British Illustrators 8: Peggy Fortnum ad Paddington Bear

If we’re discussing British children’s illustrators of the 20^th century, we can’t really ignore Peggy Fortnum. Peggy Fortnum, who passed away in 2016, illustrated over 50 books, but she’s best known as the original illustrator of Michael Bond’s charming Paddington Bear books. The idea of anyone else having illustrated Paddington is about as outlandish as anyone other than E.H. Shepard having illustrated Winnie the Pooh.

Copying this picture was an interesting and surprisingly challenging experience. It looks simple, yet I found that every one of her lines was precisely placed, and imprecision on my part rendered the sketch far less effective than the original.