Deborah Hinde works from her home based studio in rural Waikato. Her studio is a converted double garage not far from the house, with garden and rolling countryside views. Pheasants, hares, hedgehogs and rabbits, plus a multitude of birds are often seen enjoying the garden. Her surroundings often provide great inspiration for some of her characters.
Deborah is the illustrator of more than 100 books, both fiction and non-fiction, with over 45 of these picture books. Her illustrations for The Spaghetti Giraffe (Flat Bed Press) was awarded the 2018 Storylines Notable Book Award (and more recently in 2023, A Kiwi Night Before Christmas (Scholastic NZ), the first book she ever illustrated, received the Gaelyn Gordon Award for a well-loved book.
In 2016 Deborah ventured into independent publishing with Hare. Since then she’s produced another 5 books working on her own text as well as bringing other authors stories to life. She illustrated and project managed The Garden’s Secrets, a book based on and published by Hamilton Gardens. She’s also worked with author, Sarah Johnson and Life Education Trust: Waipa/King Country on their book titled Harold’s Spots.
1. What is your writing or illustrating day like? When and how do you create?
My days have been a little more leisurely over the last year or so, which makes a change from taking on four or five books a year and not having enough time to breathe between them.
I now tend to the business of being an illustrator in the morning, after walking the dog and having coffee. This leaves me the around 5 – 6 hours without interruptions for me to work on illustration projects.
2. Where do your best ideas come from? How do you develop them further?
Illustrating picture books for me is a puzzle – the images need to extend beyond the words and add emotion to the story. I love that challenge! I love that I get to decide what the set looks like, who the characters are, how they look, and what they wear.
When I receive a manuscript from a publisher I’ll read it through a couple of times - this sparks ideas that I quickly jot down on the manuscript – these little sketchy marks or notes wouldn’t make sense to anyone else, but they’re like a code to me.
It’s definitely easier to work with a manuscript that has been edited and signed off, than on my own manuscripts which can be revised multiple times until I’m absolutely happy with it - this can be happening while I’m working on the illustrations!
In either case my next step is thumbnails. For me this is an important step that gives me a complete overview of the book and how the illustrations flow. I’m looking for the pauses or stops in the text – the sad moments or happy ones so I can mark where the character turns to the left, or gazes out of the page at the reader.
Then it’s onto developing the characters – this involves a fair bit of time thinking and sketching. If the characters are anthropomorphised animals I’m not familiar with, I’ll research them to check out their bone structure. I may save a couple of images of their faces for reference and then it’s more sketching and tweaking until I’m happy that they look cute and believable, even though they’re doing unbelievable things.
If I’m drawing people I tend to draw from my mind. If I need to check a hand position I’ll refer to my own, or sometimes I’ll have Mark pose for me for reference and I can use those images to base a child or an adult on.
My next step is to transfer the thumbnails and sketches to Photoshop and start working on small storyboards (four spreads on A4) this stops me from adding too much detail so I can focus on positioning the characters, the background and where the text will sit. Sometimes if there’s a lot of text I’ll copy and paste that in to help me plan the page. Once I’m happy with these I’ll enlarge up to full size and re sketch adding in all the detail. Sometimes things get moved around, flipped, enlarged or reduced before I do a final drawing of each of the spreads which then goes to the publisher for their approval.
Their book designer gets involved at this stage and may make a few suggestions to improve on what I’ve done.
3. What is the work you are most proud of so far? Why?
Goodness! That is such a difficult question to answer. Each project I’ve undertaken since I first started illustrating books back in 2003, with A Kiwi Night Before Christmas (Scholastic NZ) I’m proud of for different reasons. The Hopplepop is high on the list because I had the freedom to come up with something pretty unusual. And then there’s Cow Power (Random House, 0000) a true rescue story where I felt every emotion while working on the illustrations. The horror of the author almost losing their life to the sadness of the cows calling to each other as they got swept away. It still gives me goose bumps when I think about it!
Another rescue story about the three cows caught on an island in the Kaikoura earthquake Moo and Moo and the Little Calf too (Allen & Unwin, 2017) would also be work I’m proud of - for the speed in which it was produced. Roughs were completed in under a month and then the finished illustrations were delivered within 6 weeks! I’m pretty proud of that!
Hare, (PictureBook Publishing, 2016) the first book I wrote, illustrated and published myself, I’m also proud of – undertaking indie publishing is not for the faint of heart as there’s a lot to organise. It definitely helped that I had a background in graphic design and had worked with printing companies.
5. What is one thing you would say to aspiring children’s illustrators?
Draw every day, look around you and draw what you see. Understand perspective – this will be helpful you to create amazing illustrations.
Practice drawing people realistically and practice drawing people from your head. Dream up and draw characters based on an object. Let the child in you out and have fun with drawing.
Visit the library and pick a selection of books to take home. Analyse the illustrations. Look for the stops, the pauses. Look at the colour palette. Look at the illustration style and the characters – do they resonate with you? If not think about why.
Consistency and being persistent are two important traits in becoming and being an illustrator.
It took me years to get my first book and that was way back in 2003 – there’s so many more opportunities available to aspiring illustrators to learn this craft in this digital age.
The most important thing I’ve found after all these years is to keep it FUN!
Below is a selection of books illustrated by Deborah. Visit her website at www.deborahhinde.co.nz
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