Images: Lizzie Mayson

Shirley Hughes OBE is a world-renowned, multi award-winning children’s author and illustrator. Aged 88, she has created countless bestsellers including ‘Dogger’ and the ‘Alfie’ picture-book series. She has three children and lives in London, where she continues to work from her home-studio.

You’ve created some of the best-loved and most enduring children’s stories of all time – how did you become an author/illustrator?
I started my career as a working illustrator when I left art school, having studied costume design and then illustration. It was a long haul, going around with my folder showing people my work. My first job was illustrating other people’s stories – some rather boring education books along the ones of ‘Mick is a dog, I see Mick’, and all that type of thing. Gradually I was spotted by a very good author Dorothy Edwards, who wrote the Naughty Little Sister stories; she saw my work and said she would like me to illustrate for her – that was my breakthrough.

After that I was offered work doing fairytale stories for six-year-olds for Faber, and next I tried to do book of my own. We’ve just republished one of the Lucy and Tom stories, which was my first picture-book. At the time I was told ‘OK, Shirley, but you understand they will never be understood abroad’. Then I had the idea for Dogger, which was based on the terrible loss my then-infant son had when he lost a toy, which we actually never found. This story was my big breakthrough, and it won prizes. The drawings were based on a toy owned by my eldest son, and it’s since been on show in various galleries and museums including the Ashmoleon. My son gave him the name.

How does the process of writing for preschoolers differ from writing for older kids?
I don’t dumb down my language for preschool children, I just write very simply, as I would be telling a story to a child. Anything that can be seen in a picture I don’t need to describe in the text, instead I leave it for the child to discover. In the current climate, where life is heightened and children’s responses are being hotted up to lightning speed, it is my job is to slow them down. It isn’t a competition, it doesn’t matter if you learn to read early or late – the most important thing is to look and see an image that isn’t moving and examine it, to get ahead of the text. It’s about the need to make a leisurely examination of pictures. If they can do that then they’re fine.

I have also written quite a lot of books for older children, where I can be more ambitious. I use them as a springboard into all kind of things, after all picture-books can lead you anywhere. I base a lot of these older books on legend, and legend is dark and mysterious, isn’t it? It means my art-work can be much more detailed. I don’t have to go for simple impact as I do when creating for a three-year-old.

How do you go about starting a picture-book?
My main observation is of life; the way children move, they way they all crouch down to look at something and then run off like a flock of birds. I lurk about in parks and play areas with a sketchbook. My husband and I used to go on holidays with a sketchbook, he was looking at buildings, as an architect, and me at the people. Then you go home and make sense of it all.

I write the narrative first and the pictures are all already in my head. The standard size for my books is 32 pages so I know it has to fit nicely into that space. I use gouache watercolour, which is slightly thicker than watercolour so I can cover things up. I have a work-room overlooking a communal garden and I work here every weekday morning, more or less. We’ve been in the same house for years.

I’m just finishing another Alfie book at the moment. As an author/illustrator, the most important person in your life is your editor. We sit about having long conversations, they know your work inside out. I work with a marvellous designer who takes my text and puts it in place on the page and I then work around it. I’ve also done a series of Dixie O’Day books and my daughter Clara Vulliamy is the illustrator – it’s for emerging readers, because you lose a lot of children at that stage. It’s a thrilling adventure story, which is all fast cars, air balloons and dashing about.

How did you encourage your children to be creative?
I have three children and they all knew very much what they wanted to do from a very young age. My eldest son is a journalist, my second son is microbiologist, and Clara is an illustrator. When my children were young I would leave my paints in the pallets after day’s work, every day when Clara came home she would be drawing and painting; I would let her scrape around the pallet like icing sugar around a bowl. Sketchbooks are incredibly important, I keep them all the time. I hold on to them all.

My life has been just as turbulent as anybody else’s, especially trying to raise a family and a career. I think the important thing is to always be behind all their adventures – not wildly encouraging. If they do a drawing you can’t keep saying “darling that’s absolutely wonderful,” but have lots of paper lying around and good quality materials. We are all in love with the stories and pictures young children do, they are so uninhibited. But you have to realise the time comes when their style does tighten up, they become more self-conscious. It’s so important, they have to go through the watershed, they can’t always do naive Picasso-type pictures. At that stage it’s important to encourage them through the process, and keep reading to them.