illustration process Quotes

I'm not a painter by any stretch of the imagination; I'm a dyed-in-the-wool traditional illustrator, and I begin with black and white. If I need colour, I add it over the top. There's a calligraphic element to it... it's about the texture of lines on the page.

When I illustrate a cover or a book, I draw upon what the author tells me; that's how I see my responsibility as an illustrator. J.K. Rowling is very descriptive in her writing — she gives an illustrator a lot to work with. Each story is packed full of rich visual descriptions of the atmosphere, the mood, the setting, and all the different creatures and people. She makes it easy for me. The images just develop as I sketch and retrace until it feels right and matches her vision.

I never spent less than two years on the text of one of my picture books, even though each of them is approximately 380 words long. Only when the text is finished ... do I begin the pictures.

I write separately from the inking up. I'm sure this varies from cartoonist to cartoonist; I find that the writing is the hard part and the drawing is the fun part.

I've never met any artist who illustrated one of my books, although I've corresponded briefly with one. I have always been impressed by the technical expertise involved in the covers, even if sometimes puzzled by the subject matter.

When I'm writing a comic book, I'm thinking about a character that I'm going to be drawing on the page. I've never drawn a character to look like who I want to cast in a movie because I don't think that way. I'm a real monomaniac. I do one thing at a time.

I write the poems first, with only a few exceptions for odd reasons, where I'm given the illustration first.

The books take a year just to do the drawing. I will travel to a country to do the research and get ideas. Sometimes I don't travel to do research, but mostly I do. It takes a long time, but do I ever get tired of it? Not really. The characters kind of grow and evolve.

Most people don't realize the many steps that a pop-up goes through. There are a variety of "Dummies" (the sketch phase of the book). Then finally the pencil "dummy", then the finished art which is like painting pieces of a jig saw puzzle.

I think we sent Tony Fucile pictures of ourselves, photos from like when we were seven years old. That's what he worked from. He captured exactly what we looked like. I'd love to do another one with Alison, not just for the joy of writing, but also for the joy of watching Tony bring it to life with his illustrations. I'm hoping at BEA, or ALA, I'll get to meet Tony and shake his hand and thank him.

Every sky with its varied tints and every feather of each bird were coloured by hand; and when it is considered that nearly two hundred and eighty thousand illustrations in the present work have been so treated, it will most likely cause some astonishment to those who give the subject a thought.

The illustrators work so much harder on the books than the writers do. I mean, that's so much work doing what they do, and it's terrible for them.