ILLUSTRATING children books on the subject of dementia or a biography on the life of a mathematician is no easy task, but it's one that 29-year-old Ashling Lindsay accomplishes with creative sensitivity.
Shortlisted for the Children’s Book Ireland Book of the Year 2019 for Between Tick and Tock, this year Ashling was winner of the KPMG Children’s Book Ireland Honour Award for Illustration.
The Tide centres on a family day out at the beach and explores the relationship between a little girl and her beloved grandad who lives with dementia. Rather than think of her work being of a particular style, Ashling tries to approach each book with a way of working that suits particular projects.
“When I first read the text of The Tide I was really struck by the loss of connection between the grandad and the girl and it was that loss I was really interested in working with.
“I wanted to see if I could find a way to show that loss but also retain the warmth and love that Clare had in the story and I think we really achieved that in this book,” she explains.
For her illustrations Ashling uses a combination of drawing, painting, printmaking and computer design and will be providing a series of online videos showing the artistic process behind her work.
“I always start each project on paper as sketches and then I go in with paint and watercolour pencils. I might make some pieces using printmaking and drawing techniques and then I’ll scan it all into the computer and start working with it digitally," she says.
“With each new book project, I find I’m using the computer less and less, which feels great because it’s much more satisfying to finish a project and have finished pages of art to keep rather than just digital files on the computer."
Since graduating from Ulster University’s School of Art in 2013, Ashling’s beautiful illustrations have gathered much attention thanks to their distinctive style and her stunning talent. Her picturebooks have been published in more than 10 languages.
In April the latest in the hugely successful Little People, Big Dreams series was published, a biography of Second World War code-breaker Alan Turing, featuring Ashling’s eye-catching illustrations.
Developing drawings for the series, which has sold more than 1.5 million copies worldwide, has been a major achievement for Ashling but unfortunately many other of her projects planned for this year had to be been placed on hold, due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
During lockdown Ashling spent her spare time developing new ways of working either with drawing, printmaking and “experimenting painting techniques” as well as thinking "about how my experiences and skills may be able to help others”.
Ashling is one of a number of local artists to receive funding from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Artists Emergency Programme and is using the money to purchase new equipment to enable her to provide online classes and tutorials on picturebook making.
“I often get emails from people who are interested in my process, or have questions about the tools or software I use, and people that would like to know more about publishing books and how I got started. I don’t usually have the time to respond as thoughtfully as I’d like to these so I thought I could try to answer these questions through showing the process, talking through the tools and sharing some of my experience in the industry.”
And her biggest piece of advice to budding illustrators?
“Try and get familiar with how to read contracts and how to price your work. I always advise illustrators to take the business side of things just as seriously as they take developing their practice,” says Ashling, who is currently writing and developing art for her own picturebooks, one written in the Irish language and two in English.
“It’s a very different thing having control over the text as well as the images and I’m having a lot of fun experimenting with approaches and figuring things out,” she adds.
:: The online tutorials will be available this autumn on her website Ashlinglindsay.co.uk
