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Posted 20 hours ago

Gustavo, the Shy Ghost (The World of Gustavo)

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A great story about making friends by being yourself and the illustrations are a constant visual delight. As I slowly learned, I realised that you can do wonders with a limited palette because it gives coherence to the illustrations, creates atmospheres, catches the eye, and also, colour conveys meaning, so it’s one of the most valuable tools to master. Flavia: I just moved from Mexico to the UK to do a PhD, I have been living on my current address only for a few months so I am afraid that it still needs decoration, but here are pictures of my studio in Mexico City. As a fun fact, in the graveyard scenes, you can find the names of my late grandparents engraved in the tombstones – Chuta, Lupe, Rolando and Tuto.

I’ve been seeing this book on Pinterest/ig influencers’ photos of their kids’ seasonal bookshelves and I wasn’t sure about it—I am very picky about what messages I am representing to my toddler through books, and like them to have nice illustrations as well. So, plucking up all his courage, he sends a very special letter: “Dear Monsters, I would like to invite you to my violin concert at the Day of the Dead party…”With exquisite detail and humour, Flavia Z. Mat: I loved how you tapped into that sense of shyness and reluctance to approach others that can affect children (and adults).I have even talked the head into a little revamp of the library so that we can display them properly!

More than anything in the world Gustavo wants to make a friend, but he also has a problem: he is very shy, so whenever he tries getting close to the other monsters in town, he realizes they can’t see him. In Mexico we have a widespread tradition of hand lettering, you can see it everywhere, so I designed and traced the letters because I wanted them to have the same aesthetics as the drawings. Flavia: Hmmm, this is an interesting question… I am a fan of Bosch and Pieter Brueghel who are known by painting incredibly detailed scene, but also some Mexican folk art tends to have lots of details and colour, I guess I must have picked up something from them! We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Mat: Are there are any contemporary artists/illustrators whose work you admire so much that you think everyone should encounter them?

I know that this is not how the story ends – at some point I even considered that Gustavo could be a real boy disguised as a ghost – but as the plot evolved the sheet joke became irrelevant as Gustavo was already showing his true self. Such drawings contained mini scenes which added little stories to the main one, so I guess that lots of years of practice have helped me to understand how the eyes flow through the page and how I can use composition, colour, heads, and arms to point the direction where the eyes should (ideally) wander through the page.

Although he loves all the usual things about being paranormal such as walking through walls, he’s too shy to join in and make friends.They would also only drop off a case of books and leave us to run it – it was so lovely to have you on hand to chat to the children and recommend them books, as well as the small (but appreciated! My first idea was to have Gustavo’s face on the cover –as if he had shape-shifted into the book– but my publishers felt that even if it was a fun idea, the cover wouldn’t reflect the detailed world inside the book, so we explored different options and arrangements. I would love to do some collaborations, or to illustrate someone else’s text, however at the moment my hands are quite full with all my PhD reading and experimentation.

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