London

Time Out's Lisa Mullen drawn by Quentin Blake

Is it different drawing for an adult audience?
Well, when I started drawing I didn’t think I was creating a style that was for children particularly; and in fact, when I started talking to publishers at that time, some of them said it was rather sophisticated for children. Though, in fact, children seem not to have been so worried about it… So no, it’s the same kind of drawing, but it just has a different audience in mind.

Is it frustrating to be so closely associated with Roald Dahl?

It isn’t something that worries me because they’ve been such interesting tasks to do. It was nice that Roald came to like my drawings, because he had a variety of illustrators before me. I would have been less happy if I’d had to give up my own character to do them, but it’s not like that; people can still recognise me in the work, I don’t feel I disappear into it. Roald had tremendous character and imagination, but one doesn’t feel subsumed into his vision. Feature continues

Did you have much to do with the stage version of ‘The Twits’?

Not really, to be honest. The thing about Roald and his work is that it has so many offshoots. There’s still a lot of work going on with new books, and I’m also involved in the charity aspect with the Dahl Foundation, which raises money for haematology, neurology and literacy. So, at some point, I had to decide that I would stick to drawing things for the books. I don’t even try to get involved in theatre productions or films: I’ve been invited to do sets once or twice but I always feel that the books are the immediate things.

Do you find you have to change mental gear when you’re working from someone else’s words?

You do a bit, in some ways. For my own books, it really is a visual narrative sequence and the words are extra. I even did one, ‘Clown’, which has no words at all and tells the whole story in pictures. But I like working with other people’s words – I think of it as a kind of theatre on the page. When you’ve got someone else’s manuscript, I imagine it’s a bit like being the director of a play. You decide what it’s going to look like, and you’re guided by the text but you have to bring it forward from the text, so that you actually see the surroundings and you decide what those characters are wearing and the way they move and behave.