Emma Farrarons is an illustrator
An illustrator of picture books has the chance to tell an additional story through drawing alone. There is something special about noticing something new on a page when re-reading a book.
Very young children can’t read yet, so they are carefully studying every single detail of the pictures. The adult reads the text; it’s almost a performance for the child. A special moment when illustration can sing on its own.
So much collaboration happens when making a picture book. At the heart of it, it’s about creating a powerful spread where text and image both sing together and separately.
My debut picture book My Hair is as Long as a River, written by Charlie Castle, which won the Klaus Flugge Prize, was a masterclass in picture book making. I put myself fully in the nurturing hands of my designer Lorna Scobie and editor Grace Gleave at Macmillan Children’s Books.
Centring feelings
Something that really stayed with me was how Lorna and Grace broke down the text and assigned it to a layout of blank pages, showing me roughly where the text would sit, like a cut and paste.
They printed it into a contact sheet of 12 spreads on a single A4 page. On each spread, they wrote an emotion: joy; insecurity; magic; wonder; amazement; adventure; storytelling; fierce; pride; love.
This was a new discovery for me, and one I now use on every new book.
Storytelling through colour
Colour is very important. The boy in my book has flowers, twigs, waterfalls and forests growing from his hair. I drew my own contact sheet and painted colour swatches, exploring how colour can storytell emotions. I had a sketchbook full of observational drawings of London parks, a nearby forest and rockpools from a holiday in Cornwall. I also visited my greengrocer, examining beetroot, kale, berries, and mushrooms for inspiration in creating a natural colour palette.
Composition
As I begin composing pages, I see how many ways I can interpret a scene to create a book rich in pacing, rhythm and flow. I try not to get too focused on the limitations of a spread.
Instead, I take a large layout pad and draw a scene from many perspectives. Close up, from above, from afar, bird’s eye. I think of a camera shooting from different positions. I use a timer – three minutes, 10 minutes – and churn out as many options as possible. It’s a bit like Pictionary. Loose, not detailed.
Then I scan my big pile of spilled thoughts and send them to the team. They take over and do their magic. The designer and editor pick the most powerful, narrative-rich images, suggesting a variety of full spreads, vignettes and single pages.
Each choice is made with a lot of thought and care. There will be lots of back and forth until the thumbnails feel right to the author, illustrator and publisher team. I cut and glue many mini books to look at the pagination and flow, all the way from thumbnails to final colour art.
If you’d like to see this process in action, I made a video for the Klaus Flugge Prize. You can watch it here:
All the illustrators on the shortlist for the Klaus Flugge Prize for Illustration have gone through a similar process – and the results are extraordinary. The breadth of talent and the variety of styles is breathtaking.
If you’re looking for picture books that will stimulate children’s imaginations, look no further than the shortlist.
Born in Cebu, Philippines, and raised in Paris, Emma Farrarons grew up immersed in books and drawing. She studied illustration at l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs and at the Edinburgh College of Art. After studying in Scotland, she moved back to Paris to start life as an illustrator. Unsure about what she wanted to do, one day she took the Eurostar to London, loved it and stayed. After an internship in a publishing house, she worked as a picture book designer and freelance illustrator. She became an international bestseller with her Mindfulness Colouring series. Filled with templates of exquisite scenes and intricate, sophisticated patterns, the books have helped a million people worldwide to feel calmer and more at peace. In 2025, the first in her illustrated chapter book series, Wands Away; Learning to Fly was published by Simon and Schuster.
