By Inbal Leitner

In this video, Illustrator Inbal Leitner takes us through her Sketchbook documenting the development of her illustrations for poem ‘Growing Up’ by Harry Behn.

Exploring the Elements of a Poem by Inbal Leitner

Unfolding Stories by Inbal Leitner

I’m Inbal and I’m an illustrator. You may already know that illustrations are images that are found usually next to a text, like in books, magazines, and newspapers. Sometimes when I read stories or poems, all kinds of ideas and images jump into my mind. That’s why I usually carry my sketchbook with me everywhere I go.

One day, I was walking in the forest with my family and suddenly it reminded me of a poem I’ve known for many years. I sat down and wrote that poem in my sketch book and started drawing the forest.

Later on, whenever I had an idea or an image that popped into my mind, I put it down in my sketchbook. Let’s read the poem first, and then I’d like to share my sketchbook with you. It’s called Growing Up by Harry Behn.

When I was seven,
we went for a picnic
up to a magic foresty place.
I knew there were tigers
behind every boulder
though I didn’t meet one face to face.

When I was older,
we went for a picnic
up to the very same place as before.
And all of the trees
and the rocks were so little,
they couldn’t hide tigers or me anymore.

So this is the poem and this is the first drawing in the sketchbook. Can you spot the little boy and the huge, huge trees in the forest? I started thinking, what if there were tigers in that forest?

Can they hide behind trees?

Here is a tiger. And here’s a tiger. Take notice of this tiger with the eye, we’ll see it later.

I started thinking of colours. I also thought, how can tigers actually hide behind rocks? They’ll have to be very small or fold their body in different ways. I also thought about colours that hide behind other colours.

So here I got light brown covering darker browns or this creamy colour covering this mustardy colour. And I try to think of colours.

Can they hide behind each other? Can you see the connection between this image…

and this image…

and this image?

I started looking for the tiger. There are all kinds of options. I started exploring the facial expressions and facial features tigers. And I think, at some point, I met this one again with the eye and here is the tiger that I thought would be my tiger for the poet.

Here’s another exploration of trying to figure out if tigers can hide behind rocks. Then I thought, can all the tigers hide behind many rocks in the forest?

Then I thought, what if the forest is filled with rocks? What if behind every rock, there is a tiger. Just like in the poem.

Here, I’m thinking again, about the shapes as a combinations formed when tigers and trees are in the same place. I’m looking for the boy, trying to find his face.

I’m thinking of a tiger’s fur, the softness of that fur.

And here, I’m thinking of the differences between the first picnic, when there were tigers everywhere. And the second picnic, when he was older and they went to a picnic. Up to the very same place as before.

And all of the trees and the rocks were so little…

they couldn’t hide tigers…

or me anymore.

And that image got me to think of the feeling of that boy. I was wondering whether he is sorry for not seeing the tigers in the second time. I was wondering if he felt that he lost something by growing up.

And that made me draw these two images. There’s more space in the sketchbook, which I will be filling in the future. There are endless possibilities to developing ideas to a story or a poem. You can take it anywhere you want. Start with a sketchbook where you can draw and stick your craziest ideas.

You don’t have to fill the sketchbook in one or two days. It can be on your desk or shelf. And whenever you have an idea, a thought or something you’d like to explore, just open the sketchbook and have a go.

Good luck.

Explore how you can fill your own sketchbook capturing the elements of a poem just like Inbal.

Exploring the Elements of a Poem by Inbal Leitner

Unfolding Stories by Inbal Leitner 

This is a sample of a resource created by UK Charity AccessArt. We have over 1500 resources to help develop and inspire your creative thinking, practice and teaching.

AccessArt welcomes artists, educators, teachers and parents both in the UK and overseas.

We believe everyone has the right to be creative and by working together and sharing ideas we can enable everyone to reach their creative potential.

What We Like About This Resource….

“This resource is a lovely example of how words and text can generate ideas, which can then be transferred to paper. Working in this way with children is a great way fo them to engage with literature – and to have an individual response. Try reading poems out loud to a class and ask them to list all the images that spring to mind before exploring those images through drawing”. – Rachel, AccessArt

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We are all passionate about the importance of art education, and we all represent different audiences. To help explore how we can help support each other to help create a more sustained pipeline from early years through to life long learning, and to build new links within the pipeline, we need to consider our Wish List. The audiences we work with do not exist in a vacuum – they are part of a larger picture. By sharing our wish lists we might be able to see where we can better support and learn from each other.

Thinking in particular about the individuals, organisations and institutions around you, what would you like to ask of them? Is there a type of organisation you have never had experience of collaborating with, but would like to.

Some examples:

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“The sentiment behind this resource idea is lovely and it provides an opportunity to really develop some fine motor skills as well as independence of approach. Taking ownership of the medal design means the sense of achievement is heightened beyond the children just being given one. You can really imagine the positive energy that would surround this activity within a classroom, with each child working on a shared project but embarking on their own creative journey.”  – Rachel, AccessArt

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“It’s great to see music being explored in this way, and combining it with making creates a really interesting immersive project. This activity would work well as part of an extended project looking at musical instruments around the world and some of the natural materials they are made from.” – Rachel, AccessArt

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“You can get a real sense of the environment in this post and how this could provide so much inspiration for creative projects. We are aware there the challenges to exploring the outdoors when many schools are in towns and cities. A way around this could be to have a regular collection of natural objects within the classroom and using them as a stimulus to respond creatively in sketchbooks or in extended projects” – Andrea, AccessArt

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“It’s always so inspiring to hear how different artists work and we particularly like the detailed references Jake makes to his process – marking out the composition using neutral tones; adding and taking away compositional elements and gradually building in more colour and detail. Delivering a still life session in a classroom could begin with this process and encourage the practice of looking at positive and negative space. Some suggested resources below also touch on this”. – Rachel, AccessArt

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“It’s really interesting to hear how Su’s career path evolved organically, and how experimenting with different disciplines such as ceramics and sculpture whilst studying Textiles at the RCA began her journey towards paper craft and books. We really like how the small book sculptures inspired the larger scale set designs for The Snow Queen. They transfer so effectively to the stage and you can imagine how engaging it would be for a young audience to recognise letters and words on lampposts and other scenic elements”. – Rachel, AccessArt

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By Dr Judy Thomas

This response was written after the first meeting of the Creative Pedagogy & Pathways Group 

Bakhtin (1984) promoted pedagogies that facilitate dialogic engagement; his ‘Chronotype’ theory suggests time and space is inherent in narrative.

Our narrative, and that of our learners, has shifted dramatically over the past year; we have embraced new virtual spaces that present us fresh opportunities. The online environment scaffolds contemporary possibilities for connection and dialogue in ways previously not considered. Virtual adaptation has enabled us to come together and create new freedoms to positively learn from one another. This unites a divergent multiplicity, where we can actively, more fluently, share dialogue, in ways previously not so accessible. We can exchange ideas and create new, beneficial learning spaces that help us collaboratively discover common ground and navigate challenges.

We are stronger together and the promise of this dialogue is exciting. By applying online, dialogic approaches to learning, we can cross boundaries through beneficial zones of potentiality. The overwhelming excuses for being insular no longer exist; we can cross-sectors to collectively explore creative spaces to reflect, question, challenge, develop, innovate, and inspire. This dialogue can stimulate change and positively create wider access to art and future creativity.

Bakhtin, M (1981) The Dialogic Imagination in Ehre, Milton. Poetics Today, vol. 5, no. 1, 1984, pp. 172–177. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1772435. (Accessed 16 May 2021).

Cohen, Tom. “The Ideology of Dialogue: The Bakhtin/De Man (Dis)Connection.” Cultural Critique, no. 33, 1996, pp. 41–86. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1354387. Accessed 16 May 2021.

Oxford Reference (2021) “Chronotope” Available at: https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095611483 (Accessed 16 May 2021).

Rule, P (2011) Bakhtin and Freire: Dialogue, dialectic and boundary learning, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43:9, 924-942, DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.2009.00606.x (Accessed 16 May 2021).

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