We are delighted to welcome Kate Winter, winner of the 2024 Klaus Flugge Prize for most exciting newcomer to picture book illustration, on how observational drawing is central to her book The Fossil Hunter.

When I studied Children’s Book Illustration at Cambridge School of Art, we were taught to develop our skills by going straight to the source, which meant drawing and closely observing life. Not only does observational drawing help you improve your technical skills, but it also ensures that you are seeing the world first hand through your own eyes and therefore embracing your own unique view of the world. It means you notice the way things are and the way things really look, and these small observations become essential when developing stories, creating characters and expressing a sense of place in your illustrations. I teach my own students that observational drawing is essential to their practice.

On a practical level, developing the drawings from observed sketches to imagined imagery is something that takes time and practice. I have found that the more I draw from observation the better my “database” of what I can draw from my imagination gets. During my MA I wrote about this connection between observed drawing and memory drawing as part of my written thesis. I made a collection of sequential prints about rowing (on the river at night!) which is one of my hobbies. I was able to focus on observing the boat, landscape and crew around me and hold it in my memory until I could get home to draw what I had seen.

[See image one in gallery]

It felt comforting to find that by practicing my observational skills through everyday sketching and through intense looking I was improving my ability to draw from memory. I now find I am much better at drawing from my head and my illustrative work is primarily imagined images. It’s important to know that it has come from many, many years of drawing practice. I don’t like to draw from photos, as my students will know! I feel that photos can block the natural and personal mark making that is within every artist. My advice for anyone starting up is to draw, draw, draw from life. Let the drawings be bad and imperfect and wrong for a while; the more you practice the better you will become and the more you will reveal your true self within your work.

When beginning research for The Fossil Hunter the first thing I did was to go to Lyme Regis and visit the town that Mary Anning grew up in so that I could walk in her footsteps, get a sense of where she was from and experience her life as much as possible.

[see image two in gallery]

Walking on the beach at Charmouth felt almost like I could be in the 19^th century. The beach would not have changed much; there were still the same dark grey-blue cliffs towering over the shore. I managed to visit on a particularly windy and rainy day, which felt very appropriate. I had learnt that the best time for fossil hunting is after a rough sea has tumbled against the cliffs, tearing down the mud and revealing new layers of fossils. I had also learnt that at the Anning’s most destitute times they had lived right by the seafront, with the waves crashing against their windows and sometimes flooding their home. The sea was both a friend and foe.

[see image three in gallery]

When I was there, I drew and drew. Many houses had remained from Mary’s time. The geography of the steep road sloping down to the sea remained, as did the stream running through the centre with remnants of the watermills that once stood in Lyme, and many old pubs and bridges. I visited the very helpful Lyme Regis Museum which holds a wonderful collection of fossils, a model of Mary’s house created from a drawing done by Mary herself and many photographs and maps showing Lyme’s rich history.

[see image four in gallery]­­­

I was also able to tour the Sedgewick Museum in Cambridge and the Natural History Museum in London, which both hold fossils found by Mary Anning. I spent time in all these places, collecting image ideas and feeling more and more connected to Mary.

What I have since realised is that my job as an author and illustrator has more similarities with Mary’s palaeontological work than I first thought. Both involve bringing together fragments of the past and trying to find a story. This made me feel very connected to Mary as a person, and in turn helped hugely when developing the story and illustrations.

[see image five in gallery]

When working on the drawings for this book I tried to capture the big themes that dominated Mary’s life. She is a gift of a subject because she represents so many important qualities; she was incredibly hard working, focused and academic in her pursuit of the truth about the fossils she was finding. She was also determined, brave and defiant in the face of social structures that she endeavoured to tear down. The themes of truth and discovery in her pursuit of furthering science felt intrinsically linked to her pursuit for equality and recognition.

[see image six in gallery]

There are layers of time represented in the cliffs, and layers of fossils below the ground, buried over millions of years. Mary had a special ability to reach back through time, both metaphorically and physically peeling back those layers to uncover hidden truths.

[see image seven in gallery]

These “statement” images needed to be in the book, as well as moments of quiet contemplation where she was mulling over the creatures and her discoveries in her workshop. It felt important to visualise her imagination by sometimes depicting her thoughts like dreams floating around her. I hope the inclusion of the cabinet that the reader can physically open and look into also gives the feeling that the reader is stepping into Mary’s shoes themselves. All of these elements were important to me in order to create a sort of time travel; to really immerse the reader in the story.

[see image eight in gallery]



A big thank you to Kate Winter for the blog and Andrea Reece for the opportunity.