Copy of Children’s Book Illustration

What a journey this was for me… I suppose it started all the way back in my childhood.

From the get go I was extremely obsessed with colours and patterns - my earliest memories are of things I could see around me in my cot - and I had strong preferences then which I retain to this day. Some things give me tremendous pleasure to behold, others I find physically repellent - perhaps it’s a symptom of some sort of neurodiversity, but there it is.

So, as soon as I could get my little hands on coloured crayons, I was away. How I loved to draw and paint, so much so, that at the age of seven I began to have lessons with a local artist. These continued for about ten years and were a source of happiness and contentment.

Had anyone tried to help me figure out my vocation, in my mid-teens, it would surely have been, ‘children’s book illustrator’. But it didn’t work out for me at the time, even though it was the only thing I had going for me, and I more or less stopped doing art for the next forty years.

But I never stopped my enjoyment of looking. I study people's faces and know them off by heart forever; I study beautiful views, animals, plants; I see all the patterns and colours and details. I collect illustrated children’s books. My taste has never changed - so what I want to see in an illustration is the same as what I wanted to see as a young child - it gives me more satisfaction than almost anything.

In 2020 I finished my first five books and started to think about illustrating them. How on earth could I find someone who could paint like some of the artists I loved so much? Dulac, Jill Barklem, Margaret Tarrant... Could I contact them directly, if they were still alive? Should I put out adverts? Ask around? As it happened I tried quite a lot of options.

The first person I approached was a lady in her eighties who had produced an illustrated account of her and her late husband’s lives leading up to the time they married. The pictures were simplistic but vibrant, and they really did the job. Her book was absolutely beautiful, and although she wasn’t my favourite artist in the world, I could imagine my stories illustrated in this style and being perfectly satisfactory. But, of course, the lady in question was far too elderly to contemplate such a serious and lengthy project as mine.

Another wonderful artist couldn’t draw people; another couldn’t do vehicles; another became ill; another didn’t really want to do it after all; many were just rubbish in the first place (even with degrees in illustration!!! - come on guys, you can’t call yourselves professionals if you haven’t managed to learn anatomy or perspective yet!) and some wanted too much money. I wrote to agents; I wrote to universities; and eventually I decided to do as my brother suggested, and learn myself.

I bought a load of art supplies and set about catching up on decades of missed practice. It turned out I was better than some of the youngsters who’d got degrees in fine art or illustration - and this made me feel quite depressed - but I wasn’t as good as I would like to be. I couldn’t get the images out of my head and onto paper as easily as I would wish. It was frustrating and disappointing, but in some ways it was a relief to let go of the idea of being an artist once and for all. There was no way I wanted to practice for decades and decades - so back to the drawing board.

I thought, right: good artists have to exist somewhere in the world, just as the right romantic partner has to exist somewhere, for those who are looking - and where do you look nowadays - online of course. So, I joined various social media sites and scrolled through daily, and eventually found the work of the wonderful Maya Pivk.