Windows into Illustration: Carly Gledhill

Carly Gledhill channels her love of colour, character design and hand-drawn lettering into everything she creates, from children’s books to surface pattern designs. She has written and illustrated picture books, novelty books and board books, with humour a key element. In this Windows into Illustration feature, she describes the composition of a spread that fascinates her readers.

Pass the Parcel is a book I wrote when I was really quiet at work, sat twiddling my thumbs and feeling pretty glum. After 10 minutes of that, I decided to do something about it and make a picture book to cheer myself up. I wrote a book called ‘How to post a parcel (to really far away)’ and fully illustrated it too. A silly tale about a parcel, whose journey we follow once he’d been posted at the Post Office. By the time the book was finished with, I had some more actual work to do and got back on with life as normal.

When tasked with picking my favourite illustration I had two in mind, firstly the spread that features the queue of people in the Post Office when Parcel arrives, which is very relatable to all adults. I went full silly-billy illustrating this one, there’s a lemon in the queue posting a box for goodness sake.

But the one I actually picked is the spread that most of the little people who read the book seem to be amazed by. To set the scene; we’ve gone through the Post Office queue stage, Parcel has had his stamp applied, is ready to head off on his journey and then is actually unceremoniously chucked into the back of the Post Office onto a big pile of post.

The we turn the page to this spread. It features lots of conveyor belts, carrying assorted post and parcels heading off in different directions, there’s a block of cheese, a huge banana, wrapped in brown paper AND a post Octopus, who better to grab all those parcels and set them on the right track? It’s all very exciting.

My illustrative style depends heavily on the age-old skill of drawing shapes and moving them around until I like it. I’m not a huge fan of sketching ideas first, I’m always very keen to get onto Photoshop and start playing with the form and colour of the spread.

I used actual parcel paper and cardboard as part of the collage style, scanned in and cut out, this is how the character of Parcel was made too. Other elements like the conveyor belt are drawn straight into Photoshop, with colour and texture added on later, once the structure is in place. There’s an earlier iteration of this spread on a grey background, where you will notice that the characters are less developed, but the structure of the converter belts is already in place. It got spruced up and developed further, complete with a Post Office crocodile and a lovely pink background.

It’s a really fun and joyful book and I think these pages show the excitement of the start of Parcel’s journey. I hope you enjoy it too!

Pass the Parcel by (9781836270416, £12.99 hbk) and Pencil’s Best Story Ever (9781836270485, £7.99 pbk) by Carly Gledhill are published by Post Wave Children’s Books.