chris riddel

Chris Riddell is one of my all time favourite artists. He inspires me so much with his daily drawings and topical political drawings. I first encountered him at a university lecture in 2017 when the way he describes drawing and art really changed my perspective. He said that drawing was a way of living, and a way of documenting time; to think of it like a diary entry.

He primarily does book illustration for children's book - some of which he writes himself - as well as covers and daily sketches on his instagram. His book illustrations are really fascinating to me as they seem to capture the traditional essence of book illustration. He uses very loose and rough lines in his work yet he always seems to capture a moment, place or person.

In an interview with The Guardian, he describes his way or working as such:

“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.”

In November 2021 I went to a talk at Waterstones in Piccadilly, where Chris was drawing live and answering questions on the novel 'Arthur: The Always King' by Kevin Crossley-Holland that he had illustrated.

Though I was nervous because it was a public talk, I asked him a question at the end about how he plans out working on such a long novel as there's so many pages to illustrate. He said that he likes to just go through the entire manuscript and draw on it as he goes with initial ideas. These might change later down the line but it's a way to start and get ideas on paper right away from first impressions.

He then went on to say that he also draws on pages of poetry books sometimes. He explained that sometimes when you get a poetry book they will have blank pages next to the text, and it's a great space to draw illustrations that go with the poem.