With a kind, gentle manner and a mischievous twinkle in his eye, David McKee comes across as more than a little like his most famous creation. He even sports an Elmer badge on his lapel; it seems rather like a name tag. McKee believes he has more in common with Mr Benn, though. ‘Whether it’s the escaping mentally, I don’t know. But I do feel very akin to Mr Benn.’
‘If I’m writing I’m a writer; if I’m drawing funny drawings I’m a cartoonist; if I’m painting I’m a painter; if I’m illustrating I’m an illustrator. I choose what I want to be at that time. I don’t actually change the costume, but I do change. It is a different moment, a different world that I go into. It is a bit Mr Benn, really.’
'It is a different moment, a different world that I go into. It is a bit Mr Benn, really.’
Nevertheless, McKee admits that he does share his house with the patchwork elephant. ‘He tells me about himself. He’ll tell me a story every now and again.’ His soft West Country burr becomes deeper and rougher as Elmer speaks: “Did I ever tell you about the time when…” and I’ll say, “I don’t think so, what’s that one?” And he’ll say, “Sit down a minute and have a little listen”, and then he’ll tell me a story. He’ll say, “Wouldn’t you like to do a book about that, David?” I’ll say, “Perhaps I would, Elmer.”’
Some of the characters in the Elmer series are drawn from his own family. Cousin Wilbur the ventriloquist is McKee’s ventriloquist uncle Harold, while Aunt Zelda is based on his mother.
'Elmer and the Rainbow was about love. I’m a big believer in love.'
The inspiration for others, though, comes from elsewhere. ‘Eldo, the grandfather, comes from an African ring that I’ve got, which is almost exactly the same pattern. A golden ring: Eldo, Eldorado. Elmer and the Rainbow was about love. I’m a big believer in love.
'Elmer and the Hippos was really because of immigrants. I thought, why do we tell them just to go away, that there isn’t room here, that we can’t have them? There’s some reason they’re here. That’s what we should be looking at, not just saying no.’
This year is the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Elmer by Andersen Press; the occasion will be marked by a new book, Elmer’s Special Day. But the Elmer that readers know today is not the one that McKee originally created. The first edition was published twenty-one years earlier, but went out of print when its publisher ceased trading.
‘The first version is much more painterly, much more sloppy in a way, and had more pages. So I made it fit the Andersen format at the time and changed the story slightly. And then of course it went into the series. The first time around it was just two books.’
The original version was stylistically different, he says, because of the way he was working at the time. ‘The 60s were visually fantastic and you could do things which you can’t do now. I can still get away with crazy perspective because I did at the time. They think I can’t draw properly! Probably right!’
Though McKee’s paintings for his picture books are childlike and sometimes cartoonish, he has a firm background in fine art; indeed, the Illustration Cupboard exhibited some of his oil paintings in March 2009.
When he started at art college in 1950, all of the courses focused on painting; illustration was not an option. ‘As a painter you look at architecture and you look at furniture and you look at all sorts of things. Probably all the people of my generation were brought up like that, really, to work more in that traditional art scene.’
His own use of line and colour were originally inspired by artists and styles he encountered at college. ‘With the fine line, I was influenced by Paul Klee, Saul Steinberg, Andre Francois, and by the clarity of the primitive artists like Louis Vivin, who when I was a student I loved, and I still like. In fact I’ve got a Vivin. The Fauves [a group of early twentieth-century artists including Matisse] influenced me a lot with their very strong colours.’
‘African art influences me now. There’s just so much all the time and when you go back to working you can’t help but be influenced. You think: “That was great: that pink with that sharp green, or that pale blue with that lemon line across it. I can use that!”
'I like the humour of Picasso. I like the humour of Dubuffet. I don’t think art necessarily has to be very serious'
'Humour I like, as well, in art. I like the humour of Picasso. I like the humour of Dubuffet. I don’t think art necessarily has to be very serious: “What is he trying to say about humanity”, and all that?’
And yet he does have quite a lot to say about humanity, or the lack of it. Just look at Two Monsters, in which the feuding creatures hurl names and stones at each other only to discover, once they have destroyed the mountain between them, that they are friends; or Three Monsters, about the way we treat refugees; or Tusk, Tusk and The Conquerors, both indictments of war, the latter specifically about the war in Iraq.
‘I was brought up during the war and the idea was that you were on the defence of the island. There was not this business of attack. And it was so obviously wrong, but it was also so obviously impossible. How were we going to get out after we’d gone in? I just felt so furious, and the only thing I could do was a book.’
‘When I started art college there was somebody there who was an ex-soldier. He’d been in Italy, and he said, “Who won? Us or Italy? It was Italy, because all I want to do is go back there.” And that idea stuck in my head. It’s so true, this business of where the real force and strengths are.
'So The Conquerors was based on that idea, which I’d had at that point nearly 50 years, and I did the book in a week. I wrote it, I rewrote it and rewrote it, I drew it and redrew it, but I chose a style which was simple, almost childlike; and at the end of the week the book was finished. So did the book take a week or did it take 50 years?’
Even the sweetly humorous Elmer books contain serious themes about the appreciation of difference. ‘Elmer and Rose came up because of the idea of... if you’re in a community and everybody’s white and there’s only one black person, it’s fine. But if it’s the reverse and you’re the only white person, mass becomes sort of threatening. So I thought it was nice to have another mass, but only one first of all. And, in fact, Rose only saw one grey elephant, which she thought was odd. I like that book.’
‘My first wife was Anglo-Indian,’ he continues. ‘We were rather an odd couple in Devon at that time. My present partner is Algerian. So I’ve seen the results of not being accepted. I’m quite used to walking with it, but it needs talking about as well.’
Though always recognisable as his work, McKee’s style varies according to his subject. The Conquerors is drawn in simple line and crayon; the King Rollo books, after which his TV production company is named, are designed with four panels to a page, like a comic book; I Hate My Teddy Bear is downright surreal.
‘I’ve never been very interested in selling “David McKee”, the style,’ he says. ‘What I’m interested in is each book as its own thing. If someone says Not Now, Bernard was great, that’s great. That book was quite influenced by Steinberg.
'I don’t like that idea of just repeating something because it works. I’m not looking to be rich rich, and I’m having fun. I’ve always had fun. I got into the game to avoid working, even though it takes all the hours that there are. 'It’s not a job; it’s a way of life. And so a lot of the changes in style are because of something I’ve seen or something I’ve heard, or just because I’ve been working with a fine pen and I suddenly want to work with a brush.’
The book is he is working on at the moment is a simple story which he has already drawn four times but still isn’t happy with. In the meantime, other ideas keep cropping up, including one for a new Mr Benn story.
‘It used to worry me at one time. I used to think: “I hope I finish this book before I die, because I want to get it out.” Then I realised that when I die there’ll still be a load of stuff in there that I haven’t been able to get out, because as soon as you get rid of something there’s other stuff coming in.
'I believe the air is just full of stories, full of music, full of images. If we had a television set in this room, we would have I don’t know how many programmes passing us. We just need the right receiver. You just have to be tuned in to pick them up.’
He admits that this constant attunement to sounds and images is a mixed blessing: it provides artistic inspiration when just walking down a street, but becomes wearing at times.
‘Pierre Bonnard said when he was near death, “I’m tired of looking”. Sometimes I feel exactly that. It’s so intense, even watching the silhouettes against the windows here and the light changing. It just never stops; you’re feeding that all the time.’
