Studio Tour

Take a virtual tour of Quentin's studio! Click and drag your mouse on the image to pan around the studio space. To find out more about an item, click on the '+' beside it.

People send me things sometimes, and they can be quite interesting: a group of artists from Australia once sent me a little wooden box full of pictures and items beginning with 'Q'. I have a large ball of pencils (from the Big Draw) which, no matter which way up it lands, will always make a mark; and there is a sheep skull in here somewhere, too. Not to mention a good collection of old-fashioned motor horns, which I include in my books whenever possible.

I have an archive of over 40,000 drawings: not only finished work, but also all the roughs and many preliminary drawings too. Here's the artwork for the fictional story of 'Harvey C Attar' from the series 'Rake's Progress'. The cartoon strip was published in 'Town & Country' magazine in the USA in the 1980s.

It's been a challenging few years for arts venues across the UK. As Artist Patron at Hastings Contemporary, I've been working on imaginary portraits of all shapes and sizes, many of them worked in watercolour pencil or ballpoint pen, both of which I love to draw with. There were originally going to be one hundred in total; but I just couldn't stop drawing, so I've recently added another 60 or so to the set. The works have been on display in Hastings for the summer, and all of them are for sale: proceeds will support both Hastings Contemporary and the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration.

Often I use a lot of scruffy-looking dip pens. Essentially each of these is a straight double-ended holder (a German make called Brausse) with a nib, which is flexible and scratchy, or a J nib, which is harder and broader. Or it may be some other kind of nib, such as a brand called 'Waverley', a favourite of mine, which is a very old-fashioned sort of nib that used to be used a lot by clerks; they are quite hard to come by now, but luckily I laid in a good supply which will last me for years. Or I might use a brush, or a reed pen, or a watercolour pencil, depending on the needs of the job.

I've been using a lightbox for the past forty years or so. How it works is this: the light shines up through the rough drawing (on fairly thin paper) which I place underneath a blank piece of watercolour paper. I can see the rough shape of the drawing under the paper - but not too clearly. So I don't trace the drawing, but it does help me to know how the picture is composed; and I can retain an air of spontaneity, of 'doing it for the first time' no matter how many goes I have at any particular drawing.

Studio Tour

Do you keep imagery around you to reference in your work?

What is the most unusual object in your studio?

How many books have you written/illustrated?

Peek into the archive ..

What sort of paper do you use?

What are you working on at the moment?

Which pens do you use?

Which paint do you have in your watercolour palette?

Drawing with quills

Which ink do you use?

The Lightbox