Illustrator Beth Krommes Illuminates World for Children

By Leah Woolson

    Peterborough’s Beth Krommes is a children’s book illustrator and has received acclaim for her unique artwork. A self-employed artist since 1989, Krommes’ talents include illustration, wood engraving and painting.

    Her work includes the illustrations for The House in the Night by Susan Marie Swanson; Grandmother Winter, written by Phillis Root; The Lamp, the Ice, and the Boat Called Fish: Based on a True Story, written by Jacqueline Briggs Martin; and Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow, by Joyce Sidman. Among her honors are the Golden Kite Award in 2001, for her scratchboard illustrations in The Lamp, the Ice, and the Boat Called Fish: Based on a True Story, and the ASPCA Henry Bergh Award in Illustration in 2007 for Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow.

    She recently took time to answer some questions:

When did you realize that art was something you wanted to pursue?
    I realized as early as kindergarten that I loved to draw and wanted to be an artist. I can still remember the picture I was drawing in kindergarten when I knew I would be an artist. It was a garden scene of many flowers, drawn in crayon on oaktag paper.

    All through childhood, I attended a Saturday morning art class in our town where we worked in all kinds of mediums: clay, oil paint, pastels, pencil, acrylics, etc. I took these classes with a wonderful teacher, Dr. Keim, until I was 17 years old.

You used to be a high school art teacher; how did you make the transition into full-time artist?

    My parents were always very supportive of my desire for a career in art. My undergraduate degree was in painting from Syracuse University. I went on to graduate school for an art teaching degree so I would have an easier way to earn a living in art. I love kids of all ages and enjoyed teaching junior and senior high art, but I was in a temporary position filling in for someone on leave. Art education jobs were drying up all over Massachusetts in the early 1980s.

    I then worked at the Groton Center for the Arts in Groton, MA, at the Sharon Arts Center in Sharon, NH, and as a designer and art director for a computer magazine in Peterborough. I started doing a little freelance illustration on the side.

    I have now been working as a fulltime freelance illustrator since 1989, focusing on children’s book illustration for the last ten years. I have enjoyed each of the jobs I’ve had leading to where I am now.

How have your surroundings, such as your home in Peterborough, influenced your art? And what subjects do you feel most passionate about drawing or painting?

    I had a happy childhood in Emmaus (Pennsylvania) with my parents and four sisters. I love Pennsylvania, especially the rolling hills and farmland around Lancaster. That landscape was the model for my most recent book, The House in the Night.

    My last book, Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow was inspired by the beautiful meadows around my grandmother’s house on the side of the Sugarloaf Mountain in Pennsylvania. My actual research for the book, however, happened in the meadows of Peterborough and Hancock. After finishing the book, I found I couldn’t leave meadow images behind, and have been working on a large series of casein paintings of meadow plants and landscapes.

    It’s been a nice little sidetrack for me into the world of fine art. More than any landscape, my children have been my biggest inspiration. My daughters are now 12 and 15. The experience of reading to them every night when they were young – seeing what kinds of books they like and what details in a picture would draw their attention – has been a tremendous help to me as a children’s book illustrator.

How did you get into illustrating for children’s books and what is the most fulfilling aspect about illustrating for this genre?

    Having children and becoming aware of the many beautiful children’s books being published these days made me want to try my hand at it.

    The best part of illustrating children’s books is having a child tell you how much they love a book you’ve illustrated. The second best thing is having the luxury to spend time doing what you love – to be lost in the creative joy of working on your pictures.

You have such a unique way of creating your illustrations. Could you explain your process for creating one?

    It took quite a few years for me to develop my style of illustration. In 1982, I saw the most amazing exhibit of wood engravings by Nora Unwin, Randy Miller and Herbert Waters at the Sharon Arts Center. I had done woodcut in college, but had never tried wood engraving. Wood engraving is known for its small size and tiny detail. Engravings are cut on end-grain blocks with tools that resemble those used by metal engravers; as opposed to woodcuts, which are made on plankside blocks with gouge and knife tools. My first illustrations were all done as engravings. This gave my work an old-fashioned quality that helped it to stand out.

    I soon switched to scratchboard, which is faster and more forgiving than wood engraving. Scratchboard is a board coated with a smooth white clay layer, then a black layer of ink. One draws with a sharp tool through the black ink to expose the white below. It is a drawing medium—one can’t make prints from a scratchboard, but it has the same look as a wood engraving. I often need to add color to my illustrations, so I developed a technique of photocopying the finished scratchboard illustration onto acid-free paper, and then adding watercolor paint to the photocopy. That becomes the finished art I present to a publisher.

Among artists, who do you admire?

    The children’s book illustrators I most admire are Wanda Gag (“Millions of Cats”), Barbara Cooney (“Miss Rumphius”), James Marshall (the George and Martha series), and Lizbeth Zwerger (“Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales”). The painters I always look at are Bonnard, Matisse, and Picasso.

    What recent work of yours can we see in stores now and what can we expect in the future?

    The book that I finished illustrating last summer is just out in the stores now. It is called The House in the Night by Susan Marie Swanson. It is a quiet good-night story for the very young. The text is very spare and lovely. I had a lot of leeway for interpretation in this project and it is certainly my most personal project to date. It is different from my other books in that it is done in black and white with spot accents of yellow-gold. So far, the book has received four starred reviews. I had never worked on anything for such a young age group before, and I found that I loved it.

    Since finishing The House in the Night last June, I’ve had an interesting working sabbatical year. For the first time in ten years, I did not have a new book to begin immediately. This gave me a chance to paint. I’ve finished a large series of casein paintings of meadow plants and landscapes. I’ve also attended a class in Boston run by the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts of Massachusetts called “The Artists Professional Toolbox.”

Photo By: Marguerite Krommes