I’m sure I’ve mentioned before (here & here!) that I LOVE Quentin Blake’s illustration style, he’s such an inspiration! I enjoyed reading this transcribed interview with Quentin on the Children In The Picture website, here’s a snippit that totally captures what it’s like to develop a character for a children’s picturebook :

“The process begins with immersing yourself in it. You have to learn the book really and the book, the text, is the guide to the illustrator, that’s my view of it, but of course you start off, once you have read it a few times, you start off by drawing and its very interesting because there are some descriptions of the characters but you don’t really know them until you have drawn them so you start drawing and you sort of find out what they are like by drawing…. It’s is a very strange experience because you start drawing, even with characters of my own, by the time I have got to the finished illustrations in the book, you can look at the early ones that you started doing and they are not the same and you think “Oh, it doesn’t look like him”. It is a very strange experience, you’ve got to know them like a person, but you have to do it by drawing.  You can think something but that does not really produce the appearance of that person and what they are like.” – Quentin Blake

Another exciting package arrived the mail today! Charline & Lauren sent me copies of our book, “Tartan Meets the Queen,” printed & published by Trafford Publishing. I’m pleased with how the colours turned out, again Trafford did a great job on the printing.

You can buy this book online at Trafford.com, or if you’d like to order a copy signed by the illustrator (moi!), drop me an email and I’ll arrange it for you :)