production, really, but that’s quite
fascinating, because of course you
decide what the characters look like.
There are about 10 illustrations in
the book, double-page spreads with
one or two exceptions. The drawings
go in the appropriate places, but they
never appear alongside the text, so
they are carrying on a thing of their
own really. The only time that doesn’t
happen is when Lucky arrives on
a long rope and it goes off onto the
next double-page spread.
Waiting for Godot was drawn with
Winsor & Newton’s watercolour
markers. Depending on the amount
of water you put on, they dilute, and it
diminishes the mark. I quite liked that
because I thought it made the marks
slightly uncertain. And at the end, Lucky
and Pozzo say “let’s go” but don’t move
as they bring the curtain down, so I’ve
drawn three spreads in which theydon’t move but they fade, something
you can do with the markers.
All of my favourite stories need
activity, of course. That was always
the good thing about Roald Dahl:
everything is an activity in his books,
there’s no introspection. There are
plenty of things to draw, but you can
also bring a bit of introspection into
the drawing. Illustrating someone
else’s story is a double act: you don’t
want to spoil the punchline of the
joke, so you try to fi nd the moments
that are just off to the side.
It helps to have gaps to fi ll in. Roald
Dahl’s The Minpins was published 29
years ago as a colour picture book by
Patrick Benson, and then someone at
Penguin Books had the idea to do a
black-and-white version, as all Dahl’s
books are now. I knew Patrick’s
pictures and I think they’re wonderful,
but when I came to read it, I discoveredit’s full of things happening, rather
charmingly. It’s full of little people
with sticky boots so they can walk up
trees. It gestures at the period dress
and it mentions “headgear”, which is
a very good prompt.
Did Roald put little things in the
books to set me off? Yes, we talked
about it a lot at the time. We had a
lot of conversations about The BFG,
about what he was going to wear.
If you read his stories, there’s always
a lot of visual information in there.
Quentin Blake: The Sennelier Portraits
runs from 8-28 March and an exhibition
of The QB Papers runs from 17 May to
6 June, both at The Coningsby Gallery,
London W1. Quentin Blake: From the
Studio runs until 31 October 2021
at the House of Illustration, London N1.
Quentin Blake: Airborne runs until 22
March at the Hastings Contemporary,
East Sussex. http://www.quentinblake.comABOVEAugust from
2017’s All the Year
Round by John
Yeoman
© QUENTIN BLAKE