posted on 19 Sep 2022

Quentin Blake: A Year of Drawings edited by Claudia Zeff

At the time of peak lockdown in 2020 being effectively under Covid house-arrest, people found themselves doing uncharacteristically obsessive things – some creative, some not – to feel they were passing the time gainfully. During this time I thought that this state of affairs might really suit some artists – imagine having all the time in the world to create without being nagged and bothered by the need to socialise.

I don’t know how true to life my assumptions were for most artists but what Claudia Zeff has pulled together here gives us a fascinating insight into what one artist – Quentin Blake – did to pass the time. Zeff is an art director who has worked closely with Blake and in 2011 she became his Creative Consultant, helping him set up the House of Illustration (which is currently being reimaged as The Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration).

Zeff was in the privileged position of seeing at first hand how the lockdowns impacted on the work of one of our greatest illustrators and artists. He was able to work on one or two outstanding commissions but other than that he was free to please himself:

“During the lockdowns of 2020-21 he had no office to go to and fewer demands made on his time……But the rest of the time he could really do whatever he felt like.”

Talking to Zeff by phone, Blake would describe sitting in bed drawing from 6 am in the morning and working on spontaneous series of linked drawings:

“In recent years I have found myself working increasingly in sequences of drawings which explore subjects and techniques which interest me. The sequences vary in approach and tone, and between reality and fantasy.”

He used whatever came to hand – biro, crayon, pencil, watercolour – on whatever paper was around and simply let his imagination rip. The results were then photographed every afternoon by his lifelong friend, fellow artist, Linda Kitson.

It seems that sometimes the sequences might run to sixty or more drawings and what Zeff presents to us here are the edited highlights (but that still amounts to a hefty and substantial book).

There are drawings here in a style that will be very familiar to lovers of his books but there is also content that will come as something of a surprise. I was struck by the way I found myself thinking of other illustrators and artists – there’ surely more than a pinch of Mervyn Peake here and it sometimes feels he’s reduced some the great Renaissance draughtsmen to a few decisive lines. I’d even go as far as to say I feel the hand of Francis Bacon in some of the work.

But all of it remains indisputably Quentin Blake and be prepared for the fact that much of the work is far from whimsical – there are some dark portraits here that wouldn’t be out of place in a Victorian museum of the common criminal.

Examples of his use of watercolour burst out every now and then and instantly pages come to life and there’s a great photograph of the great man sitting and contemplating a wall frieze where green ink is the main medium. A little addition of red suddenly gives the whole thing another humorous dimension.

History will record the Covid lockdown years as ‘lost’ time for many people but artists like Quentin Blake show us that it wasn’t all wasted space and we have this book to offer up as evidence of the way the creative spirit was ultimately unquenchable.  

As I write this review the book is only available in hardback – but who wouldn’t want one of those?

 

Terry Potter

September 2022