Whimsical is pure joy. It makes people smile and it charts a happy story or message. My atelier is full of toys, often unloved ones from local broacantes, that are given a new home, to inspire me to create characters for my books and illustrations. I owned a flock of geese, ducks and chickens up to 2023 and they changed my life in many ways. My naughty goose Bumble and my guinea called Pipi inspired me to start illustrating. I created two characters that became key to me choosing birds as my niche subject, and from that stemmed the writing of children’s stories. I illustrate all my stories and this blog will highlight many of the ideas I have and how they manifest into the final book.
I illustrate in coloured pencil as a preference. I found watercolours too volatile, and oils took too long to dry, but pencils came in such a wonderful instant rainbow of colours, just opening the tins brought me instant joy. Oil, wax, graphite, charcoal, pastel – the choice is as endless as the colour shades. Mixing pencils gives you huge control over the final image, with pastels giving softness in backgrounds, and wax pencils blending beautifully to move from one colour shade into another. I use acrylic pens to add crisp lines, highlights and detail and occasionally a little watercolour for backgrounds.
Art is so important. Creating wonderful visuals brings others into your world, sharing your joy, stories and characters. I do use Artificial Intelligence to help me visualize for my stories as I write them. I also use it to test ideas before committing to paper. AI has been very helpful with the composition of lino-cutting designs I do for birds.
But mostly I love to take one of my favourite colour pencil shades and start to draw.
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