Korky Paul
About Author
Early Years and beyond
Korky Paul was born in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1951. He studied art at the Durban School of Art in Natal, South Africa and then spent three years working for an advertising agency in Cape Town. In 1976 as Korky puts it he "fled for Europe" and got a job illustrating and designing educational books in Greece. He then spent some time working for an advertising agency in London and Los Angeles and then studied film animation at Cal Arts in California.
Korky Paul is married with two children. He works in Oxford but spends the summer living it up in Greece.
First drawing attempts
On his first day at work, the young art graduate Korky was called the new 'drawer'. On reflection, it is a fair description of what he did then and what he does nowdraw picture books. He likes the word, preferring it to artist or even illustrator.
Korky's first children's book was published in the USA in 1980. It was a pop-up book called The Crocodile and Dumper Truck. During the 1980's Korky illustrated a number of children's books and in 1986 he illustrated his first book for Oxford University Press, Winnie the Witch, which won the Children's Book Award in 1987.
Korky the drawer
Since then, Korky has illustrated many more successful children's books for Oxford University Press. He has continued with his adventures of Winnie the Witch and her loveable cat Wilbur, as well as illustrating many children's poetry books in collaboration with John Foster. He has become a hugely popular figure in the children's book world and he is especially popular with the young children who read his books and are carried away into a fantasy world by the illustrations.
Author link
Interview
WINNIE THE WITCH illustrator
July 2012
Oxford University Press
Winnie the Witch, first published 25 years ago, has gone on to become one of the most recognisable characters in childrens fiction and also one of our favourite witches. When children draw a witch these days, she often has yellow and orange socks, just like Winnie. But what has made the slightly incompetent witch such a cherished character?
Much of Winnie's success can be attributed to the instantly recognisable illustrations by Korky Paul. When he was given the first Winnie the Witch manuscript to illustrate, Paul read it on the bus home and decided that rather than doing as he'd been asked and illustrate it for an early readers' series, he would illustrate it as if it were going to be a picture book. "I just felt it deserved more," he explains. The then editor at OUP, Ron Heapy, agreed with him and loved his illustrations - and that is how the first Winnie the Witch picture book came to be.
That was 1987. It would be almost ten years before Korky Paul would agree to illustrate the next Winnie the Witch story, although now one new book is published each year.
Paul is convinced he got the job because of how he created Winnie's house, which was meant to be black. "I had a very traditional training as an artist and I was taught that, even if something is black, it isn't just black - you need to add colours like purple or blue to give black warmth, so that's how I approached Winnie's black house."
Because the house is so black, Paul decided to give Winnie very colourful clothes to help her stand out - including stripy socks and a rather squashed up witch's hat. "To be honest, when I did the first drawing I ran out of space so I squashed her hat up a bit to fit - but then it seemed to look right, so it stayed."
Over the years the characters have seen some changes, especially Winnie's cat, Wilbur. "In the first book he was quite a minor character and doesn't even open his mouth - in later books we see him grinning or grumbling and doing things more like sitting on Winnie's shoulders or scratching when he's bored, rather than just sleeping."
Winnie's broomstick has also developed various new functions along the way - including one broomstick that has a bicycle saddle.
The house has also taken on a life of its own. When Paul first draw it, he drew it as a Tudor cottage but decided that was too cliched so he replaced the cottage with a stately home; the author Valerie Thomas had not put in any description of the house so it was down to the illustrator to create it. He gives her an enormous kitchen, puts a telescope in the top floor window, designs winding corridors and installs a 'corridor of ancestors' where paintings of Winnie's predecessors gaze down on her. Because Winnie's house is 'magic', Paul doesn't need to keep it the same every time he illustrates it.
The illustrations are carefully designed and placed through each story to change the pace - for example, Winnie's spells at the end of Winnie the Witch involve much colour and movement compared to the sleepy start. "I like to illustrate picture books like movies," says Paul. "As the illustrator you're the director and you're in charge of the set design, the costumes, the staging, camera angles and lighting." It's not too much of a surprise to find out that Paul has done a course in film. He also worked in advertising which, he says, gave him the feel for how to lay out the pages of the book including the typography and design.
Paul begins each picture book in October or November and completes the illustrations the following March. He will spend about five days on each spread, working long hours, he says.
It was his grandmother, who lived on a farm in the Kalahari Desert in South Africa, who gave him the idea for using black and white pen and ink illustrations. "I used to study her cross hatching and drawings when I was a child and when I was 16, she gave me all her pens, brushes and equipment. It was all in a great big metal paint box."
Creating the black and white drawings for the Winnie young fiction stories is a very different process from illustrating the picture books, he adds. "I have a lot of time to do the little black and white books and I can illustrate one of them in eight or nine weeks."
The picture books require more research, practice and draft drawings. "When I was illustrating Winnie in Space I spent a lot of time looking at stars and around the Nasa website. I had a lot of fun drawing that book with all the multi-coloured planets and space ships - and the pile of junk Winnie uses to build her space ship." It remains one of his favourites to this day.
In his studio - a basement in his house - there are many reminders of Winnie that people have sent to him, from models and drawings of Winnie to a pair of orange and yellow socks. "I just love drawing her books," he chuckles. "She's gone to lots of different places and evolves all the time. As an illustrator, you can develop the characters and places. It's just lots of fun."
