Questions About How Creativity Can Inspire Picture Books

Guest blog by Alison Goldberg
 
One of the places I look for picture book inspiration is the creative process itself. Whether reading a writer’s essay on the story behind a story, watching an artist present their sketches for a work-in-progress, or listening to a musician talk about how they wrote a song, I love learning about how people approach making art.

​In addition to the very practical lessons this can offer for how to move a project from start to finish—and the reassurances that time, patience, and revision are often crucial for completing works—these conversations can reveal clues about the role of art in people’s lives. 

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​I often wonder about questions like: Where did they find their initial spark? What inspired them along the way? Did they seek out books, art, or music to guide them? Did they look to their family or friends? History? Culture? The natural world? Were they creating the artwork for someone in particular? Was there a feeling they hoped to convey? Did they work alone, or did they involve other people in the process? What were some of the big decisions they had to make while moving their project toward its finished form? How did they make those decisions? How does all of this relate to the completed artwork? What meaning does the artwork carry because of the way it was created?​
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​As you can see, I have a lot of questions on this topic, so it might not be a surprise that my last two picture books explore them.
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In my nonfiction biography, Bottle Tops: The Art of El Anatsui, illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon (Lee & Low Books, 2022), I had the opportunity to research an extraordinary contemporary artist and highlight some of the lessons he shared about creativity. I loved learning about how El Anatsui experiments with media, and how he considers the stories of the materials he works with to create art that evokes his history and environment. (Read more about Bottle Tops in this post.)

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​Learning about the creative process inspires me to create! With Bottle Tops fresh in my mind, I reflected on my own process, and this led me to write my newest picture book, Eighteen Flowers for Grandma: A Gift of Chai, illustrated by Jesse White (Red Comet Press, 2024). This story looks at art through the eyes of a fictional character, Sadie, whose grandmother will soon graduate from college. To celebrate, Sadie wants to make Grandma a unique gift. ​

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​In her art-making journey, Sadie grapples with many of the questions I’ve listed above. Her initial spark is Grandma, and she draws on a Jewish cultural tradition and looks to the world around her for creative inspiration. She wants her gift to remind her of Grandma. To move her project to its finished form, she makes several ​​attempts (time, patience, and revision). In this story, art is an expression of the special bond between a granddaughter and her grandmother.

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Investigating the creative process is a common thread in these picture books, and it has also been a way for me to identify some guiding questions to ask myself about other projects too. So in this post-of-many-questions, I’ll leave you with a few more: How does learning about the creative process of others inspire your work? Which writers, artists, or musicians do you look to for ideas about how to create? What questions about creativity do you ask yourself when you write?

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Alison Goldberg is the author of the award-winning picture book Bottle Tops, a biography of the Ghanaian artist El Anatsui. Her newest picture book, Eighteen Flowers for Grandma: A Gift of Chai, was inspired by her own grandmother, who graduated from college at the age of seventy-eight. You can visit her online at alisongoldberg.com.