Beautiful Birds of Katriona Chapman

Illustrator Jo Fallon has written a contributor’s post for Ape on the Moon.

Katriona Chapman is a London based Illustrator whose incredible hand-rendered work I first came across on twitter, when the smiling face of a mysterious little bird appeared on my account.

Having worked mainly in children’s book illustration, her work has a gentleness about it which leads us in with ease to the magical world of mysterious, (and some more familiar) creatures she creates.

This is used to great effect in her latest book ‘Five’, where we are taken on a journey with her beautifully rendered birds through equally beautiful worlds. Here, Katriona talks to us about what inspires her, the process of putting the book together, and shares her (very cosy) workspace with us.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

I certainly get a lot of inspiration in general from the natural world… and for ‘Five’ I was drawn to the fact that the story was all about birds.

I thought there was so much potential for pattern in their feathers, and I was really inspired by the prospect of creating strange new types of bird and trying to capture them in motion (birds in flight or landing/taking off can be so beautiful.)

Is self-publishing something you’d recommend to other Illustrators?

Only if you’re very determined! It was a lot more work than I first expected, even though I’d researched it a lot and was prepared for a lot of work. But I’ve got an awful lot out of it as well… the satisfaction of producing a product myself from scratch, and knowing who’s bought it and what parts of the world it’s been sent to has been really exciting.

In many ways more exciting than freelance work, because you’re completely involved with every stage of the publishing process, although obviously I’m still keen to do as much freelance work as possible too!

What materials do you prefer to work with?

I love pencils. ‘Five’ was entirely illustrated in 3B pencil… but for colour work I usually combine watercolour under-paintings with coloured pencil detail work.

What are you working on at the moment?

Just at the moment I’m still trying to keep up with orders for ‘Five’ and get the last 50 or so bound and ready to sell. In the future I’d love to bring out more books myself, although there are pros and cons to going down the hand-made route like we did with Five!

The fact that they’re hand-made makes them really special, but the actual binding of the 200 copies has taken a lot longer than we first thought.

I’d love to bring out a children’s picture book next under my small-press name of Tomatito Books… though obviously how long that takes will depend on what other jobs I might get over the coming year!

© Katriona Chapman 2010