Influenced - Adulthood Favourites
Fortune favors the bold
I hope you enjoyed reading about my childhood favourites that left huge impressions on me in my first “Influenced” post. After I passed my picture book age, I didn’t rediscover the love for picture books until my early 30s when I decided to be an illustrator. In this post, I’m going to share children’s books and artists that had big influence on me and helped me develop my own style (whatever it is) to this day.
Before I continue, I should clarify what I mean by “favourites” here. As any book lovers might agree, it’s an impossible task to pick only a few favourite books. I could say all 290 (and counting) children’s books on my bookshelves inspired me (otherwise I wouldn’t have bought them, would I?). So, in this post, I’m going to focus on my favourite books and artists that influenced me. For example, I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen and Oh No, George! by Chris Haughton inspired me to be a picture book maker and I absolutely adore Beatrice Alemagna, Felicita Sala, Júlia Sardà and Isabelle Arsenault (to name a few) but they are not included in this list.
My Dad Used To Be So Cool & Tough Guys Have Feelings Too by Keith Negley
When I decided to be an illustrator, my tools of choice was gouache, markers and ink and my palette was muted. But my stylistic breakthrough came when I met a co-founder of Flying Eye Books at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in 2017. He suggested to re-illustrated my dummies in more graphic and bold style like Negley’s books.
My biggest artistic inspiration is ukiyo-e (Japanese wood prints) so I liked his style - flat colours with subtle use of textures and dynamic compositions (also, the stories about masculinity are touching).
So I started using Photoshop and I re-illustrated my dummy books with more graphic shapes and flat and stronger colours, then something clicked. Here are the same spread from Avocado Asks first dummy and the second dummy.
