How to illustrate a children’s book

It’s important to face the blank page and start making marks.

Detail from the cover of The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse, by Charlie Mackesy

Since the publication of my book I’ve been quite busy. I’ve had to get a diary for the first time. I normally go to bed in the clothes I was wearing the night before — maybe without my jeans — so getting dressed only takes a second. Drawing is my addiction. I can lose myself for hours in my studio. The book came about after I began posting the boy and his animal friends on Instagram, more than two years ago. People liked them and I got thousands of new followers. Around the drawings are short conversations centred on the boy’s questions about life and feelings. Their world is tender and without guile, where being honest and vulnerable is a strength. Sometimes it takes 50 attempts to get a picture right — the ink lines have to convey the emotion in the words, through the angle of a head or the swish of a tail. My studio is covered in rejects; you can’t see the floor for the paper. It’s important to face the blank page and start making marks. I also like to do cartoons based on things I’ve overheard: “I can’t get over your new house, Marjorie” will have me sketching someone trying to clamber over a building. I sleep restlessly and keep a notebook by my bed to jot things down for those 3am awakenings. My sheets are covered in ink.

Charlie Mackesy is the author of The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse , published by Random House UK, $35 (HB).