Interviewer: What is the story behind the story of Little Gull: Lost at Sea?
Lucy
Autrey Wilson: I wrote and illustrated
Little Gull in 2019. I love to go to the various beaches in Pt.Reyes National Seashore and am always amused by the sea gulls. We are also lucky here in California to
witness whales migrating past various sites on the Pt. Reyes peninsula. So I came up with a story that included
sea gulls and whales.
Interviewer: Is there any significance behind the names
Greta Gull and Wanda Whale?
Lucy
Autrey Wilson: No, I just thought Greta
Gull (GG) and Wanda Whale (WW) sounded good.
Interviewer: I remember you telling me that your first
book, Little Cloud, had a message of friendship and you hoped it would instill
awareness of climate change, however subliminally. Are you trying to do that again with this new title?
Lucy
Autrey Wilson: I used to write little
morality short stories when I was very young.
I was strongly influenced by Aesop’s fables (still one of my favorite
books). So, yes, I have a tendency to add
some little positive takeaway in my writing.
In Little Gull, that is a bit tempered.
Although it is fine and good to make friends with strangers, and even to
count on them to help you out in a jam, it’s not a good idea to take any kind
of serious risk hoping someone will always be there to rescue you if things
don’t work out.
Interviewer: Can you tell the reader a little bit about
your illustration process. The artwork
in Little Gull looks different from that in Little Cloud.
Lucy
Autrey Wilson: Again, I wanted to make
both a digital and a print book so needed to make as much of the art vector
based to reduce the file size. Drawing water with mathematical
lines and curves, however, turned out to be really hard. So, I took original photographs I shot at the local beaches and converted them to traced vector images for the backgrounds, and then painted in
Illustrator on top of the converted photos.
Interviewer: What source material did you use for your
illustrations?
Lucy
Autrey Wilson: All of the birds and
ocean scenes are based on my photographs.
I’ve never had the good fortune to see a humpback whale breach, however, so I
had to go searching for a lot of other reference to draw the various whale
pictures.
Interviewer: What do you hope is the take away of your
reader?
Lucy
Autrey Wilson: First and foremost, I hope
the reader is entertained. Secondly, I
hope the message of friendship and the benefits of helping others
resonates. And finally, humans have
created a mess filling up our oceans with plastic and other garbage. It is killing off the creatures who live in
and depend on the sea. So, I hope to
raise awareness to this problem as a little added benefit.
Top to Bottom Photo Reference:
Page 16 Photo shot at Limantour Beach in Pt. Reyes, 2017
Page 24 Big wave photo shot on Seymour Island in the Galapagos, 2017
Page 30 Photo shot at North Beach in Pt. Reyes, 2012
Page 4 Birds at the beach photo shot at McClures Beach in Pt. Reyes, 2016
