This month we went behind the scenes with illustrator Lauren Tobia to find out all about the making of Lauren and Atinuke's latest picture book, Splash, Anna Hibiscus!
What do you enjoy most about
being an illustrator?
I suppose it is the moment when a new text arrives as just the words. It's then I have my first go at scribbling ideas all over the page. I get to look at it, explore it and see what it does. I feel it’s a massive privilege to get to play with an authors words and their world. Oh and the fact I get to go to work in my slippers!
I suppose it is the moment when a new text arrives as just the words. It's then I have my first go at scribbling ideas all over the page. I get to look at it, explore it and see what it does. I feel it’s a massive privilege to get to play with an authors words and their world. Oh and the fact I get to go to work in my slippers!
In Splash, Anna Hibiscus! ,
Anna and her family go to the beach, is there anywhere that you would like Anna
Hibiscus and her family to go to next?
Anna’s world is so rich and fun I think
she can go wherever Atinuke wants to take her, but I will say I love to draw
big crazy imagined city’s full of tall buildings markets and people and
gardens..
I think Anna’s world is a bright sunny
amazing world of Atunuke’s and now my imagination and that’s a place I visit
all the time. Real Africa is such a huge continent
with so many different people and cultures in it that I would probably never
see it all in a lifetime. I have been to the very top of Africa on my holidays
once but as for Anna’s world of West Africa no, but I would love to one day.
How do you go about creating
your characters?
Atinuke's stories create such a full
world that I just read the text, had a cup of tea with a pencil in my hand and
she came to me so quickly it was like she just waved at me out of the paper!
Mind you she has evolved a bit over the years and in Splash she even gets to
wear a sunny swimsuit.
Where do you get your
inspiration for your illustrations?
I get most of my inspiration from
looking.. it's filling your visual world with new things. The way plants cast shadows on walls,
children in the park, views out of windows the writing on a cereal packet,
films, traveling, the internet. I got a lot of ideas for Anna’s city from
watching Nigerian pop videos. I also
have a big collection of picture books that I have always loved looking at. There
are so many illustrators working now who I admire its very difficult to just
say one or two. I think we are in a golden age of beautiful books. I would like
to say that some of my favourite illustrators are still ones from my childhood
such as Edward Ardizone, Jennie Corbett and the fabulous Gerald Rose.
What was your favourite
picture book growing up?
I had so many to choose from my mum took me to
the big city library every week and so I always had different books to look at,
the wonderful thing about libraries is that you get a pile of new books every
week! I suppose it had to be anything Illustrated by Gerald Rose..but in
particular “The Great Jelly of London” I
would get that book out week after week.
If you weren’t an
illustrator, what would you be?
I expect I would still be an intensive
care nurse or if not I would have continued working for a lovely landscape
gardener. We had lots of fun whizzing round country lanes in a white van
drinking tea out of flasks and I love being scruffy.
How long does it usually
take you to make each illustration for the picture book?
That’s a very difficult question as I
work in so many stages...It starts with a rough drawing that maybe only takes a
few hours but it gradually evolves over time and its maybe months before the
drawings become colored and tweaked into finished artwork. I work with advice
from Atinuke and a very talented team at Walker Books that help nurture the
book on its way.
Do you have any tips for
aspiring illustrators?
Yes.. Draw and look! I would also say that the most
wonderful thing you can do is go to university and study illustration with an
open mind, experiment and enjoy it, learn as much as you can ...then leave and
do your own thing! 
Get your hands on a copy of Splash, Anna Hibiscus! by Atinuke and Lauren Tobia at your local bookshop
