Illustrators' Sketchbooks

Intimate and often unseen, the sketchbook means something different to each illustrator. It might be a beautiful object, a work of art in its own right, where every line is painstakingly considered. It might be a pictorial playground, where mistakes can make art. The boundaries between sketchbooks, notebooks and visual journals are often blurred, lending to the creativity that fills their pages. It is likely that you will recognize many of the illustrators featured, including classic childhood favourites Beatrix Potter, Jean de Brunhoff, Edward Ardizzone and Tove Jansson, and established names such as Beatrice Alemagna, Oliver Jeffers and Shaun Tan. Others are up-and-coming, for example Charlotte Ager and Leah Yang. Martin Salisbury draws on decades of experience as an illustrator and educator to shed light on the lives and work of each artist. He even reveals pages from his own sketchbooks, exposing the rawness of his ideas and the narratives that surround them. As the reader will discover, sketchbooks are often a fascinating and surprising window into the mind of the illustrator.

Martin Salisbury is a professor of illustration at the Cambridge School of Art, where he designed and teaches on the renowned MA Children’s Book Illustration programme. He has previously chaired the jury for the Ragazzi Award at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, and has served on juries for numerous other international illustration awards. His many books include The Illustrated Dust Jacket: 1920–1970 (2017), Drawing for Illustration (2022) and Miroslav Sasek (The Illustrators series, 2021), all published by Thames & Hudson.