Windows into Illustration: Simon Bartram

Best known for his books about Bob, the man on the moon, Simon Bartram’s artwork is characterised by its richness and depth, his confident draughtsmanship and his affectionate humour and sense of the absurd. His is a painting style that demands intensive labour. Here Simon Bartram explains the technique and thinking behind one of the illustrations of the Monster in Bob’s Best Ever Friend.

In my picture books about Bob, the man on the moon (The Man on the Moon, Bob’s Best Ever Friend, Bob and the Moontree Mystery etc) I see the relationship between the words and the illustrations as that of a straight man and a funny man. The text is the straight man. It is written from Bob`s point of view and is quietly deadpan, revealing little about what is actually going on in the story. The pictures provide the fun and the jokes and are responsible for moving the events along.

In this illustration from Bob’s Best Ever Friend, Bob is at home enjoying a nice supper of fish fingers and peas in front of the news. He is lonely and wishes he had a best ever friend to share his cosmic adventures with. Unbeknown to him aliens lurk all around his living room. Even his fish tank and his tea mug have been invaded. As far as he`s concerned life is normal.

The story is unfolding through the window where. An asteroid (on which his future friend Barry, an alien dog, is travelling) is fast approaching Earth. Also through the window there is a shady character in a top hat who is up to no good. Both Barry and the top hatted man are not mentioned in the text. Bob is blissfully unaware of their existence but hopefully the readers are more eagle- eyed. With luck they will follow the two strands as they develop through the book. I would like this to give them some ownership of the story.

In my work small details play a big part. Only terrifying deadlines prevent me from adding more and more and more. Most artists I admire share the same compulsion. If I had a time machine I would nip back to 1434 and watch Jan van Eyck paint The Arnolfini Wedding before accelerating forward to visit Ingres, Stanley Spencer, Peter Blake and the comic book artist Julio Schiaffino.

Though pretty detailed, the fish finger illustration, as with all my other pictures, began life as a scrawl in a dog eared notebook. Ten or twenty thumbnails later the composition then progressed into a series of A5 line drawings in which important features were decided. At this point a finished rough was presented to the publishers and after approval it was down to the business of producing the artwork. Having drawn and redrawn the composition many times on tracing paper and after much adding in and rubbing out, a clean, tight line drawing was transferred down onto a sheet of heavy duty watercolour paper primed with Gesso. Then I began to paint with thin, milky acrylic layers with the smallest brushes known to man. I began with his head as I wanted the viewer`s eye to be first drawn to this point. Coupled with his intricate tanktop, I hoped this would create a strong central part of the painting around which everything else would revolve. Next I established the tonal values and light sources. Then I strapped myself into my chair and worked night and day for three weeks before re-emerging with a beard and another illustration closer to the end of the book.

Simon Bartram’s Bob’s Best Ever Friend (978 1 8487 7053 9) is published by Templar at £7.99 pbk. Simon is celebrating 10 years of  The Man on the Moon with a new picture book out this Autumn, Bob and the Moontree Mystery (9781848777460, £12.99 hbk; 9781848777491, £6.99 pbk).