From Commercial Artist to Picture Book Author

How Illustrator and Comedian Chris Gall Became a Writer

May 26, 2009

Picture book author Chris Gall traces the experiences in libraries, advertising agencies, and comedy clubs that led him to become a picture book artist and author.

Every author’s road to publication is different. For Chris Gall, author and artist of Dear Fish, There’s Nothing to Do on Mars, and Dinotrux, writing picture books is partly the result of a lifelong love of reading, his work as a commercial artist in an advertising agency, and his experiences as a stand up comedian.

Suite 101 spoke with Gall via an April 22, 2009 phone interview and learned about these experiences. The following is an edited version of the interview.

Avid Reader

S101:You once joked that your parents grounded you from the library when you were a kid. Is that true?

CG: It's true! It was in the summer – Phoenix was hot and there wasn’t a lot to do during the day so I spent most of my time at the library! By the time I was fourteen I was reading at the adult level – I’d go through the authors from the A’s and pick out every book I wanted to read and went through them systematically.

I had so much reading under my belt by the time I was in seventh grade that my writing became much better – because the more you read the better your writing is. They really go together. You get a feel for what is grammar and good context.

So I started writing just my own stories for English class – I got a lot of encouragement from my seventh grade teacher and won a Read Magazine award for writing. When I was in high school I won a creative writing award for the whole high school even though I was just a freshman and that really inspired me at that time to be a writer.

Commercial Artist

S101: You were a commercial artist for an advertising agency for years and then a freelance commercial artist before becoming an author. Why did you go this direction?

CG: I went to University of Arizona to go to architecture school – but I got so much encouragement from the professors about my drawing they convinced me to drop out of architecture and go into fine art! So that’s what I did – and when I got out of school I spent five years at an advertising agency which let me broaden my skills. Because when you’re an art director there’s words, there’s copy, there’s headlines – I learned a lot from a copy and artist’s point of view.

S101: Did being an artist at an advertising agency give you contacts in book publishing?

CG: I had some contacts in publishing houses and the art directorial side of things. But it helped me surprisingly little. Because in the world of books it’s all editor driven and not art director driven and they are completely separate entities.

My only really lucky break was because I had a friend who had been an art director at Harper Collins who was friends with a literary agent. And that was how I got published! I turned my proposal over to him and he decided to represent me.

Stand Up Comedian

S101: You also spent four years as a stand up comedian – how did you end up there?

CG: Well I was always a class clown in college and high school, and always wanted to try comedy some day. I took a workshop and got enough encouragement that I started trying out the open mikes down in Tucson at Last Comedy Café.

It took about a year of doing open mikes before the owner thought I was good enough to be booked on a weekly basis and be paid. And from there I worked my way up to other comedy clubs – I did all the casinos – it’s all about networking in comedy.

CG: It helped my writing tremendously! Because in comedy, you have to write as tightly as possible – you can’t be up there humming and hawing – and very brief writing is important to picture books because the story has to be so short.

And learn more about Chris Gall’s artistic background by visiting his website.

The copyright of the article From Commercial Artist to Picture Book Author in Picture Books is owned by Michael Jung. Permission to republish From Commercial Artist to Picture Book Author in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.