Putting Potter into pictures

Reading, failing and practice can make perfect, says Levi Pinfold.

When Levi Pinfold was young, he thought he would become a helicopter pilot. But he’s glad he didn’t. Instead, Pinfold says he chose the much more fun route of drawing objects such as helicopters and imagining them instead. “Most kids draw,” he says. “I just didn’t stop when I was supposed to. I’ve always been drawing.”

Pinfold is now an award-winning illustrator, and has just completed work for the Harry Potter Hogwarts House Editions (available now), which celebrate the

20th anniversary of Harry Potter and the

Chamber of Secrets.

Pinfold says it was “scary” working on the books. “So many people love Harry Potter that you just want to get it right,” he says. “But it is also great fun because you’re dealing with characters that everyone knows and everyone immediately knows who you are drawing.”

Pinfold says he wasn’t always good at drawing and the more he did it, the better he got. He began by drawing his own comics and created lots of different characters.

Before starting work on illustrations, Pinfold does lots of research. He reads books, studies related images and says that when he is out and about, he is always looking at how things make him feel. He will watch the way people interact and see how objects work. “I’ll be trying to build a library of things so that if you have to illustrate that later, you have it there to draw from,” he says.

He has three pieces of advice for anyone who wants to become an illustrator. “First of all, practise. Secondly, be prepared to fail and to chuck some of your drawings away. Thirdly, read as much as you can. If you read a lot, you have a greater wealth of things to put in.”