and optimism.
3. Persevering until it's right
A great deal of work, time and energy goes into getting every illustration right. Willpower and perseverance are just as much a part of every book as the paint and the paper.
4. From sketch to bookshop
From rough sketch to printed picture book: a collaboration with a publisher, early readers, and, most importantly, the children it's all made for.
Imagining is giving shape, colour and substance to the things you cannot directly see or that aren't in sight.
Every Pluis book is proof that a disability is a different path, not a dead end.
from a reader:
“A lovely little portrait of a big achievement, every book and drawing again. Sweet, endearing, inquisitive and touching characters. Proof, too, that when you dare to colour outside the lines in life, you're capable of great (and grand) things. However small it may seem to someone else.”