I write and illustrate both of my books and I think actually it’s easier that way cause I’ve never actually really illustrated for anyone else so I don’t know how people managed, but I think really when you’re writing a picture book, you have to have both — the pictures and the words are equally as important.
You can’t actually manage one without the other. You need to sort of combine them both together so when you’re writing one doesn’t particularly come first. You might have an idea because you have the particular image you want to go with or you might have a particular set of words you want to go with.
Well, I both write and illustrate my books because for me, actually, that’s the easiest way to do it. I’ve never actually illustrated somebody else’s text or whole book anywhere and I find that that would be actually quite difficult. I’d like to do it one day, but I think it’d be quite difficult because when you’re making a picture book, both the text and the picture are sort of equally important and they’re dependent on each other. So the picture might be saying one thing, the text might be saying another thing.
And if you took one of them away, the story would completely change. So they’re sort of interdependent. And when you’re writing them, it’s really good if you can sort of take control of both of them and write them at the same time. I’m influenced by people like the Ahlbergs, well a lot of English illustrators just because I think their sense of humor is great and there’s little visual jokes. And I just like the detail in people like that drawings, really. I don’t have one particular major influence.
