sarnies with chris riddell

Yesterday I had lunch with an illustrator I’ve always admired, at least ever since the Cartoon Museum opened and I studied the way he drew the bony knuckles of an old man’s hands in a political cartoon. He’s Chris Riddell, and you may know him for his Ottoline books, his political cartoons in The Observer, his many collaborations with writer Paul Stewart, such as The Edge Chronicles or his funny little literary parodies in The DaVinci Cod. (You can read a longer list of his work over on Wikipedia.) Here’s a picture we drew together:

Chris doesn’t use any digital elements in his work, just pens and paint, and we had fun geeking out over such things as quality of line, lettering with brush pens, and ink stains on the inside of one’s jacket pocket. (Yes, his jacket lining is a bit of an inky mess.) We had our sandwiches outside the Observer offices, overlooking the canal, which was completely choked up with green algae.