HI! I'M ANTONIA, A CHILDREN'S BOOK AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR LIVING ON THE SUNNY SOUTH COAST OF ENGLAND, UK, WITH MY HUSBAND AND TWO LITTLE GIRLS
FOR ILLUSTRATION PROJECTS, BOOKS OR LICENSING ENQUIRIES, PLEASE CONTACT MY AGENT BECKY: becky@theplumagency.com
I love to chat all things children's books!
For any other enquiries or just to say hello, please use the contact form below
Children’s books are an art form that will forever hold wonder for me. Distilling tricky subjects for small people is something I love to get my head around - the dance between words and pictures, sound and sight, getting deep into the heads and hearts of a captive audience. Especially if they’re in their pyjamas - what a privilege!
A BIT OF MY JOURNEY
When I was little I was always drawing drawing drawing. I used to make everything into tiny books, including barcode, blurb and price on the back. The best part of any school work was always making a beautiful cover design on the front of my workbook! If I could have taken every single creative subject on offer I would have. Sadly, school timetables don't allow for this.
I began dabbling in portraiture in my teens, and in particular I loved painting portraits of little children. Even though technically still a child myself, I appreciated the beauty and innocence of young children and I wanted to capture that on the canvas.
I stumbled into illustration when I realised how much I enjoyed creating art for a purpose, to a brief. In my final year of university I was approached by a local church to create a children's book that would tell a bible story using sign language, so they could be more inclusive to the children in their congregation. The project taught me a lot of things - not least how to draw hands!!
One of my earliest experiences of pitching for a book (that I didn’t get) taught me something else really valuable - the difference in the body shape of a 1 year old, a 2 year old and a 3 year old. I was asked to make the main character that I had drawn about a year younger. Being 23 and with no young children in my life at that point I was baffled as to how to age down a character by just one year! It was such a helpful experience and was the start of my really looking at children to discover how they move and grow through different ages.
I now love to observe and draw the differences between ages of children, particularly from babies up to starting school. My greatest joy in juggling motherhood and illustration has been having little walking talking “muses” for my work - the crazy, funny and lovely things they and their friends do are always giving me loads of ideas for new stories!
My children are no longer little enough for baby books, and the oldest is very much beyond picture books (although she still definitely reads them when I bring new ones home), but I will always have my illustrator’s eye on the very littlest and youngest audience. I can’t resist drawing the curves of those lovely little chubby limbs!
