Rachel Tonkin Illustrator Profile

Rachel writes: As a child I spent most of my time drawing, it didn't matter where, at school, all over my books, on any spare sheet of paper I could find, and the rest of the time I spent reading stories. The obvious consequence of this was that by the time I finished school I was not much good at anything else, so I did an illustration course at R.M.I.T.

Illustrating, and more recently writing, have always been a serious business to me. A lot of my thinking is done at night when I am in bed and should be asleep. And as my studio is a room under our house (aptly called the dungeon) if I have a good idea which I want to put down on paper, I can go to work at any time. These days I may feel reluctant to start a drawing which I know will be difficult, but I rarely, if ever, find myself 'stuck'. There are so many processes that can be followed to stimulate ideas.

Medium: Rachel uses a variety of media, techniques and styles and changes from pen and ink, to watercolour, to coloured pencils. The publishers like to see a variety of styles so that they can select one that they think suits the 'atmosphere' of the manuscript.