HOW I DRAW
B
orn in Sidcup, Kent in
1932, Sir Quentin Blake
is perhaps Britain’s best
loved and most recognisable
illustrator. After reading English
at Cambridge, he began his
career creating satirical cartoons
for Punch and The Spectator.
Blake is, of course, best known
for his drawings for kids, having
illustrated more than 300
children’s books to date for
authors including Sylvia Plath,
Beatrix Potter, Dr Seuss and
Roald Dahl. Most recently, he has
self-published The QB Papers,
a series of 20 short, themed
collections of drawings.
Keen to give back, he taught
at the Royal College of Art for 21
years, served as the inaugural
Children’s Laureate in 1999 and
founded the House of Illustration
in London’s King’s Cross in 2014,
which houses a permanent
gallery dedicated to his work.
He is also a patron of a number
of charities, including The Big
Draw, and was duly knighted for
services to illustration in the
2013 New Year’s Honours list.
Blake has been trying to retire
since 1997.MAKING A MARK
I suppose if there is a pattern to my
day in the studio, it’s that I go and
look at what happened yesterday fi rst.
I switch on a few Anglepoise lights
and think about what I’m going to do.
At about 10am, I come to my offi ce
across the square. That’s quite good
because you’ve walked away from it
and you can think about other things.
And then I go back and have a bit of
a session, stop for lunch for an hour
and then go through the afternoon,
probably to about 6pm.
The artworks in my new exhibition,
TheSennelierPortraits, wereall
drawnwitha Sennelieroilstick.
I’dhadit fora longtime,andI had
it inmyheadthatit wasonlyforbig
drawingsbecauseit’saboutaninch
across. I suddenly realised that if you
drew on an A4 sheet of paper, the
mark was huge and I just took off
with that idea, making up faces.
The interesting thing for me was
you could use the stick in different
ways – it’s got a fl attish end so you
can get the full width or a sharper line
and so on. I was having an enjoyable
time trying to fi nd as many different
ways of using it as I could. I did far
more portraits than I ever expected
to do. They’re different sizes, different
styles, different papers as well. Each
one is done with the same stick,
which I fi nd fascinating.
Did it change the way that I drew?
I think so, but I didn’t mind that.
I couldn’t tell you how I hold it, actually.
They’re the way I draw but not
identifi ably the way I draw, if you know
what I mean? You start off with the
nose or something and you sort of
discover the character as you go along.
You dig it up out of unconscious
memory. Internally, I often act the
expressions out. In the past, I have
had someone come in and say,
“You’re making the faces, you know?”
I went to Chelsea School of Art in
1957 to attend life-drawing classes,
twice a week for nearly two years.
I didn’t know how to draw from life
when I went there but I put in that
time and I’ve never done it since.
It just seems to have gone into my
system, so now I can make up fi gures,
even though they may not be
perfectly anatomically accurate.
Did I need that period? Absolutely.
I’ve been living off it ever since.
It was a bit of a revelation to me that,
in those life classes, it was partly
about the forms but a lot of it is
about balance – making them look
as though they are standing up or
leaning or whatever it is. That wasn’t
how life drawing was conventionally
taught but it was a very important
feature of it, I thought.GENERATINGIDEAS
I’mdoingfewercommissionsnow,but
I’veproducedmoredrawingsoverthe
past 10 yearsthanI everhave.I’mjust
makingthingsupasI goalong.ABOVEO is for Ostrich from 1989’s Quentin Blake’s ABC
TOPSid Bunkin from 2004’s Angel Pavement by Quentin Blake
LEFTDecember from 2017’s All theYearRoundbyJohnYeoman