About the Artist - Kim LaFave

Interview with Kim La Fave

We noticed that you have drawn a lot of boats in your books. Why?

I love boats. I’m a big sailor and any chance I get to be on the water or near the water, it’s my favourite place to be. We live across the street from the water. We have a cabin on the ocean and all kinds of boats. I’m a boat guy. I do a lot of racing, actually, sailboat racing, and keel boat racing. We have a Thistle, which is a sail boat for racing and we race it every Wednesday night. Boating is really in my blood. I was born here. Having lived near the ocean for much of my life, I almost feel compelled to be out on the water as much as I can. We live up what’s called the Sunshine Coast, and to get to it from Vancouver, we have to take a boat across Howe Sound.

What do you like best about the TD Summer Reading Club poster you’ve designed this year?

Well, it isn’t quite complete, and at this stage a better question might be what are all the things I don’t like about it! Which just means I’ve got to the point where it’s almost ready and now I’m tweaking it to make it better. I had a lot of fun drawing all the characters in the boat, and getting the mermaid placed; she moved around a lot, she was in the boat then out of it. The characters evolved, some of them disappeared, some returned, some never did. There are a lot of different stages in a project like this, but the early conceptual stage, when I’m playing with all the options and ideas, that’s the best part for sure. Everything is now in place, and the work I’m doing is very absorbing, if not as much fun – more along the lines of developing the style, things like proper weight of line and getting the colour more interesting.

Why did you become an illustrator?

I didn’t really become one, I think it’s more like I’ve always been one. I was the youngest child in my family and at a certain point all my siblings headed off to school and I was there by myself and I kept myself entertained with pencils and paper. I never sat down and drew single pictures, or worked on a painting, I always felt like I was working on a single project, that all the drawing I did was part of a great tableau that was like an ongoing adventure.

What is your favourite thing to do in the summer? And Why?

I live on the coast and it’s such a great place to be in the summer. Where I live, you can step off the road and practically step directly into virgin rain forest. I’ve lived in other places, including Toronto for a number of years. I loved living in Toronto, but the thing I missed the most was being able to step into nature as easily as I can here. So my favourite thing to do in the summer is stay home!

If you could be one water creature, which would you pick, and why?

I think I would probably be a dolphin because it looks like they’re having so much fun, and they seem so well suited to their environment, they just look so perfectly adapted. You see them in big schools out here sometimes, and it’s quite magic. I’ve never really been in the middle of a huge school of them, but friends have told me how they’ll swarm around a boat and play. I’ve seen a few of them playing around my boat when I’ve been out sailing. One time when there was no wind, and we had the little outboard motor going, a dolphin started following us. It kept coming up through the bubbles from the motor, right at the stern of the boat, then it would fall back a bit, then come up through the bubbles again. It was quite extraordinary. I’ve had dolphins playing around my boat other times, but never anything quite like that.

Is there a place you like to go to get your ideas?

I tend to work in the studio till I get stuck, then I just head out into the garden and start pulling weeds. That sort of physical thing you can do to get your body moving and get your mind in another place where you’re not thinking about a specific problem to do with illustrating is always a good way to get the juices flowing again. So out in the garden is where I probably do a lot of good thinking. We basically live in the rain forest, so the garden is pretty natural with a lot of beautiful flowers, so it’s a nice quiet, natural place to be.

If you could sail the world and go anywhere, where would you go?

We once chartered a boat in the Adriatic and sailed the coast of Croatia. I’ve often thought I’d like to sail the South Seas, but I think if I had the chance to go anywhere in the world, I’d head back to the Mediterranean.