What Blake is good at, apart from
drawing, is empathy. Since 2006, he
has painted murals for hospitals. He
knew that children would be in an alien
environment so he gave them a friendly
Planet Zog. He gave people with eating
disorders everyday ordinariness. He
gave the elderly the adventurousness
of their memories, with old people
swinging through trees, while mothers
in labour got floating, rapturous
encounters with new babies.
And just as he connects with people,
they respond to him. A man from Essex
wrote to say how a Blake exhibition
transported him when he was
depressed and couldn’t work.
He began to see more art and
is now well and employed by
a charity. “You don’t often
get anything as diagrammatic
as that,” Blake says. “But it
does demonstrate that it can
have an effect.”
Although he is generous with
drawings for causes, his work is political
only in the wide sense. “What is good
about doing drawings is that they are
some distance from the news. You can
express sympathy with people who are
unfortunate without being specific.”
He believes we could all draw more.
“At 13 we look at grown-up art and give
up.” And “the problem is when you
draw from life you’re presented with a
vast quantity of visual information. I
might take this or that. But people think
their drawing is inadequate... if you
draw and look at it afterwards you’ve
probably got something.”
I ask if he ever worries about not
being able to draw one day. “I never
think of it,” he says, and stopping is
clearly not part of the plan.
Indeed, Blake has been working on
opening the largest museum of illustra-
tion in the world. Next year, or possibly
in 2023 depending on schedules, the
House of Illustration, which Blake
founded, originally at King’s Cross, is to
be relaunched as the Quentin Blake
Centre for Illustration on a vast new
site in Clerkenwell. He hopes it will
“reinforce the English tradition of illus-
tration, as well as introduce an interna-
tional dimension”. In the documentary
he includes it in his mural, adorned
with banners. “We will put out the
flags,” he says. cThe Little Match Girl
Sadler’s Wells Digital Stage
Hans Christian Andersen’s story
turned into a bewitching ballet.
From £5, sadlerswells.comAlice’s Adventures in
Wonderland Britbox
Let the Royal Ballet take you
down the rabbit hole. £5.99
a month, britbox.co.ukAn American in Paris
Stage2View
Before Emily in Paris,
there was this
Gershwin musical
about art, friendship
and romance in the
City of Light. Sure
to get you singing
along; s’wonderful.
£6.99, stage2view.comRomeo and Juliet
Globe Player
Alfred Enoch and Rebekah
Murrell, left, give spirited
performances as the
star-crossed lovers.
£9.99, player.
shakespeares
globe.comSusannah Butterschool magazine, shows foot-
ball players taking off their
boots. “I don’t know why,” he
says. “I hated sport — except
table tennis.” When I say I feel the
same, Blake offers to play me one day.
He read English at Cambridge Uni-
versity, which he is glad of because
learning to read texts has been invalu-
able as an illustrator. However, he also
went to life classes at Chelsea School of
Art for two years. He would draw from
life, then turn his back and draw from
memory, and do it again at home.
Since then, he has hardly ever drawn
from life.
Top draw
Clockwise
from top left:
The Boy in
the Dress;
Quentin
Blake — Self
Portraits; The
BFG; We Live
in Worrying
Times; for
the Rosie
Birth Centre,
CambridgeTHEATRE & BALLET CLASSICS YOU CAN STREAM NOW
Quentin
Blake: The
Drawing of My Life
is on BBC2 on
Christmas Day
at 4:10pm19 December 2021 23