PICTURE PERFECT
Cat’s creative career
I’ve always loved art and drawing, and I have a Bachelor of Design degree, majoring in photography.
Before I started a family I worked in lots of creative fields, including in my sister’s design store, where I produced a line of children’s ceramics.
When my first son, Thurston (9) was small, I decided to follow my real ambition and enrol in a course for budding children’s book illustrators, which I’d found online. I found it really inspiring and stimulating, and I was very lucky to have Sandra Morris as my tutor. She has an illustrations agency and, two courses later, asked me if I’d like to join it. Of course, the answer was ‘yes’!
Some quite well-known international publishers soon expressed interest in my work and before I knew it − within a couple of months − I was in my dream profession.
As time went on I became more confident, and my work got better and better. You don’t always realise how much thought goes into creating warm and relatable characters, but I begin by reading the text and then I start playing around with rough pencil drawings.
When I got underway on my first colour book, The Frog
Who Lost His Underpants, the principal character began as a young boy but somehow that didn’t work, so − after trying him as a bear, we settled on a frog − and he was a great hit!
We do work very hard on gender-balance and having ethnically diverse characters – there’s no pink for girls and blue for boys going on, and it’s this variety that I love.
A couple of years into my new career, my husband Tim and I had our second son Miles (4) and because I was working at home, we had the ideal family set-up. The first year of his life went very fast as I looked after him while Thurston was at school, dashing to my studio to work whenever he was asleep.
The boys, of course, enjoy what I do, although they can be very open, honest critics. I run my characters past them and ask for opinions as to whether they are funny enough and, of course, Thurston and Miles and their little friends inspire me.
Capturing mobility and anatomy with imaginary creatures – which is what I’m doing as an illustrator − can be difficult. Basically I’m drawing anthropomorphised characters, doing human things, so they need humanistic qualities. I watch how the boys sit, lie, run and climb, and their facial expressions and body language give me lots of ideas too.
Once the basic concepts have been settled, it’s time to get into the colouring side of things and it’s something I really look forward to. I use coloured inks and the images are very delicate, with lots of detail. It can take me anywhere between six to eight months to produce 33 pages, so it’s not a short process by any means.
At the moment I’m mixing up children’s books and commercial design. I’m teaching myself digital design skills with Apple Pencil for iPad Pro and it’s amazing what can be done. I’ve worked on product packaging, fabric design and infographics.
I really enjoyed doing an asthma brochure, aimed at children, because I was able to dream up soft, approachable characters that children could identify with.
Above all, though, it’s always a wildly anticipated day when the first copies of my completed books arrive. I’ve illustrated eight now, but the thrill is always the same, and the boys gather round for a first read. I think they’re proud of what I do – well,they certainly say so − and my friends and neighbours are supportive as well. Children’s books need to appeal to adults too, as anyone who’s read the same one aloud 100 times knows, so I’m always keen to get their feedback.
Although the pay cheques can be sporadic, Tim has been right behind me from day one. He’s a creative person too, but in the music industry, so we understand each other.
While I will keep branching out a bit, I can still see myself doing many more children’s books in the future. Apart from anything else, I love the humour of it all and when I find myself chuckling away at my funny characters, I feel very lucky indeed.”