Anne Spudvilas is a multi-award-winning illustrator of children’s books and an established portrait painter. In 2000 she won the CBCA Picture Book of the Year award for Jenny Angel, by Margaret Wild (Penguin), which was also shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Award. In 1996 Anne was awarded the Crichton Award for Illustration for her first picture book, The Race, also a CBCA Honour Book in the same year. Anne has illustrated books for many of Australia’s leading children’s authors, including Isobelle Carmody, Gary Crew, and Margaret Wild, with whom she has worked on three picture books. She also works with the Melbourne media as a courtroom artist, and is a regular at schools and literature festivals, where she talks about the process of picture book illustration and running drawing workshops with students. For more information, visit her website.


My Visit To China

After the huge success of former world-renowned ballet dancer Li Cunxin's autobiography, Mao's Last Dancer, Penguin Books Australia decided to produce a children's picture book version of his story. This became the book I Illustrated, The Peasant Prince.

When I was invited to illustrate the story, I knew I would have to go to China in order to create a convincing picture of Li's life in Beijing and Qingdao. And so, funded by the Australia-China Council, I was fortunate enough to be able to accompany Li on one of his visits to see his family in Qingdao province.

We flew to Beijing, where on the night of our arrival I met his teacher Xiao, his old friend "the Bandit," his family anda few others for a big dinner. It hardly seemed real to me to be meeting these people who I was so familiar with as a result of reading Mao's Last Dancer. The next day we flew to Qingdao, where we stayed with Li's family for three days, enjoying large meals together every night. His mother was so warm and full or energy! She literally welcomed me with open arms.  Li's family took me in and helped me with my research of their home town. I was taken into the older parts of Qingdao to see areas that are similar to where Li and his family lived in the 60's and 70's, and I got some valuable photographic references for my illustrations of the interior of Li's home.

Li with his his wonderful mother; With Li's brothers (right)

The Beijing Dance Academy

Back in Beijing I was invited by Li's teacher, Xiao, to spend time at the Beijing Dance Academy, where I photographed the most gifted students rehearsing for an international competition.Three wonderful practice studios filled with leaping whirling dancers were mine for the morning.

Li's old friend "the Bandit" and his wife also took me to the old academy where Li lived and studied in the 1970's.  We were lucky to arrive when we did. The workers had moved in to totally renovate the building for the Beijing Opera Company, which was about to make it their new home, but we were able to see it exactly as it was when Li was living and studying there.

Students rehearsing at the Beijing Dance Academy

Traditional Chinese Painting

While still in Beijing, the Bandit arranged for his son's art teacher to show me some traditional Chinese painting styles, and he also advised me on which brushes to buy. We went to the beautiful heritage street of Liulichang, where the brush and ink shops are, and I brought home the materials needed to produce pictures in traditional watercolour and ink on rice paper. The traditional Chinese brush painting style, used in illustrations like the one below, gave an authentic look to the story.

Illustration in ink & wash on rice paper

Upon returning to Australia, I attended classes with Patrick Lam at the Centre for Adult Education (CAE) in Melbourne to learn the techniques of Chinese watercolour painting and I also studied closely the beautiful paintings in the Chinese collection at the National Gallery of Victoria. I had time for such extra studies because, thanks to a grant from the Australia Council for the Arts, I didn't have to work on any other projects while I worked on this book.

Oil Painting

In the American scenes of the book I changed the medium to oil paints to achieve the rich and glossy colour of the big city, in contrast to the low key colours of the Chinese scenes. This is most evident in the theatre picture, where I really wanted to paint an elaborate old theatre full of gold and red. While visiting Li's family I photographed some of their old family photos, so I had a good reference point in painting his parents at the time of their U.S. visit.

Getting the Details Right

It was very important to get the everyday details right. In order to accomplish that I collected a lot of materials about people using their chopsticks in many different ways, so that every member of the family could be portrayed eating in their own individual manner. These images were gathered from different sources, including Chinese films and photographs I found in books. The background of the meal scene below, for instance, is a collage of photographed newsprint from an old newspaper I bought in the Panjiayuan market, in Beijing. It dates from the 1970's so it fits in with the era of the book. The posters from the Mao Zhedong era were also bought in Beijing, photographed and reduced in proportion with the illustration.

Constructing the Illustrations

Railway station scene

The railway station scene above is a good example of how I used the photographs I took in China to create the illustrations in The Peasant Prince.

I stood outside the Beijing station for a while, observing and photographing people arriving for their train journeys with large bundles and food. From the photographs I took, I sketched selected people that gave an idea of the busy atmosphere of the station entrance. These sketches were then photocopied at various sizes (60%, 80 % and 100%) so that I could choose the correct sized figures to create the perspective of the scene. They were then cut out and moved around until I had a composition that worked.

My desk with cut up photocopies of sketches done from my day of photographing people at the Beijing Station

For the station picture I used a darker paper than the other illustrations, so that the light on Li's face would make him the focal point, even though he is a small character on the page.

My illustrations for this picture book simply wouldn't have been possible without the enriching time spent in Li's native China and the amazing experience of meeting his family and friends. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that has led me to work in new ways and left me with an overwhelming desire to return to China soon, to see more.

Posted January 2008