Picture This: Look Again
Nicolette Jones shares some favourite illustrations you might have missed.
Over 230 daily illustrations from picturebooks were chosen to post on Twitter (as I think of it) before I decided to leave the platform. I believed that thanks to the creators and readers and custodians of children’s books, in a hopeful corner of the site we could celebrate skill and beauty together. And a respectable 7300 followers were on board. When I moved, some objected: this was the platform, they argued, with the reach not just to show pictures to those already familiar with the range and skill of children’s illustration. But I thought its immoral algorithms had a lot to answer for, and involvement felt wrong. Perhaps it was a fight or flight impulse. I fled, leaving the followers behind, but hoping to find many of them again on Instagram and Bluesky (the latter recommended by Dapo Adeola for not harvesting posts for AI raw material). Now #NewIllustrationoftheDay is on @nicolettejonesig and @nicolettejones.bsky.social. The context is undoubtedly kinder, but building back the reach is going to take time. I am all the more grateful for space on the utterly honourable pages of Books for Keeps.
In the past this feature has focused on images that met with a notably enthusiastic response online. Occasionally the ‘like’ count was lower for some posts than I hoped (though everything had its fans), and sometimes on reflection I thought it was because I had chosen the wrong image from a book, which did not do justice to the whole, and to the illustrator. In a very few cases I thought I had lowered the bar, with fewer books to choose from (away on holiday, for example) and the meagre response was fair. But for this feature I would like to discuss the quality of three pictures that were not showered with hearts, but which I think contained more of interest than might have met even very discerning eyes in a cursory scroll.
The first is by Shamar Knight-Justice from Dante Plays His Blues (Harper Collins), written by Allen R. Wells. It is a picturebook about a boy and his mother who have to leave their home, and who go to live with his uncles. One of them teaches the boy to play the sax, which allows him to express his feelings, and to mend: ‘Turn yo’ blues into yo’ muse’. The reason for losing the home is not specified but is presumably eviction or repossession, or even domestic violence. It is an image in which a lot is suggested but not said.
At a glance the picture seems uneventful. Three people riding in the cab of a pickup truck (as we already know it to be), in what seems quite a simple graphic style of bold shapes and limited colours. But every time I look at or think about it there seems to be more going on.
This is a multi-media image, using collage. The rear window, on inspection, has sheet music in it. And the back wall of the cab is covered in hand-written words in old-fashioned script (like an accounts book or a legal document?). The windscreen wipers have more printed words on them, which seem random, but the phrase ‘secure it from’ is legible. Do these suggest the worries of evicted Dante and his mother? Or does the music imply that something is playing in the truck? Are the words the lyrics? Are Dante’s eyes closed because he is sad, or because he is listening? Dante’s lips, and his mothers, are pursed. Are they humming, or singing? Or do the background words suggest their heads are busy with thoughts? Meanwhile a band logo on Uncle Ron’s T-shirt picks up the musical theme.
There is a surprising degree of emotional charge in this image. We see Dante’s mother watching her son, with her hand of his shoulder. We know from the page before that her eyes are wet. Leaving home is hard and she is concerned for, and comforting, her son. Meanwhile Uncle Ron seems to be holding the steering wheel tightly but his face suggests a gentle character. He is resolute, opening his home to his sister in trouble, and quietly aware of the grief. The two uncles are apparently a gay couple. So this image of three people in a truck is about compassion, loss, unconditional love, music, family loyalty, and inclusivity.
The limited palette also creates a harmony. Dante’s red shirt matches the truck. It implies that he belongs in the vehicle that came to collect them, which is a place of warmth. I find the whole picture subtle, characterful and moving.
Also less embraced than I expected was a page from Beautiful: A Celebration of Evolution by William Spring (Big Picture Press). The 
intention of this large-format book is to explore creatures that are not generally admired for their beauty, depicting them in watercolour with close observation to demonstrate that nothing in nature is not beautiful. I chose a page with three images of different species of hornbill, a bird whose huge beak, horny casque and wrinkled throat are unlikely to make us say ‘aww!’. I suppose this, and the fact that the three separate vignettes have no narrative purpose, made it less popular as an illustration. It looks like a page from a sketchbook instead of a composition that tells a story.
It happens that Lauren St John told me that hornbills are her favourite birds. I thought, looking at them in this book, that their oddity, their sculptural quality, and their resemblance to dinosaurs were all to be admired. But what really made me choose this picture was the care and craft that went into it, the conjuring of feathers and horn and the set of the head on the neck, and the scrupulous recreation of particular colours, textures and characteristics. These pictures advocate looking closely, and also putting aside preconceptions. The three incomplete birds on a white page encourage the making of art as well as a knowledge of nature. If the choice were between these three skilfully shown but arguably grotesque birds, and a picture of kittens which depended on the cuteness of the subject for its appeal but was less carefully observed, I would rather have the ‘ugly’ birds.
Another choice was similarly about observation rather than decoration. I selected a picture by war artist George Butler, drawing a bombed building in Ukraine, from his book Ukraine: Remember Also Me: Testimonies From the War (Walker Studio). The image is called ‘Missile Strike, Kramatorsk, March 2023’. Butler’s line is careful and conscientious, following the outlines of objects in a way that tells a different kind of story. This is purist drawing that tries to avoid the emotive intention of much illustration, which sets out to engender a feeling in the ‘reader’. The obligation of war artists – in the tradition of, say, Piper or Sutherland – is to let what they see do that. Even though the small seated figure, seen from the back, looking at the destroyed building, is suggestive. It seems to belong to the tradition, going back to the Renaissance, of figures signifying grief, seen from behind.
And there is more here than simply recording a scene with line drawing. Butler uses collage, from printed paper and corrugated cardboard, to suggest the textures of the building, and the destruction – the sense of a place being reduced to incomplete scraps. The colour is both detailed, in the clothing of small figures, and more of a splash, with loose brushwork, evoking a painted wall that now has an indeterminate edge.
In other drawings, Butler adds duration to his pictures by recording movements – an arm may appear in three different positions. This is consistent with the immediacy this picture suggests – it is partial, and a moment, though it captures what the larger scene is like. It is both swift, expressing the instant, and slower than a photograph. The artist has taken time to see the details, and we are invited to do so too. And in noticing these, we have the chance to dwell on the subject.
What moves me most here is the picture’s commitment to truth. Which was what was lacking on Twitter.
Nicolette Jones writes about children’s books for the Sunday Times and is the author of The Illustrators: Raymond Briggs (Thames & Hudson); The American Art Tapes: Voices of Twentieth Century Art (Tate Publishing) and Writes of Passage: Words to Read Before You Turn 13 (Nosy Crow).
Books mentioned:
Dante Plays His Blues, Allen R. Wells, illus Shamar Knight-Justice, Harper Collins, 978-0063216259, £17.99 hbk.
Beautiful: A Celebration of Evolution, William Spring, Big Picture Press, 978-1800786165, £18.99 hbk.
Ukraine: Remember Also Me: Testimonies From the War, George Butler, Walker Studio, 978-1529514087, £20.00 hbk
