FAQs

Depends on whether you win them! I've won very, very few. However I do think that awards or recognition early in a career is a real encouragement. So, for instance; winning The 1982 NSW Premiers Literary Award (Whistle Up the Chimney by Nan Hunt) was great. The Children's Choice Award listings are a real buzz. It has also been a huge honour to be the recipient of the 2011 Euphemia Tanner Award. This is not for a particular book - reading the citation will explain all.  Without being corny I would say having the respect of my colleagues in the illustration and publishing community is pretty well the best reward.  

Very broadly, illustrators tend to come from from two different traditions. One is naturalistic, and puts more emphasis on sentiment in the way a story is told. In this approach the reader is often guided by words and pictures to how they should feel. For instance, the “I love you Mummy” sort of books. The other approach takes more from representation and interpretation. In this approach a story is told in a more abstract way, perhaps appreciated more intellectually, less emotionally. In the decades past the former approach was seen as the American, the latter seen as the European.   Now there is more blending of these stylistic approaches. Many Illustrators in Australia are certainly influenced by both, and incorporate both in their work. I certainly do so. There is respect, and a very appreciative audience for the abstracted and stylised art styles. On the other hand excessive sentimentality tends to make some people groan. (Well it certainly makes me groan!). The mainstream here though, I think, veers towards the naturalistic, whimsical, humorous approach (however it is painted), and it is in this mainstream that I deliberately put myself. 

A few times I have drawn my mother and father, or my cousin Bob. Bob always seemed to me the archetypal good-hearted Australian man. So he was the model for ‘Dad’ in Paul Jennings’ The Cabbage Patch series. I like drawing grown-ups because they do have more distinctive features, eg, wrinkles. Family life is very important to my illustration. It’s where most humour is. Including, dark, ironic and sometimes sarcastic humour! And warm, gentle, loving humour of course. The family is the core of a child’s world. The depiction of Australian suburban family life is what I do best, because it is what I know best.

No. Illustrating is my full time job. When doing roughs I think about the story. When painting I probably think about politics mostly! And about water - greywater, groundwater, stormwater - and weather and climate change. That’s a lot to think about. Music is usually on. And podcasts. 

Yes, I do. Nowadays I do think about childhood more. I illustrate from the position of wanting the drawings to be interesting, funny and sometimes surprising. So I draw in a lively, silly sort of way.

In the beginning, a book needs an author, and a story. Storytelling is the heart and soul of a book. The driving idea and direction for the book comes from the author. But that’s enough about authors. My job starts with the editor sending me the text.

It doesn’t particularly fuss me. In some way it makes me want to understand my work better.

There is a moment when you tire of it. And your eagerness to start the next picture is increasing.

I try. I try and be quite groovy. Luckily baldness is groovy. I'm very groovy.

One trick is to use tracing paper for the roughs. You can then do multi-layered roughs. Or even turn it back to front. Lastly, tracing paper is tough and can take lots of rubbing out.

To write, then illustrate my own story. I do have a little story about a cat that may be published one day. It needs a couple more lines at the end, and maybe a bit more in the middle. So far it has taken me five years to get this far. Writing is hard. I would love to be a political cartoonist or satirist. Drawing the former Prime Minister as a duck is the closest I’ve come to it.

I am told by the editor how many pages the book will have. Usually 32 for a picture book. Then I work out where the lines of the text will go on each page. This forms the basic layout. It can be moved around later. Then I start the roughs of the illustrations, done with pencil, and eraser, on tracing paper. A photocopier is useful, especially being able to change the size of a drawing. Bits of roughs can be sticky-taped together. A rough can become pretty messy! These roughs show all the important bits of the composition. But not all the details. Lots of things can be left for later. Especially colour, of course. Then they get sent back to the editor (I hate taking them in personally). The editor may require some changes, or worse - lots of changes! But if the editor loves them then I can start the final artwork. That usually means tracing the roughs onto artboard, re-outlining them in ink, then finally painting them with goauche paint. Sometimes it takes forever going from first rough to final painting. In recent years I have done quite a bit of colouring on computer. I’ll write about that elsewhere.

Firstly, for the outline I like to use a nib (with ink). With a nib the lines can be thick or very thin, and the ink can be dark or very watery... Colour is applied with a mixture of inks, gouache paint and acrylic paint. Sometimes with coloured pencil on top, particularly soft pastel pencils. (Dipped in water!) In recent years I’ve done a number of books using Adobe®Photoshop and Corel®Painter 8 software on the Mac computer. I use it to apply colour to my hand-drawn line work. (This outline drawing is scanned into the computer.) The wonderful thing the computer allows is to have the outline drawing on one layer.The colour is applied underneath on a different layer. So you always keep the entire outline drawing, bits of the linework don’t get painted out. The computer has its weaknesses though. The computer brushstrokes don’t have that gorgeous texture that a real brush has. But they are pretty good! My computer technique is to produce pictures that appear to be ‘real’ paintings. I’ve not developed other techniques the computer does well, like 3D, or vector images. The physical stress of spending hour after hour on the computer is far, far more wearing on eyes and arms than painting normally. A long days work on computer leaves me wrecked!

They told me many things – like stop picking my nose. Or, that I was required to work in the shop on Saturday morning. More memorable was their example of being hard working and reliable to others. My dad did like to talk about what I was reading, my mum told me I could only read if I had exhausted myself doing all sorts of boring chores.

I have many… Peeing my pants in class because the teacher had said ‘No more hands up to go to the toilet’. I have sort of immortalised this scene in my drawings for ‘The Cabbage Patch Curse’ by Paul Jennings.

Personally, I think the writing! A brilliant story with ordinary illustration can still be a good book - with a long publishing (‘in print’) life. A dull story - even with brilliant or beautiful illustrations will probably not have a long publishing life.

For me,I think the best, cleverest, most imaginative ideas come in silence, and in slowness. What you could call deep thought, or could call 'the zone'.  

I’m often inspired by my fellow illustrators and authors. Not all of them, but quite a few of them. Particularly the Melbourne community - not surprising, because that's where I live. It is important to be inspired. Especially early on - by people who may come to be a role model. So, following are a few friends and colleagues who have been important to me as an illustrator: First, Maire Smith, my sister.    Then the graphic designer John Nowland. Ron Brooks for his empathy and understanding of stories. Leigh Hobbs makes linework and brushwork 'sing'. Shaun Tan who, through his words, invites you to a clearer understanding of the process. Ann James and Terry Denton... 

A computer can’t draw or think. But who knows?