Katie Cleminson: Best Emerging Illustrator 2009

Describing her feelings about being named Best Emerging Illustrator in the Booktrust Early Years Awards, Katie Cleminson is momentarily lost for words.

‘It felt amazing to be shortlisted because I’m brand new to this,’ she says after a long pause. ‘When you create a book you have no idea how people are going to react to it. I already feel really lucky to have been published. Winning is an amazing stamp of approval for the work I’ve done.’

Now just two years out of art college, Cleminson was picked up by Random House after a meeting at the Bologna Book Fair, where she was the only featured illustrator from Britain. She started her first book, Box of Tricks, for which she has won the Booktrust award, in her last year at North Wales School of Art and Design. Although she had long hoped to become an illustrator, she has always enjoyed telling stories too.

‘From a young age I loved to draw, and it was natural for me to write stories to illustrate. For me, one just isn't as much fun without the other.’

‘Box of Tricks started with wanting to do a simple story about magic. I’d never seen a picture book with a girl magician in it. I’d like children to put themselves into the story and to think about what they would conjure up out of the box if it was them.’

Cleminson’s girl magician, Eva, conjures up a friend in the form of Monty the polar bear. She pulls dozens of rabbits out of hats, and she magics a feast and a band of animals, who provide the music for an impromptu dance routine by Eva and Monty.

‘The dance moves were inspired by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers; they were really fun to draw!’ she says. And as with Max’s rumpus with the Wild Things, the climax of Box of Tricks is a wordless, joyful celebration. ‘It’s really nice for a children’s book if there’s a bit where everybody has fun, like in Where the Wild Things Are. Even in Winnie-the-Pooh they have a party or they go off on adventures.’

The simplicity of the story is a departure from the postmodern work Cleminson was creating at college. ‘In terms of the text what I was doing was more European; I was playing more with the idea of it being a book, with more eccentric characters, more abstract ideas.

'I did a book in my second year that was highly commended in the Macmillan Prize, but then I got it out of my system. I realised I didn’t have to have a really off-the-wall story to be original.’

The characters are drawn entirely in black apart from red stripes on Eva’s top. As the action progresses, Jackson Pollockesque splodges of mainly blues and reds of varying intensity are added to the background.

‘The start of the book is just Eva at home. I used a lot of white space to show that nothing was going on. Then as soon as she begins the magic the story comes to life and the page comes to life. I took a very decluttered approach to it. I took more out than I put things in.’

‘I like it when there’s a contrast of colour and then plain black and white,’ she continues. ‘I’m often drawn to books where there isn’t too much colour going on. Alexis Deacon is quite a good example of that, or even John Burningham.

'He’ll use white space for effect, or he’ll use colour to show excitement. I like the characters to be able to breathe on the page and for the eye to be directed around the page. I made the characters black and white because I wanted the magic to be very obvious. Eva is the only one with any colour.’

After years of favouring photorealistic pencil drawings, Cleminson made the transition from pencil to ink during a trip to Chester Zoo in her first year at university. ‘A friend from America had given me a box of art stuff when she went back and there were inks in there and I just took one out and drew with it.’

She achieves her distinctive line with the pipette, the dropper that comes with the ink bottles. ‘You pinch the top to suck up the liquid, then you squeeze it to dispel it. You normally use it just to move the ink, but I actually draw with the pipette, so it's not a pen, as such.

'The pipette is very unpredictable, and when I started to draw with ink I had to draw things bigger to get a clear line. With my second book I’ve had fewer problems because I’m more experienced. I can draw smaller now.’

The shift in medium inevitably made an impact on both her approach and style; Cleminson has found the change exhilarating.

‘When I began drawing with ink I had to think quicker and I had to draw quicker, and it gave this lovely loose style, which I liked. It just made me more instinctive. All my years of drawing very neatly and looking at what I’m drawing have paid off because when I drew with ink I could still draw accurately, but it was more exciting to look at. I really enjoyed it.

'Every time I drew I didn’t know how it would come out at all. Because with the pipette the ink can just suddenly come out, there are unpredictable air bubbles in it. Anything can happen. It is scary, I suppose; but I love it.’