Illustrator draws on his talents to finish book

Window cleaner by day, artist by night. An Ashford took up his pencils to illustrate a children’s book.

Philip Huetson, 57, who lives near the town centre with his wife Christine, spent around five years painstakingly labouring over the coloured pencil drawings for Ten Desert Hare, by Marisa Hupka.

Juggling his day job, Mr Heutson’s illustrations were mostly completed in evenings or when bad weather left him short on work.

He said: “It’s really nice to see the finished pictures in print, it was actually quite a relief!

“The pictures are quite large when I draw them and I do three drafts of each so it’s quite a slow process.

“It took me a few years, I started it in 2011 but I took a little break in between to do some other work for my son.”

The pictures are all predominately done with coloured pencils, but Mr Heutson also used acrylic paint to airbrush some of the skies and some watercolour on the front cover.

He said: “I have always enjoyed drawing and remember when I was young getting my first tin of watercolours, it was like winning the lottery.

“I went through a lot of col- ouring pencils and they are not cheap.”

Mr Heutson met book author Marisa Hupka, an elementary teacher and biologist living in Las Vegas, when he was a teenager living in Chicago.

They lost touch when he moved back to the UK in 1982 but nearly 30 years later, US-based writer Marisa approached him on Facebook and asked if he would illustrate her latest book.

He said: “We’ve also discussed the possibility of another one based in the jungle, with more information and more description of the animals.

“Marisa travels to Puerto Rico quite a lot so I think she’s quite interested in doing one about the rain forest.

“I have a couple of little books that I have done over the years but have never finished.

“There’s one that only needs half a page more work, so it’s nearly there, but I started it in 1996.

“Hopefully one day I will finish them.”

Ten Desert Hare is a children’s science and counting lesson about habitats. It follows the journey of 10 hares as they get plucked off one by one in the difficult desert environment.

The playful rhyming children’s ecology lesson was inspired by mountain hikes and Marisa hopes it will both teach and entertain her pupils.

The book is available in print from Amazon.

Philip Huetson, from Ashford, has illustrated children’s book Ten Desert Hare