I am pleased to share my interview with Catarina Sobral about Ashimpa: The Mysterious Word , translated by Julianna Barbassa, here today! This is a particularly exciting interview for me because I have owned the Portuguese edition for over a decade, and now that it's publishing in English I have a chance to show you the process behind making it! Enjoy taking a closer look at this gorgeous and whimsical book with me!
About the book:
One day, a researcher makes an important discovery. A mysterious word buried in an old dictionary: ASHIMPA.
Quickly the news spreads. Everyone wants to use the new word, but no one knows what it means or even what part of speech it belongs to. A 137-year-old is certain that it's a verb: people ashimped and would always ashimp. A linguist is convinced it's a noun. Soon there would be people who claimed to have seen live ashimpas--and in color. "They still exist abroad. They're green!"
Check out the endpapers:
Let's talk Catarina Sobral!
LTPB: Where did the idea for Ashimpa: The Mysterious Word come from?
CS: At first, Ashimpa was my master’s project. I was researching how to communicate verbal devices (grammatical notions and rhetorical tools) in a predominantly visual medium. I don’t think I succeeded, I found no answers to that question, but the idea of the book was fun, I really enjoyed doing the illustrations and my publisher took an interest. As far as I can remember, the idea came to me in the shower, like most good ideas.
LTPB: What did you find most difficult in creating this book? What did you find most rewarding?
CS: The biggest challenge was to find a link between the different scenes. There are only two repeating characters, so what I did was situate the narrative in a city and use some references to places I know to draw a few illustrations. I think the most rewarding part was drawing funny, silly characters who obviously don't know what they're doing or what they're thinking.
LTPB: What did you use to create the illustrations in this book? Is this your preferred medium? How does your process change from book to book?
CS: I used oil paint, wax pastels and pencil. Some shapes were cut out and glued. I really enjoy working with crayons and collage and I've used them again in other books, but with a different technique. I get bored of always using the same technology or the same vocabulary. And I need challenges. Painters say that “pictures come in fours”. The first is tentative, we don't know what we're doing; in the second we get there; the third is just right; but the fourth is already decadent, we don't need it at all. After that, we have to start again. I think there's some truth in this, and it can be applied to illustration. You probably need more than four illustrations to get it right. But I really think you need less than four books before we have to change. If we don't change something in technology, technique or vocabulary, the work feels tired. How does that change happen? I'm not sure, but I know why: we change, the world changes, we experience different things, think differently, discover more art... And if our art doesn't reflect our contact with the outside world and who we are, there's no honesty. We're just machines copying ourselves... right?
LTPB: What are you working on now? Anything you can show us?
CS: I'm starting work on my second stage play for children. It's still in the research/writing phase, but I can share the title and a preliminary illustration. It's going to be called Perder (Losing) and it will be a short treatise on natural history on the experience of losing. How many feelings are attached to it? Where and how do we feel it in our bodies? What is the opposite of losing? Does it have symptoms? An anatomy?
LTPB: If you got the chance to write your own picture book autobiography, who (dead or alive!) would you want to illustrate it, and why?
CS: That's a difficult question! I can think of a handful of illustrators who would do me a great honor if they illustrated my autobiography. I'd say Yuliya Gwilym, because I love her work and very much admire her political views and activism.
A million thanks to Catarina for taking time to answer some questions! Ashimpa: The Mysterious Word publishes today from Transit Children's Editions!
Special thanks to Catarina and Transit for use of these images!
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