Having surrounded myself in a rosy haze of retro chintz, I then had to knuckle down and find a visual language that allowed a resonance of vintage lithographic techniques to imbue my drawings. I didn’t want the art to be a pastiche, but something honest. So I took the drawings I had done of theatres (see Part One) and tried to develop them with these influences in mind.
In the same way I began to draw characters. Ella Bella and the principal characters – Aurora and the Lilac Fairy – I drew over and over again until they felt comfortable and real, and as familiar as my own signature. I love this phase as the drawings are wholly unself-conscious. It doesn’t matter if they fail, and they have a life and a freedom because they are of little consequence individually. Gradually, though, I found things of importance. The pastels captured the subtleties of lithography, the line work kept things fresh and added humour. More importantly, the line work is very “me”. And so, Ella Bella began to live and breath on the paper before me. The next thing to tackle was… COLOUR!
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