There are artists who give me new look on conventional materials. For example, I always regarded pastel with suspicion, did not understand how to work with it, cause it crumbled, soiled. I did not imagine how to use it in illustration. But after reading interview of Victoria Turnbull I got other sight on work with pastel. Only one book of Victoria is issued in Russia  – Pandora (Polyandria publishing company). I cannot stop looking on her illustrations.

As the artist says, she got the idea of the book after reading news about the cave with petroglyphs found by archaeologists, where traces of a child and fox were found. Victoria presented the world where people disappeared with piles of garbage left after them, and only living being in these deserted gray landscapes – the fox.

After finding of the main idea Victoria started to work on story-boarding and character design. With first design she applied to her publishing company. The idea was approved. Now she could start working on the sketches. Victoria wanted the main heroine to look like a child, small and fragile, therefore Pandora has a small dress, and small black paws as if wearing stockings.

Information on drawing of locations Victoria searched in museums of London, where she made photos of exhibits which could fill the world of Pandora.

Work on illustrations consisted of several stages. Wishing to preserve the vividness of pencil sketches Victoria scanned and printed them on the hard paper. Then these pictures were touched by lead and color pencils, as well as pastel with flax oil. Adding more and more color to each spread the artist showed the changes in the world of Pandora.

There is an interesting idea of the book cover. No paper, but cloth coating creates tactile perception of substance, handcrafting in the world of e-books.

This year Victoria impressed us with Christmas illustrations for book Is It Really Nearly Christmas? (author – Joyce Dunbar).

I highly recommend to visit her site and see illustrations for other texts. Colorful, impressive, they cannot help but be inspiring.

The article uses materials of portal  picturebookmakers and site of  the artist