Artist on artist: Liz Pichon on the 'joyous' Quentin Blake

After working for several years as a graphic designer, Liz Pichon made the move to what she herself calls ‘the best job in the world’; authoring and illustrating children’s books.

In 2010 she conceived the character of schoolboy Tom Gates, and his first outing The Brilliant World of Tom Gates, an illustrated diary presented as written by the eponymous schoolboy, proved a huge hit, bringing Pichon a trio of awards and an army of young fans. More than 20 further Tom Gates books have followed, translated into 46 different languages, and selling more than 16.5 million copies worldwide.

But had she not snuck into a guest lecture at Camberwell College in the early 1980s, Pichon may’ve never even considered her current career path. Delivering that guest lecture was the illustrator and author Quentin Blake. A man who needs little introduction to anyone who has grown up in the UK, Blake has illustrated well over 300 children’s books, including 35 of his own, and 18 by the author Roald Dahl, with whom Blake has long become synonymous. Now in his nineties, Blakes’ work has touched generations of children, of which Pichon is most certainly one. Ahead of joining us at Imagine in February 2026, she shared her admiration for Blake and his joyous work.

I remember really loving Quentin Blake’s drawings as a child. I probably first encountered him on [the BBC children’s television programme] Jackanory. I’ve such strong memories of Jackanory, particularly of the illustrations and hearing stories being read to you in such fantastic voices, and with Blake you’d get really big close ups of his incredibly jolly, gregarious, fun filled pictures.

His drawings are deceptively complex. They look, and they are, very free and very sort of spirited, but they’re beautifully done. Everything’s so carefully drawn; it’s all in the right place and has so much movement and feeling. It’s an illustration style that children love to copy, because they don’t look at it and feel like it’s unobtainable, which is a lovely thing.

It’s very difficult to disassociate Roald Dahl’s stories from Quentin Blake’s artwork. Because his illustrations just bring so much to them. I know Blake has written his own amazing stories as well, but you can’t think about Miss Trunchbull, or The Twits with all the stuff in his beard, without seeing those pictures that make you laugh. You only need to think of them and it makes you smile.

Illustrating someone else’s stories is a really difficult thing. It’s a completely different skill to illustrating your own stories. To look at someone else’s text which, particularly with somebody like Roald Dahl, is so rich and so full of descriptions and choose which bits of it to illustrate and make funny, and how to help tell the story and create the right atmosphere, it’s a very difficult thing. And yet Blake’s drawings do that so brilliantly. 

I particularly love that his drawings are funny. Because quite often, particularly with children’s literature, the books that are funny, the ones that make you laugh, don’t get the same plaudits. And yet funny books, ones that make children laugh, are really important. And that’s not necessarily easy to do, it’s a really hard thing to pull off. So I think that’s something that’s incredibly important about his work.

Although his illustrations always look very free, he always pays a great attention to detail. I heard an interview in which Blake talked about considering what the Big Friendly Giant would be wearing. He’d drawn some different costumes, but he just couldn’t get the shoes right, or perhaps Dahl wasn’t very happy with the shoes. In the end Dahl sent him a pair of Swedish sandals that he actually owned. And so that’s what’s on the giant’s feet. And I love those little touches of detail.

My one meeting with Quentin Blake played a big part in me becoming an illustrator. I’d never thought about being an illustrator or being involved in books at all before that, it had never crossed my mind. I was a dyslexic child; I loved books and reading, but I found it really difficult. My spelling was appalling, and still is. And when you’re at school and you’ve been constantly told that you’re not good at something, you close off to it. I never thought that this world would ever be for me. But something must have clicked at the back of my brain when I went to that lovely lecture with Blake as that was the first time I ever thought about it or even considered it.

My favourite drawings of his are of The Twits. I just love the idea that there are these two horrendous characters doing awful things to each other. Maybe that says more about me, but it was always the really horrible characters that stood out to me, like The Twits, or Miss Trunchbull in Matilda. But those detailed drawings, with all the food and other horrible stuff in their beard and the glass eye with all the terrible things that get done to it, and the idea that you’ve got them drinking beer in a children’s book! I loved it and it became one of the books I would happily read to my own children again and again and again. 

When my daughter was in reception class they did a whole project on Quentin Blake. They read his books and tried copying his drawings, so there was an entire wall of pictures drawn by the children; it was fantastic and joyous. So I took photos of the wall and sent it to his publisher and asked them to pass them on so he could see how his work had inspired so many children to draw. And he wrote back! He wrote to the teacher and the school with a really lovely card that said how inspirational it was. Isn’t that wonderful? I’ve always remembered that and always tried to do the same thing if somebody makes an effort to write to me or draw me a picture. I always try really hard to reply to them because it can mean so much.

Michael Rosen’s Sad Book, illustrated by Quentin Blake, is such an astonishing book. It’s a book that’s supposedly for children, but for anybody who’s had any kind of sadness, or has lost anyone in their lives, whether it’s a child or a grown up, that book is amazing. And a big part of the book is the brilliance of Blake’s illustrations, they’re just extraordinary, so full of emotion, and in such a clever way.

He brings so much emotion to his work. And it’s not always joy, some things are sad, but he’s incredibly good at bringing those emotions through. That really shows in the Sad Book, right from the first page where he draws Michael Rosen smiling, but in a way that shows that he’s not really smiling and is actually sad inside. Obviously Rosen’s heartfelt words are one thing – but having the skill to be able to illustrate that in a way that brings even more emotion to it and, as Blake said, shows you something else, that’s so wonderful.

I love that he’s still painting and drawing and doing things now, in his nineties. He’s doing these incredible blue biro portraits, and all that attention to detail and emotion is still there in his drawings. I’ve got friends who are retiring and they ask me if I’m planning on winding down a bit, and why would I? I look at Blake who has spent his life writing stories, drawing pictures, and to be still doing it in his nineties and enjoying it, what a lovely thing to be able to do.

As an author and illustrator, I cannot imagine a book like George’s Marvellous Medicine getting through to be published now. Just the idea that a kid would go off and help themselves to all the things in the medicine cabinet to make a terrible potion. You can imagine everyone going, ‘hang on a second, what’s this bit, he’s trying to bump someone off, he’s trying to make a potion? Oh you can’t do that, that’d be terrible’. But the thing about those stories and the illustrations are that they always resolve themselves. There has to be a little bit of mild peril, which children actually love.

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