A Conversation with Korky Paul

Feb 23, 2019
2 min read

Korky Paul was born in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1951 into a family of seven children. His real name is Hamish Vigne Christie Paul. He enjoyed a wild and privileged childhood in the African Bushveldt. At an early age he was reading comic books and scribbling cartoons. He attended Durban School of Art and for four years worked in Advertising at an advertising agency in Cape Town, where he learned about layout, typography and message.

In 1976, he "fled for Europe" and arrived in Greece. He met James Watt, working for a Greek publisher, who commissioned Korky to illustrate a series of educational books teaching Greek children to speak the 'Queen's English'., this is how he began his career as a children's book illustrator. In 1986 Korky Paul met the editor Ron Heapy at Oxford University Press who commissioned him to illustrate Winnie the Witch. It won the Children's Book Award in 1987 and has been published in over 10 languages.

Korky has since illustrated more very successful books for Oxford, Random House, Penguin and many other publishers. Korky Paul has very quickly become a well-known 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. He is an award winning illustrator.

In his work, he claims the magic number for a illustrated book is 32 pages, and to always position the title and names at the top of the page. The background imagery should be bold and simple as its only viewed at 25%. Although the text and imagery must work together harmoniously and compliment each other but not distract the reader from the message being conveyed. Paul also works using photography or imagery to aid his illustrations for a sense of realism but also with his own creativity.

He uses a 5mm bleed on his A3 paper roughs to help define and develop his designs through experimentation and to keep as a reference, to later finalise them with the use of a A2 lightbox and photocopier, alongside Colour X ink for the inking of his illustrations with a quill to draw and colouring with watercolour paint. However, so he doesn't colour areas he needs to be either white or a different colour he used masking fluid which allows him to wash the background without affecting other elements in the background.