Quentin Blake's previous fossicks...

The First Elephant Comes to Ireland
by Nathan Zimelman, illustrated by Quentin Blake

I don't think I remember anything about how I was commissioned to illustrate The First Elephant Comes to Ireland by the US publisher, although I remember thinking that, from his name, the author might not actually be Irish. In fact I never met him or had any communication with him; I worked entirely with the text although I paid a lot of attention to that. There are 48 pages in the book, with alternating two-colour and full-colour spreads, so that the distribution of the text had to be carefully worked out in advance so that the opportunities for colour bonanza fell on the appropriate pages and from house-on-fire to moonlight there were plenty of those.

Big Draw Logos

Every October since 2000 the Campaign for Drawing has encouraged people of all ages and abilities to draw. A wonderfully diverse range of themed drawing events called The Big Draw is hosted in galleries, museums, science centres, heritage and environmental sites, libraries, archives, community and shopping centres, colleges, schools and art clubs. Quentin, a founding patron of the Campaign, created their permanent logo in 2000, but has each year also drawn a new Big Draw logo relating to the theme. Our current fossick shows you the full series.

The Big Draw

Thoughts and Aphorisms of the Fruits of Meditation

of Kozma Prutkov
A Quentin Blake rarity from the 1970s

While teaching at the Royal College of Art, I started Inklings, a series of lightweight publications which would allow illustration students to explore their own projects and see without undue delay what their work looked like in print. As a pilot for this scheme I undertook a 16-page pamphlet of my own drawings illustrating the proverbs of Kozma Prutkov. Prutkov (1803-1863) was not a real person. He was a writer invented by four real writers – Count Aleksey Tolstoy and the brothers Zhemchuzhnikov – so that they could publish comic and satirical aphorisms and verses. My short selection from these aphorisms, including the unforgettable ‘if you want to be beautiful, join the Hussars’ prompted me to make seven full-page drawings. They were produced as two separate black drawings, one for the black line and one for the colour and overprinted in the same manner as a lithograph.

Look out for the character with the bun and pin-covered bosom who illuminates ‘It is impossible to embrace the unembraceable’ and see an early gleam of Miss Trunchbull (Roald Dahl’s Matilda) and Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong, who stalks Russell Hoban’s How Tom Beat Captain Najork and his Hired Sportsmen.

Alphabet Soup
This is an Alphabet book which I did many years ago with John Yeoman. It is based on an old tradition of alphabets with rhymed couplets.