Jane Hissey |
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Jane Hissey, Old Bear and Friends
Jane Hissey has become known to children throughout
the world as creator of the stories about Old Bear
and his friends. Both Jane and Old Bear are around
fifty years old - he was given to her when she was
a baby. The other toy characters she has collected
over the years.
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Bramwell Brown was made for
her son Owen who is now 22. Rabbit was bought in an
Oxfam shop in Brighton for the princely sum of five
pence - and Jane wondered at the time if he was worth
it!. Little Bear also belonged to Owen - being little
he is very mischievous and loves falling off things!
Hoot the Owl was made by Jane when she decided she wanted
to do an Owl story and didn't have one.
All the toys in the gang were carefully selected and
chosen for different reasons, maybe for their colour,
their looks, thetexture of their fur or just that their
character seemed to fit so beautifully with the others.
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When Jane starts work on a new book, the stories
come first, then the pictures. She plans out the
story creating a "dummy" book with parts
of the story and sketches of the pictures pasted
in. She then reads it through to herself to check
that the story flows and makes sense - she used
to read the stories to Owen but he thinks he is
a bit too big for that now!
When she is satisfied with the story she begins
the drawings which she creates using colour pencils.
All the pictures in the books are created using
the toys and other models and the drawings are usually
the actual size of the toys. Jane makes everything
that appears in her pictures herself. If she needs
to include a picture of a cake she will make the
cake and then draw it. A sailing scene set up "on
location" in the bathroom will keep the bathroom
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| occupiedfor days much to the chagrin
of the rest of her family!! The drawing of just one
character can take approximately 10 hours to complete,
more complicated pictures can take 20-30 hours. One
book can take up to one year to illustrate. But what
a fun time Jane has creating the models, composing the
pictures and then drawing them. And this sense of fun
shines through the pages of all of her books.
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On leaving school Jane attended art college and trained
in design and illustration. Among her tutors were
three children's book illustrators who were already
quite well known in their field: Raymond Briggs, John
Vernon Lord and Justin Todd. She then taught art for
five years until the birth of her first child when
she found more time to devote to her drawings - writing
stories came after the pictures.
Her children have also been involved in the production
of her books. They have helped with ideas for the
stories and any pictures supposedly drawn by the toys
have been works of art produced by her children. Jane
has completed around 20 different books in total with
many of these having been reprinted in various guises.
As she finishes one book she starts to think about
the next but never works |
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| on more than one
at the same time. We look forward to more adventures
of Old Bear and Friends and to the wonderful drawings
which bring the loveable characters to life.
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Contributed by Chris Tomaszewski
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