What is your advice for kids who want to be an artist or illustrator?
Create something EVERY day. Always keep a sketch book and a few pencils with you wherever you go. While on a trip, instead of shooting 50 pictures with your camera, spend 20 minutes and sketch something that you see. Find a subject that you are passionate about – cars, horses, dragons, a moment in history – and draw and paint it whenever you can. You WILL get better, but only if you practice.
What are you working on now? into a trance. The worst part is dealing with the self-doubt and the feeling that a picture, no matter how well it works for the story, is never quite what I saw in my head when I imagined it.
If you didn’t draw, what would you do for work?
I’m working on book 9 of a 10-part series about Onyx, the Black Labrador mascot of a Coast Guard Search and Rescue Team. Just for fun, I’m trying to finish up a stopmotion animation movie about a goblin and a squirrel that I started 5 years ago. It takes a lot of patience! Read more about David Geister and order books on his website www.davidgeister.com.
I would build models and dioramas for museums.
Meet
DAVID GEISTER surroundings and the objects they use should all look appropriate. Trips to historic sites give me a better understanding of the world my characters inhabit. I even traveled to Washington, D.C., to see the Lincoln Memorial so that I could envision it for my book, Riding to Washington.
Which one of your character illustrations would you like to meet in real life and why?
Most of my characters are either real figures from history or based on them. I wish I could have met the real-life Werner Franz, who was the main character in my book, Surviving the Hindenburg, but he was quite old and in bad health, living in Germany when I worked on that book.
What do you like most and least about being an artist?
The best part about being an artist is getting lost in the work – when things are going well, I almost slide
Deep Valley Book Festival Saturday, October 13, 2018 Mankato Event Center 10 am to 4 pm You can meet David Geister, see him at work and have him personally sign his books! Books will be for sale at the event. David and his wife Pat Bauer (in costume) will present B is for Battle Cry, a special entertaining and interactive program for all ages, at 1:30 pm. This event is FREE to the public and a fantastic experience for the entire family!
Photo by Al Larson
September/October 2018 | Kid-oh! • 49