Hamish Vigne Christie "Korky" Paul (born 1951) is a British illustrator of children's books. He was born and raised in Rhodesia, but now lives in Oxford, England. His work, characteristically executed with bright watercolour paint and pen and ink, is recognisable by an anarchic yet detailed style and for its "wild characterisation". He is most known for his illustration of the series Winnie the Witch.[1]
Paul giving a lecture on illustrating children's books
Paul was born in 1951 into a family of seven children in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe) where he had what he calls "a wild and privileged childhood" in the African Bushveld.[2]
He went to Estcourt High School[3] before graduating from Durban School of Art in 1972 and working at an advertising agency in Cape Town.[4] In 1976 he travelled to Greece where he met James Watt, then working for a Greek publisher who commissioned Paul to illustrate a series of educational books teaching Greek children to speak the 'Queen's English'.
He then spent some time working in an advertising agency in London and Los Angeles, and then studied film animation under Jules Engel at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California. His first children's book was a pop-up called The Crocodile and the Dumper Truck published in 1980, with paper engineering by Ray Marshall.
In 1986 Paul met the editor, Ron Heapy, at Oxford University Press, who looked at his work and commissioned him to draw several pictures for a short book about a witch written by Valerie Thomas as part of OUP's Reading Tree programme.[5] Paul liked the story enough to turn it into a complete picture book. Although this was not strictly within Paul's brief, Heapy nevertheless presented it to the OUP delegates. The resulting book, Winnie the Witch, went on to win the Red House Children's Book Award in 1988 and has since been published in over 10 languages.[6] Paul's illustrations for this are full of visual jokes and witty detail.[7] Since then he has illustrated a further nineteen Winnie the Witch titles that have sold over 7 million copies.[5][1][6]
Of Paul's contribution to the success of Winnie and Wilbur, Helen Mortimer of OUP writes, "Winnie is such a loved character. It's partly because the artwork is so distinctive and detailed; there is so much to pour over in every single spread."[6] Of his illustration of Winnie in the books, Paul told the Telegraph: "I didn't want witchy colours... I love throwing in colour, it makes me feel like Jackson Pollock."[1]
Three of Paul's picture books have been adapted for CD-ROM; The Fish Who Could Wish which won the European Multi-Media Award (EMMA) in 1995,[8]Dragon Poems and Winnie the Witch.
His anarchic yet detailed work, executed with bright watercolour paint and pen and ink, is distinguished by its "wild characterisation".[9] It has been compared to Tom and Jerry cartoons, and also to the artists Ronald Searle and Ralph Steadman. He has original artwork on display at The Mazza Collection Galleria, University of Findlay, Findlay, Ohio, US.
Paul lives in Oxford and is married to the artist Susan Moxley. Together they have two children, Oska and Zoë.[6]
Describing the technical details of his work he says: "I use an Apple Mac, Schminke watercolours, Caran d'Ache pencil crayons (with electric sharpener), Saunders Waterford paper 190gm3 [sic], black kandahar and coloured inks with a dip pen, toothbrush, porcupine quills, and my trusty left hand."[9]
In 2015/2016, he was the 7th most borrowed illustrator in UK public libraries.[10]
Partial bibliography
Written and Illustrated
The Big Book (Methuen) 1985
The Fat Book (Methuen) 1985
The Thin Book (Methuen) 1985
The Coconut Feast, Orbis (London, England), 1985.
Adventures with the Creep, Orbis (London, England), 1985.
The Special Romance, Orbis (London, England), 1985.
The Fruit Salad Tangle, Orbis (London, England), 1985.
Ernest Howard Shepard was an English artist and book illustrator. He is known especially for illustrations of the anthropomorphic animal and soft toy characters in The Wind in the Willows and Winnie-the-Pooh.
Pauline Diana Baynes was an English illustrator, author, and commercial artist. She contributed drawings and paintings to more than 200 books, mostly in the children's genre. She was the first illustrator of some of J. R. R. Tolkien's minor works including Farmer Giles of Ham and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. She became well-known for her cover illustrations for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and for her poster map with inset illustrations, A Map of Middle-earth.
The Carnegie Medal for Illustration is a British award that annually recognises "distinguished illustration in a book for children". It is conferred upon the illustrator by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) which inherited it from the Library Association. CILIP is currently partnered with the audio technology company Yoto in connection with the award, though their sponsorship and the removal of Greenaway’s name from the medal proved controversial.
Robin McMaugh Klein is an Australian author of books for children. She was born in Kempsey, New South Wales, Australia, and now resides near Melbourne.
Henry Treece was a British poet and writer who also worked as a teacher and editor. He wrote a range of works but is mostly remembered as a writer of children's historical novels.
(Robert) Geoffrey Trease FRSL was a prolific British writer who published 113 books, mainly for children, between 1934 and 1997, starting with Bows Against the Barons and ending with Cloak for a Spy in 1997. His work has been translated into 20 languages. His grandfather was a historian, and was one of the main influences on his work. He is best known for the children's novel Cue for Treason (1940).
Ian Serraillier was an English novelist and poet. He retold legends from England, Greece and Rome and was best known for his children's books, especially The Silver Sword (1956), a wartime adventure story that the BBC adapted for television in 1957 and again in 1971.
Kit Wright is the author of more than twenty-five books, for both adults and children, and the winner of awards including an Arts Council Writers' Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, the Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize and the Heinemann Award. After a scholarship to Oxford University, he worked as a lecturer at Brock University, St Catherine's, in Canada, then returned to England and a position in the Poetry Society. He is currently a full-time writer.
Michael Foreman is a British author and illustrator, one of the best-known and most prolific creators of children's books. He won the 1982 and 1989 Kate Greenaway Medals for British children's book illustration and he was a runner-up five times.
George Worsley Adamson, RE, MCSD was a book illustrator, writer, and cartoonist, who held American and British dual citizenship from 1931.
Kathleen ("Kaye") Webb, was a British editor and publisher. She has been called an "enormously influential children's editor" and "brilliant as an innovator of highly successful marketing strategies". She was awarded the Eleanor Farjeon Award in 1970.
Winnie the Witch is a series of nineteen picture books, written by Valerie Thomas and illustrated by Korky Paul. More than seven million books have been sold of the series, and it has been translated into more than 10 languages.
Brian Lawrence Wildsmith was a British painter and children's book illustrator. He won the 1962 Kate Greenaway Medal for British children's book illustration, for the wordless alphabet book ABC. In all his books, the illustrations are always as important as the text.
Naomi Lewis was a British poet, essayist, literary critic, anthologist and reteller of stories for children. She is particularly noted for her translations of the Danish children's author, Hans Christian Andersen, as well as for her critical reviews and essays. She was a recipient of the Eleanor Farjeon Award. Lewis was an advocate of animal rights and was known to rescue injured pigeons and stray cats.
Gerald Hembdon Seymour Rose was a British illustrator of children's books. He won the 1960 Kate Greenaway Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book illustration by a British subject, for Old Winkle and the Seagulls, written by his wife Elizabeth (Liz) Rose and published by Faber and Faber.
Jill Masefield McDonald was a New-Zealand-born children's writer and illustrator, working in the United Kingdom from the mid-1960s. Much of her work was done for Puffin Books, the children's imprint of Penguin, and for its club's magazine Puffin Post.
Ruth Gallard Ainsworth was a British writer, of over seventy children's books and numerous radio scripts.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
