“I draw monsters for a living,” reads James Davies’ Instagram bio. Based in Bristol, the illustrator and author is known for his naive illustrations, which complement perfectly his children books. “I think writing picture books, or any kind of children’s fiction, is much harder than a lot of people realize,” said Davies in an interview with The Association of Illustrators.
As for his style, he admits his work isn’t very polished but also – that he doesn’t necessarily want it to be. “The illustration style I have now is hugely changed from how I was working before,” he says. “Then, I’d have mountains of paper with tiny pencil lines on, scanning in everything and taking forever. Now, I do everything digitally in Photoshop, using my three favorite brushes. I feel slightly guilty at how little pencil and paper drawing I do these days, but I guess you just find what works!”
To push his work forward he sometimes sets little challenges for himself. “I try not to use more than three colors and try and use as few layers as possible in Photoshop,” he explains. “This leads to everything being simplified down to pretty basic shapes, which I then work over with lines and textures to make them a bit more detailed. It’s a process that changes every day, which makes every new illustration really exciting for me (and hopefully others.)”
We highly recommend you follow his work on Instagram (and grab his illustrated books if you can).
