Helen Oxenbury is an English illustrator and writer of children’s books, she’s won the ‘Kate Greenaway Medal’ (the British librarians’ award for illustration) twice and runner up five times. Her more recognised contribution was her illustrations in ‘We’re Going on A Bear Hunt’ retold by Michael Rosen. The story ‘We’re Going On A Bear Hunt’ is what I’m mainly looking at as a focus for Oxenbury’s style and process, the narrative is a simple tale of a family venturing through different environments in search on a bear, with the story being told in a rhyming fashion that can be sung to those that know the melody. With the illustrations as the visual descriptors for the environments and as a way of describing the characters motions works very well and is extremely useful for me with ideas and a structure for my illustrations.
By looking more closely at her illustrations, there’s a whole other side to the narrative, a deeper insight into the illustrator and what she wants to express. To start I looked at her characters designs, they all look true to reality, meaning that they look like people the animals look like animals with no massive distortion into fantasy like Nick Butterworth’s characters. The only clear alteration is with the eyes, their just dots not detailed eyes which is a small element but with massive effects, pushing a story that maybe anyone could have with their family into a world of imagination and adventure. As for backgrounds and landscapes, for some she adds more detail like in colour or just more textures and others she tries to keep it uncomplicated, with basic monochrome colours and details that are being used for the scene like a fence or standard shrubbery. I believe she does this to fit each scene of the story, when she wants to leave it open to the readers imagination she’ll simplify it, but for parts of the narrative that needs a clear and vivid environment she uses strong detail and colours to show that there’s a magic and beauty in both reality and the imagination. Finally, there’s her choice in materials, she uses a mainly water-based tools for the colouring, shading and texturing of the scenes and characters, but a basic pen for the outlines and markings. I’ve always loved this style of illustrations, to me this style of work allows both a visual for readers but also keeping it vague enough for the imagination to kick in.
For my illustrations, id like to try and obtain this balance that Oxenbury’s mastered, obviously with my own input but I believe for the mood and tone of the story I’ll be illustrating it needs to have this movement in each page with some being more and some less, with character’s tat look real but in a friendlier manner for children to understand and love but not to frighten or confuse them.
Illustrations By Morgan 