Firstly, a massive thank you to everyone who has entered and supported our little competition. It’s amazing. And well done for getting up the courage to submit your work to judging. I know that some people who entered are incredibly nervous about letting other people see their work at all, so well done. Even people who entered and won’t get through -we’ve had a lot of entries – have submitted work of a very good standard and it’s just a shame we can’t put everything out there.
So this week we are judging our illustration entries. I am completely over whelmed by the work we’ve had sent to us. The range of styles and the incredibly high quality mean our final book is going to be a real stunner. It’s going to be something really precious.
How the judging will work
Our Judges have been told to choose 30 images that they all agree on and 4 each as their own ‘wild cards’. Something the other judges don’t get, but that they personally really want to go in. The plan is that we’re going to end up with roughly 50 images. Illustrations chosen to contribute to the book will be based purely on the quality of the work. They will then only be entered into the book if they work with the story they’re part of.
Winner
Choosing the winner is going to be a bit more complicated. once we’ve chosen our contributors they’ll all be informed as I’m not into making people wait for things like this, so our contributors will all know by Monday. As we go through the book – editing the text, fitting in the images, checking everything – a decision will be made over the week about an overall winner. The winner will be the illustrations that are both most relevant to their story AND are most pleasing. This is going to be the hardest bit. HA! in your face judges – I’ll be in the pub.
How will that work when it comes to the book
It’s interesting that we’ve steered away from the original plan which was to judge illustrations for each story separately. The reason for this is that as work was arriving I realized that some work might get in based solely on the fact that no one else had illustrated that story where as other work – exquisite work in some cases – might be excluded simply because the other entries for the same story were more favored by the judges. This will mean that some of the fairy tales with have up to 2 illustrators. Stories like Briar Rose and The Valiant Little Tailor come to mind – I seen several entries for these stories that I would like to go into the book. Luckily, it’s not me who has to fight with our judges.
Anyone familiar with our poetry, flash fiction and short stories will also know that we usually have some judges work in our books. This time we aren’t going to let all of the judges have a space so they have each illustrated The Youth Who Went Out To Learn What Fear Was and they’re going to decide among themselves which one will get in.
I’m glad I don’t have to make that call either.
readingroomcafeproject 